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This Week in Anime
Resident Evil Goes to War

by Jean-Karlo Lemus & Monique Thomas,

With thinly veiled commentary on the U.S.'s involvement in the Middle East, the latest entry in Capcom's survival horror franchise brings Claire, Leon, and the zombies to the White House.

This series is streaming on Netflix.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

@Lossthief @mouse_inhouse @NickyEnchilada @vestenet


Jean-Karlo
You know, Nicky, I'm not one of those types whose personality is "I like Halloween," but if people are gonna insist we may as well replace Christmas in July with Halloween in July. So on that note, here's a tiny bit of horror for the peanut gallery!
Nicky

Sarcasm and my Netflix-fatigue aside, horror movies in the summer are about as American as baseball, apple pie, or deep government conspiracy theories! And even though this is based on Japanese video game, produced by two Japanese studios, there's just something so goddamn American, about Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness.
Testify! Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness feels more like a really weird episode of The West Wing with zombies tossed in than a spin-off of the Resident Evil games. Provided, part of that is because my brain is wired such that I still think of Claire Redfield looking like she did in Code Veronica, so the more realistic design she's been sporting since RE6 throws me off. Also, the cretins took the "MADE IN HEAVEN" patch off her jacket. Come on, guys, that's like taking the "GOOD FOR EDUCATION" pill off of Kaneda's jacket...
But you gotta admit, she still really wears the red jacket well, at least from the front.

I'm admittedly an RE casual, but recently with the advent of game streaming, I've been really enjoying watching Capcom's latest output mostly because of the high amounts of effort in the cutscenes. Even if I never have any idea what the story is about.
Resident Evil is just one of those things I do deep wiki dives into instead of sleeping at night, but I too struggle to actually play one because I have the spatial awareness of a sea cucumber and I'm terrible at 3D action games. Go figure. Anyway, before we dive in, I wanna give some credit where it's due: as you've seen so far, Claire Redfield (and the rest of this show) look pretty great. The characters have an anime styling to them that threatens to push them gently into the Uncanny Valley, but some scenes look darned realistic. It's nice to see animation from Japan on Netflix that isn't another stuttery, weird Polygon Pictures stint. I can appreciate fun details like how she's supposed to be without makeup in this one scene (most others don't show her freckles). Good work here.
You can see the same kind of push for detail presented in the recent games in this series as well. I think it really shows how far CG has come to know that you can have something closer to a serviceable replacement to live-action in the hands of skilled artists. Sometimes in stills it's almost hyperreal. You can absorb all the textures of Claire's jacket or Leon's PERFECT hair. Sensations not necessarily achievable with just regular costuming and make-up.

Also, could you even get real actors that look this hot? Excuse me, I think I need turn on the AC again.
You almost start to understand why Chris is so intent on Leon being the one to preserve the Redfield bloodline. Except Carlos is also around, but oh well.

At any rate, Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness starts out more like Resident Evil: Zero Dark Thirty with a team of ooo-rah soldier-types landing in the war-torn fictional Middle Eastern country of Penamstan. They're quickly overrun and the last we see of them before the title drop is one of them bearing the yellow eyes of a zombie.

Since the only story of Resident Evil I know is "there's zombies," I was both a little surprised and disappointed that this four episode series is a stock military and political thriller, rather than a pure survival horror. But it's focused enough I never felt too lost despite dealing with some pre-established characters and events.
Yeah, Infinite Darkness takes place right after the events of Resident Evil 4: You're Small-Time, Salazar but right before Resident Evil 5: Complete Global Saturation, which is... a curious decision, given how old both of those games are and how far off RE4's remake is.

To wit, when we truly start off, Leon Kennedy is being carted off to the White House to serve as a personal guard for President Graham, after his services in rescuing Ashley Graham in RE4 earned him the attention of the Secret Service.

Leon lands right in the middle of an outbreak of zombies in the White House, and we have a few nice tense bits of fellow agents Jason, Shen May and Patrick tracking the zombies down.

"Zombies! In the White House," is the name of my new band btw.
While the White House becomes the... House of the Dead (see what I did there?), Claire shows up to look for answers. It seems she's been working on reconstruction efforts in Penamstan, but the drawings from one traumatized boy remind her and Leon of the incidents at Raccoon City.
To be fair, it's some sick-ass cool art.

Kid is gonna be famous!

Speaking of art, it's not a political thriller unless we desecrate the sacred image of a founding father with some gross goopy blood.

Also, the subs are based on the English track so look forward to many good (gross) sound effects.

