This short, animated prequel to Takashi Miike's signature opus to cartoon violence, Ichi The Killer, is an interesting if very flawed look at some of the events that transpired before the feature film and that shaped some of the characters we know from that movie.

The film introduces us to Ichi's character and fills us in on some of his past. We know he was bullied a lot as a teenager and that he had some issues with his parents during this time as well. He doesn't do so well in school and is the butt of many a joke, some of which are quite cruel. He also has to come to terms with the fact that his parents are very much into some nasty S&M, which being socially inept, is a very difficult task for the young man who sees it only as violence and nothing more (and it just might be).

One night, while getting out of the house and trying to escape from the compressed weirdness and insanity of his life, he's bitten when trying to help an injured animal laying in the middle of the road. This is the last straw for him and he snaps, beating the still breathing animal to death and slowly starting to become aroused by it all. Giving his parents' hobby, he comes by this honestly.

Skip ahead a few years and the teenage Ichi is now a young man, with a child's mind. He's been institutionalized and more or less had his mind wiped clean by the treatments that he's been subjected to there. When he's slowly reintroduced from his sheltered life into the real world, circumstance kicks in and his old feelings begin to stir deep within him once again, causing the need to sexual violence. And then there's Kakihara (voiced here by Takashi Miike himself), a masochistic Yakuza with an unhealthy interest in young Ichi, who just may prove to be the ultimate nemesis for him given his love for pain.

While this forty-five minute animated feature doesn't come close to pushing the envelope like the live action feature film does, it's still not short at all of bloodshed and gratuitous sexual violence. It's dirty, nasty and mean – just like its predecessor and just like the manga that it's based upon.

Sadly, it lacks a lot of the style that Miike was able to imbue upon his film. The color palette used is quite flat and the animation is repetitive and quite static looking. Sometimes this works, making the movie feel like a comic book at times, but for the most part it gets a little repetitive. The story is interesting though, and anyone who enjoyed Ichi The Killer should find it interesting to get the background story that that movie didn't give you from this animated prequel.

Video:

Sadly, the transfer on this release isn't so hot. The black levels are closer to brown and the entire picture is soft and hazy looking. There are mild compression artifacts visible and the colors look a little bit off. The main problem isn't the lack of detail or anything like that, it's the black levels that seem to throw the rest of the image off just a little bit. The picture is presented in its original fullframe aspect ratio of 1.33.1.