Dies Irae: The Complete Series

A Japanese narrative-based video game inspired this horror-fantasy anime series that begs for the adjective "Wagnerian"—assuming that Richard Wagner’s operas trafficked in huge-breasted women, harem-comedy sex misunderstandings, and incomprehensible violent plotlines (which, actually, they sort of do). Here, Hitler’s Third Reich secretly hosts legions of the "Obsidian Round Table," a horde of dark wizards and evildoers with various agendas. Their ritually murderous rampages in modern Japan draw in Ren, an orphan teen (created as a test-tube homunculus) who is both unaware that his best pal is a monster-fighter and that Ren himself is fated to inherit great power. The fiends continue their timeless Nazi carnage while also training Ren to be their greatest enemy so that he can kill them, thus breaking an endless circle of destructive existence. Gore, puzzling resurrections and transformations, and the mythology of Wagner’s Ring cycle are often visually striking here but just as often embrace the anime-kitsch aesthetic of courageous boy warriors and nubile maidens battling alongside. Overall, this is a bewildering, tantalizing, and possibly even offensive series, the latter due to much SS-type regalia (and cleavage) along with profanity. Presenting all 12 episodes from 2017 and six additional ONA (original net animation) episodes from 2018 in a dual-language Blu-ray edition, rated TV-MA, this is a strong optional purchase. (C. Cassady)