Eko Eko Azarak

Proof of just how far down the rabbit-hole I live:

I can't remember exactly when I first saw this series or even who got me on it.

Essentially it's based on some manga published in the 1970's. It's about a girl named Kuroi Misa (or Misa Kuroi if you use the English name order - translates roughly to "Black Mass").

In one iteration of the story, she's the daughter of a pair of witches/magicians/whatever. Her sister has vanished and her parents have been turned into wooden dolls. She winds up fighting malign eldritch forces while looking for her sister and a way to restore her parents.

In the movies her backstory is a bit different, but essentially she knows magic and fights bad guys using spells and a knife/athame thing. Most people around her tend to die messy deaths.

Her main operative magical phrase is: Eko eko azaraku... thus the title for the series.

There were a series of movies at first:

Eko Eko Azaraku: Wizard of Darkness
Eko Eko Azaraku II: Birth of the Wizard (a "prequel" to Wizard of Darkness)
Eko Eko Azaraku III: Misa the Dark Angel (essentially a long episode of the 1996-1997 TV series)

Somewhere around the third movie, there was a TV series. It had two seasons that were later released on DVD as "The Series" and "The Second".

There was a fourth movie that came out in 2001 called Eko Eko Azaraku IV: The Awakening. It had nothing to do with the prior movies or TV shows and was - frankly - pretty awful.

In 2004, the series was revived for television again as Eko Eko Azaraku: Manako (or "Eko Eko Azaraku: Eye") and was released on DVD for a time.

Recently, the series returned to theaters as two weird movies called Eko Eko Azaraku V: R-Page and Eko Eko Azaraku VI: B-Page. These also are on DVD.

There's an animated offering somewhere along there that's apparently done in the style of the manga.

So... details:

Wizard of Darkness is probably the best of the lot. It stars Yoshino Kimika as Kuroi Misa. As movies go, it's pretty over-the-top. There's gore, nudity, exploitative lesbian love scenes, Satanists, hokey effects, and a very high body count.

Birth of the Wizard has Ms. Yoshino reprising her role in a "prequel" to tell the story of how she gets her magic powers. The movie feels like a black magic take on The Terminator as a "good" witch-guy tries to save her from a body-snatching witch. No nudity or explotative love scenes in this one (that I recall). Same hokey effects. Lots of gore. Pretty high body count. Still a fun watch.

Misa the Dark Angel had Saeki Hinako take the reins as Misa. The film quality is less-good than the first two and the effects are much cheaper. There's a high body count and a fair amount of blood. No nudity. I'm unclear as to whether or not this movie came out before or after the TV series (also starring Ms. Saeki).

The 1996-1997 TV series had Saeki Hinako doing episodic battles vs. ghosts, monsters, witches, vampires, and what-have-you in a formula very similar to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". This was much darker, as Kuroi Misa could be pretty brutal. The TV series had a surprising amount of gore and flashes of nudity and kink that would never air in the U.S. The series also explored the backstory for Misa and pretty much ignored Birth of the Wizard to make Misa's parents established witches who fall to some kind of twisted priest-wizard-guy (later killed by Misa). Misa's sister is abducted by evil nuns who... who why give it away? It's not a happy show. Lots and lots of people die. Then again, it is horror...

The 2001 movie had nothing to do with any of the prior offerings. It had an amnesiac Misa the survivor of an attempted rape where everyone involved (her also-attacked friend and the rapists) were mysteriously killed. There's a lot of junk on making the sensationalistic media into the bad guy. It's not clear if Misa is even a witch until the end. The film quality and effects are better than Misa the Dark Angel, but the story is awful.

I watched Eko Eko Azaraku Manako without subtitles, so I'm a bit fuzzy on what's going on in this. The 1996-1997 TV series lacked subtitles as well, but the settings made it pretty clear what was going on. The Manako offering was a lot more dialog, so I got lost faster in the process. It seemed cheaper in production values, using digital video cameras to film what's going on and using bad computer-generated effects for the "magic". Essentially, it seems to have been set sometime after the prior TV series. Misa (played by Ueno Natsuhi) either died or something and wound up possessing a murdered girl. Somewhat amnesiac, she wanders the city and encounters ghosts and the like. A reporter or detective guy is investigating a series of deaths and weird crap and winds up on Misa's trail. Meanwhile, a bunch of schoolgirls are having weird crap happening to them while another witch is using her magic to become a popular TV idol. All of this apparently leads up to an attempt to open some gate to hell or something. This series is pretty slow. Minimal violence. No gore, etc.

The R-Page and B-Page movies are back-to-back stories in the same setting and with more-or-less the same actors but two different plots. Misa - now played by Konno Narumi - meanders into some town while tracking some weird happenings. In one movie she mixes it up with a scarred woman with magic and a grudge. In another there's some weird crap with a kid and... oh I dunno what's going on. When stuff happens, the effects are good. No gore, blood, etc. Little in the way of violence at all. Plays more like a mystery than anything. Kind of slow for my tastes.

I do actually own all of the above shows on DVD. The process of getting legal copies of some of them was... involved... and required me to make use of friends in Japan with access to their versions of eBay.

Now that is OCD. Just sayin'