The way things have always been. The way things have always been done. The way things will always be. A trinity of poisonous lies.

A world run on murder, rape, torture, privation, the annihilation of all known being in exchange for second-order abstract value meaningless without the existence of life on earth. Is this not sacrifice enough? What more should be sacrificed and for what?

The Satanic Witch draws their power from the time and space after trauma, privation, torture, rape, death, when what has been allotted by the empty promises of rights and station and labor and position has been stripped from you by the very entities who proposed giving you these things in the first place. When all…

In 1973, the Japanese equivalent of Walt Disney decided to adapt a 19th century book about the feminist history of witchcraft into an animated prog-rock musical about a medieval peasant girl who gets gang-raped on her wedding night and then turns to Satan for help with her revenge. This is really a thing that happened. Strange even by the impossibly high standards of Japanese cinema, the wild and exhausting "Belladonna of Sadness" was conceived by Osamu Tezuka — the godfather of manga — as the third and final chapter of Mushi Productions' Animerama trilogy (a series of explicitly adult animated films that also included erotic riffs on "Cleopatra" and "A Thousand and One Nights").

Tezuka would drop out of the…

Belladonna of Sadness is an erotic Japanese animated rock opera that is hauntingly gorgeous through its explicit imagery and spellbinding soundtrack. It tells a medieval folklore tale through almost entirely still images and sublime Japanese voice acting, with the occasional musical number periodically appearing. The sensual theme song resonates throughout the story, crawling into the mind to solidify its entrancing tune that perfectly resonates the melancholy tale.

This is the story about Satan as a penis that you didn't know you needed. A love story unlike anything you've ever seen and possibly will ever see. Nearly every frame is either covered with brutal violence or explicit sexual imagery, but none of the sexual portions feel stimulating in any way. Rather,…

"What is that flickering in the pale mirror?"

A sombre tale of oppression and rebellion becomes a striking psychedelic fever dream of art and animation.
Seeking a blessing for their marriage and to offer a token of gratitude to their village lord, Jean and Jeanne visits his castle but as Jean is poor Jeanne is instead raped and abused by the corrput lord and his grinning minions. Her soul crying out in anguish, she is visited and seduced by the devil who gives her the ability to stike back at her oppressors.
Based on the book La Sorcière by Jules Michelet, Japanese director Eiichi Yamamoto along with animator Gisaburo Sugii and artist Kuni Fukai, here go from a single black…

"What is that flickering in the pale mirror?"

A sombre tale of oppression and rebellion becomes a striking psychedelic fever dream of art and animation.
Seeking a blessing for their marriage and to offer a token of gratitude to their village lord, Jean and Jeanne visits his castle but as Jean is poor Jeanne is instead raped and abused by the corrput lord and his grinning minions. Her soul crying out in anguish, she is visited and seduced by the devil who gives her the ability to stike back at her oppressors.
Based on the book La Sorcière by Jules Michelet, Japanese director Eiichi Yamamoto along with animator Gisaburo Sugii and artist Kuni Fukai, here go from a single black…

CW: rape

I think this film really need to learn what the word subtlety means because somethings are a bit too obvious. And by a bit too obvious I mean the devil is a penis, the warmongering tyrant's head consists of a skull and crossbones and a vagina is represented as a flower.

Apart from the lack of any kind of nuance, the film feels completely against what the supposed message is. There are long and objectifying shots of Jeanne that linger in a creepy and perverse manor. Her empowerment comes only when the devil (A LITERAL PENIS) rapes her. The majority of the film preceding Jeanne's eventual """"empowerment""" sees her get raped multiple times by various people, beaten by…

Medieval France and Jean and Jeanne are in love but the local Lord and his entourage of evil bastards are having none of it. The couple are endlessly abused, tortured and wronged. In Jeanne's darkest moment Satan descends and offers power and escape in return for Jeanne's body and soul. After possibly the most artistically abstract rape ever depicted in film, it becomes very clear this is no simple family cartoon.
Japanese animation studio Mushi Production, deliver a truly original artistically expressive masterwork of visceral psychedelia. With epilepsy inducing imagery featuring giant phallic devil Gods, eroticism, cruel sadism and super experimental animation, this challenges and excites in equal measure.
The entire fairytale, horror-show is twisted around Masahiko Sato's utterly brilliant…