This animé is from the acclaimed I.G. Production Company, who worked on the animation sequences for Kill Bill, written by Ghost in the Shell creator Mamoru Oshii comes with a high pedigree indeed, and it brings another rich vein of the animé tradition to British DVD shelves.

Set ten years after World War II in Japan, the story follows Kazuki – a lone, emotionally damaged member of an elite police force set to restore order in a tumultuous Tokyo cityscape. When faced with a young girl carrying a bomb Kazuki hesitates, and allows her to detonate the device. Made a scapegoat by his special police unit, Kazuki forms a strange bond with the sister of the girl he failed to kill. This friendship leads us down a convoluted, and frequently painfully slow, narrative through deception, intrigue and the human psyche.

The plot is at times fragmented, and the symbolism heavy-handed, (wolves figure ridiculously frequently as part of Oshii’s attempt to convey the mentality of a man trained, or perhaps even born, to a life of killing), and the film is a far cry from the visual cavalcade of Ghost in the Shell as it focuses more on mood and scenery than flashy explosions and magical machinery. To an extent this comes off, and the film noire echoes that pulse through the Tokyo streets are impressive, as is the opening sequence which tells the background story through a series of stills – at once nodding to the graphic novel on which the film is based, and reminding the audience of the technique which Chris Marker used to such good effect in La Jetee. But I was nonetheless left feeling a little nonplussed by it all. The slow and piecemeal plot severely detracted from the tension built by moodily lit surroundings and the haunting score, and the repetitive symbolism gave the audience little credit. So why watch it? I genuinely think that this film adds a slightly new angle to a lot of Japanese anime available in the UK, it departs from the usual orgies of violence and action, or wholesale fantasy found in more familiar household names like Miyazaki and uses the intrinsic power of animation to present a sensitive environment controlled to the last detail. You won’t be wowed, but you can definitely take something out of Jin Roh.