Defense Secretary Wilson believes the attack on the White House might be a Chinese plot, pointing to a recent hacking attempt at the Pentagon. As such, Shen May, Jason, and Leon are sent in a submarine to infiltrate China and... find proof of the plot? Just three agents in all of China, can't be too hard, I guess.
Even submerged inside a tin-can in the middle of the ocean, I'd hesitate to call the writing of Infinite Darkness very deep. The plot and the characters aren't too complicated and it doesn't deviate much from what you'd expect. I was never a big fan of this kind of military genre when Hollywood does it and adding jump-scare zombies make it enough for me. However, I will grant points for surprising me with ZOMBIE RATS.
Those rats seemed like more of a Parasite Eve thing, but even Square-Enix is pretending Parasite Eve never happened so I'll let it slide. Anyway, while the horde of rats sees what kind of trouble they can get themselves into aboard a submarine, Leon finds that his companions Jason and Shen May have taken to killing everyone that didn't get killed by rats.
I suspect that they were always gonna kill everyone, even if they weren't in desperate need of an exterminator. Turns out that Jason and Shen May both have their own agenda, and that's to expose the government conspiracy behind the civil war in Penamstan.

Jason, upon introduction, is one cryptic mf. He was once called "the hero of Penamstan," but he never really seems happy about it. Also, Leon awkwardly finds him shooting up something in the bathroom, which makes me think he has a bit of a [Zombie] drug problem. And then he also says weird shit about fear and terror.


Shen May also has her own motives, but hers come off as more personal: they involve her younger brother.
Meanwhile, Claire has gone full "Pepe Silvia" mode as she investigates further on the possibility of Bio-Organic Weapons having been unleashed upon Penamstan. She finds that the members of the unit Jason belonged to, the Mad Dogs, have all committed suicide—some extremely recently.
While Mr. Skennedy (joke) is still spinning his little hamster wheels about the events of Raccoon City, the show tries to tie all the threads about Penamstan together to show the threat of the T-virus is so much bigger than just one city or even one country. Both of these incidents are mechanisms for an all-out geopolitical war using both people and soldiers as tools to test bio-weapons.

Shen May's wounded brother Jun See was rescued by the Mad Dog squad before they were attacked and bitten by zombies, using his share of the inhibitors to save them from the fate of being zombified. Now he's cursed to live as a member of the undead and the only existing evidence of the government's crimes.

And again, all this stuff is greatly telegraphed. I don't think the predictability is a bad thing either, because the show does know how to have give a damn. The lighting, acting, and pacing are all nearly equal to that of most modern big-budget live-action productions without most of the fuss. Composer Yugo Kanno's score also provides a lot of weight to the scenes.
I called this "West Wing with zombies" earlier and honestly that's not a bad thing. It's cheap, fun B-tier entertainment. It's where Resident Evil thrives. The beats are pretty typical and nothing that'll wow your pants off, but it's really well-executed.

At any rate, it turns out that both the plan to go to China, the B.O.W.s in Penamstan, and the grief of the Mad Dogs have the same source: Defense Secretary Wilson. He makes sure Claire Redfield is kidnapped to keep her from snooping any deeper, and also has Shen May's mansion demolished.

Meanwhile, Wilson has been whispering in the President's ear about starting an offensive with China, with Penamstan serving as the perfect foothold into that area.

I still dock it's points for originality, as well-executed as it is, most of the scenes also take place in very darkly-lit hallways and it makes it hard to see anything on the small screen. (I guess this is why it's subtitled Infinite Darkness) and while the character animation and the models are good they don't leave room for exaggeration. Something I really liked about RE8 actually! It proves that CG can be as good as live-action but I think it also sometimes loses what's unique about animation with a few exceptions when we do get zombies (or rats) on-screen.

Still a big step up compared to those movies though.
Those "borderline experimental" movies... woof...
I'm not big on Hollywood waving its Big Military Cash Money around all the time, but I can appreciate that the government in RE is like pretty explicitly evil in what is obviously supposed to mirror some Bush-era politics. It seems pretty similar in its aim for greed and conquest, even if the series is still about as shallow as a puddle of zombie-blood!

Being able to drop the F-bomb liberally is endearing, too, even during the Big Villain Moment. The swearing makes the characters feel more grounded and real in their reactions. It's one of the few positive outcomes of being able to just put things directly online that you couldn't get away with before.

Wilson also threatens to keep Claire under his thumb by zombifying her while he holds the only cure, like he does to everyone he wants quiet.

As it turns out, he had blackmailed the Mad Dogs into silence using the zombification inhibitor, and his plan for Penamstan was to carpet-bomb the area with B.O.W.s and sell them the inhibitor afterwards with the help of his buddies at a well-known pharmaceutical company—the name of which might surprise you! Unfortunately, Jason shows up to spoil his plans.

