In the popular fantasy-themed amusement park, employees are winding up dead in some very strange circumstances.
What They Say:
It’s another day on the job for Takeshi Saito. He recently started working as a security guard for a high-tech amusement park called Fantasien. However, a bad day at work quickly spirals into a nightmarish maze of murder and mystery. It starts when Saito accidentally breaks a guidance display at work. Saito and Tamami are called into the office of Ms. Amano, his sexy boss. Makoto Kashiwara is sent out to repair the display. However, Kashiwara stumbles across a dark secret…
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release was pretty basic, as we get the original Japanese language in stereo and encoded at 192kbps. As with other hentai of a similar nature, the show is essentially dialogue-driven and uses primarily the center channel. In this respect, things are nice and clear and undistorted. The show makes decent use of directionality across the forward soundstage with the lightning effects and other incidental sounds.
Video:
Originally released in 2001 in Japan, the three episodes here are presented in its original full-frame aspect ratio. At the time, the series is much smoother and cleaner-looking than a lot of what we used to get since it was made in the early days of digital animation. Colors are very vibrant throughout and free of cross-coloration. Aliasing is pretty minimal, leaving the show free of problems. Well, almost. During the second episode, there’s a sequence where the screen turns into snow for a split second twice. It’s a strange occurrence and one I’ve never seen on any other disc. It doesn’t affect any dialogue, subtitles, or anything else since it’s almost a static moment in the show.
Packaging:
Released in three keepcases inside a simple cardboard box, each volume features artwork related to the individual episode, generally a collage of the women most involved in that particular episode in their various outfits. The covers are, for the most part, pretty bright in terms of the character artwork and look great. The box set itself uses artwork from the second volume on its primary panel, while the back of the box details each of the volumes and provides cover art for them. The front covers look pretty good, though things are pretty busy looking with the inclusion of the big uncensored lines and bars. The back covers show off some animation shots from each show and have a good summary of each episode. Features and technical information is nicely listed as well. As with all NuTech releases to date, there is no insert included.
Menu:
The menus are very simple here, with a few selections lined along the lower right next to the static image in the foreground of the castle from the show. Animation from the show plays in the darkened background to some of the instrumental music. Menus load nice and fast, and access times are excellent, allowing for quick and easy navigation without any transitional animations.
Extras:
The only extra included here is a two-minute-long video gallery that shows various stills from the episodes to music.
Content: (Please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a title like Bizarre Cage, I had been fairly well dreading getting to this series for a while. While I personally am not a straightlaced uptight person, there are simply things I don’t go for. When the word bizarre gets thrown around in conjunction with hentai, I’ll admit to being a bit wary. It’s actually not as bad as one would think. The story focuses on an amusement park called Fantasien. It’s a very high-tech outfit with lots of expensive gadgets and gear, some of it so revolutionary that they claim that the military is using it in their own research. Unfortunately, there’s been a series of incidents over recent months, such as a suicide and an increase in tabloid publicity, that’s causing the park to start losing attendance and money.
We pick up into the show as young Takeshi starts working there as a security guard, complete with a full knight outfit and some nice high-tech gear to go with it. But it’s not long before he’s getting into trouble with one of the women who’s working in the restaurant, and the two of them end up destroying a very expensive monitor. After a dressing down from the attractive park manager, Takeshi finds himself now being referred to as the boyfriend of this girl, Tamami. Of course, he’s finding himself more attracted to the supervisor who helped them out with the manager instead.
As we get to know Takeshi and Tamami a bit better, and they go through the motions of their day job routines, we get more hints of something sinister happening at the park after hours. Between seeing various park players screwing around in hidden areas and power plays going on between the manager and the owners, there isn’t much stability to what’s going on. Things start to collapse even more when one of the other park employees, Makoto, winds up dead from poisoning, and a fellow employee is wrongly accused.
It’s at this point that the manager realizes she’s going to lose her position and status and ends up working with Takeshi and some of the other employees to figure out how this high-tech park is being manipulated to cover up the crimes. This leads them down a fairly dark bondage-style path where we learn just what’s been going on behind the scenes. It plays out fairly decently, but it’s definitely a change from the general light and friendly air the show casts early on, with all of its exterior daytime shots in the happy park with people.
The series sports some rather nice character designs all around, making for enjoyable sex scenes when they actually do occur. Most of them end up being cosplay-oriented since the employees dress in their work uniforms, which adds a nice touch to things. The series isn’t terribly deep or complex, and the ending basically feels like something that was sort of just worked on to end things. With the reservations I had going into this show, it’s definitely turned out to be much less bizarre than I expected.
Content Grade: C+
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: C
Menu Grade: B-
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: NuTech Entertainment
Release Date: August 27th, 2003
MSRP: $59.95
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
Chris Beveridge
http://www.fandompost.com
Chris has been writing about anime, manga, movies and comics for well on twenty years now. He began AnimeOnDVD.com back in 1998 and has covered nearly every anime release that’s come out in the US ever since.
He likes to write a lot, as you can see.