And since it's been a bit since Jason last willingly had his inhibitor, he turns into the final boss and infects Wilson for good measure.

So here we have our final climactic showdown. Shen May and Leon show up just as the sensors in the bunker detect a rogue B.O.W. and start flooding the area with (batmanforevervoice.mp3) BOILING ACID (end batmanforevervoice.mp3). Jason, now in his monstrous form, decides he's going to crash the President's speech and terrify the world.

"Fear" has been a big thing for Jason since the series began; he's had a lot of speeches with Leon about how fear births terror. It's an attempt at a thematic thing that doesn't quite pan out, but eh. I'm feeling charitable enough to give them points for effort.
It's super ham-fisted that Jason wants everyone to have PSTD like him as revenge for being exploited by the government. As if that wasn't basically guaranteed when you decide to shoot-up another country. What did he think was gonna happen? Did he think they were all gonna pick flowers and go home? Hulking out makes him come off as an even BIGGER heel though, so it's more my speed.
There's a really gross bit where Shen May tries to talk reason to Jason and he does the "I'M ALREADY A DEMON, KAZ" bit before breaking her neck, which... yeah, that's kinda gratuitous and gross, especially now with how AAPI violence is in the spotlight. Shen May isn't exactly given much to do, even though she's plenty cool on her own, and wasting her like that felt just a little spiteful.

And like... Jason, do you hate being a monster or not? What'd Shen May do to you, dude?

Yeah, that was a bit of gross tragedy porn. The cynical part of my brain wiped it away as excuse to not have to corporate her into the larger continuity of the games. And it's such a goddamn footnote of the story that the other part of my brain was immediately distracted by the bit of fan service directly afterwards of "Look, proof that Claire tops!"
I thought it was already plenty obvious that Leon is a total cherry-boy, what with the way Ada Wong drags Leon around on a leash...
Look, they know what the people want. It's also actually a nice bit of levity.
They also know what Chris wants, but as we'll see, he might not get it...

At any rate: Leon and Claire manage to stop Jason from crashing the speech and showing his ugly mug. I had expected it would involve shooting his exposed heart, like with Tyrants, but it instead involved dumping the guy's body into acid. The bit where Leon contemplates Jason's remains is strikingly poetic and beautiful, all things considered.

Meanwhile, the President is informed of Wilson pulling a Benedict Arnold and decides against invading China, opting instead to offer economic aid to Penamstan.

The final battle is one of the only good reasons that the whole series is in CG and I think I ended up being more entertained than I expected because it becomes very "watchable."
It really flies by and doesn't waste a single moment, Shen May notwithstanding. For a series like this, it's about as great a climax as you could hope for—and then some!
There are worse ways to spend two hours. Hell, I also watched Space Jam 2 this weekend for some ungodly reason! Anything is better than a repeat of that. Previously, big video game adaptions felt like they had a real audience in mind other than trying to appease the masses and justify the cost of a big production; thus satisfying no one. In that light, this is much better approach, assuming any sequels continue to match or improve this level of quality.

That's right, more glasses!
It also manages to nicely fit between the other parts of the established lore. The ending sets up for Resident Evil 5, what with TRICELL being the aforementioned pharmaceutical company.
My favorite part of Infinite Darkness, even as a "casual," is that it doesn't try to hold its identity as part of an established property at armlength, but also not so tightly that there's no room for newbies to jump in. Obviously, established fans are going to get more out of it, but it's a good balance. Most Netflix Originals struggle between not feeling enough like source material or awkwardly steeped in impenetrable lore.
The other video game Netflix Original™ that comes to mind was that DOTA cartoon, which was both boring and from a practically impenetrable franchise. I don't even know if DOTA fans liked it. Meanwhile, even if I didn't know anything about Resident Evil, this would be a fun romp with agents shooting zombies. Not sure why they pushed for it to be four half-hour episodes when you could have just made this a two-hour movie, but eh.

Sit down, watch, finish, go do something else. It's good to have low-impact animation like this. Also, it looks really good for what it is.

I wish it was more ambitious. It's not quite enough to be called it "Resident Good," but it certainly isn't "Resident Bad." Infinite Darkness definitely is Resident Evil. And y'know what? That's all I can ask for.
Is it better than the live-action movies? By a country mile. Is it what I'd call "must-watch television?" Probably not. But Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness makes for fun Friday night watching with friends. Sometimes, that's all you need.

Better this than Walking Dead, if you ask me.

I mean, look at Claire. She's doing just fine enjoying this.

With that we say: Good night, sleep tight, and don't let the zombies bite!

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