The Red Spectacles

is a 1987 Japanese surrealist science fiction neo-noir film directed by Mamoru Oshii, co-written with Kazunori Ito, and starring Shigeru Chiba and Mako Hyodo. The first film in Oshii's Kerberos Saga, but the second installment overall after its radio drama companion piece While Waiting for the Red Spectacles (which aired a month prior), the film follows Kōichi Todome, a former police detective who, after fleeing Japan following a failed rebellion by his dissolved unit, returns several years later per a promise to his colleagues, only to find Tokyo completely unrecognizable and increasingly strange and surreal.

The Red Spectacles was released on February 7, 1987. It would be followed by several works intended to explain and expand the film's universe, the most notable of them being Kerberos Panzer Cop. The film was followed by two prequels—StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops in 1991, and Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade in 1999—that adapted the established stories and settings from Kerberos Panzer Cop.

Plot

In the 20th century, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department loses control of crime in Tokyo and, in response, establishes the Anti Vicious Crime Heavily Armored Mobile Special Investigations Unit, nicknamed "Kerberos", a heavily-armed police tactical unit tasked with combatting crime and evil, equipped with MG 34 machine guns and "reinforcement gear", practically bulletproof powered exoskeletons that include a gas mask with distinctive red lenses. However, while Kerberos succeeds in their mission, by the 1990s their overzealous actions and fanatical hatred of evil lead to them becoming increasingly aggressive, cruel, and corrupt. When a Kerberos member beats a misdemeanor offender to death, it sparks a massive controversy that leads to the unit's disbandment.

However, three elite Kerberos members—Kōichi Todome, Washio Midori, and Sōichirō Toribe—refuse to disarm, steal a Willys MB, and flee to the Port of Tokyo, where they plan to escape in a helicopter. After repelling an ambush by bounty hunters, a grievously injured Sōichirō and Midori order Todome to leave in the helicopter alone, but they make a promise that Todome will return for them.

Three years later, Todome, a fugitive from the government, returns to Tokyo, but finds the city inexplicably no longer resembles the one he left behind: the buildings have decayed at an exponential rate, and everything is strange, surreal, and nondescript. He wanders, trying to find some semblance of his past and to find Sōichirō and Midori, and along the way encounters strange and unusual characters—a mysterious young lady clad in red, hitmen led by Bunmei Muroto, and eccentric con artists called tachiguishi who swindle inexplicably-illegal stand-and-eat food stalls (tachigui).

In the end, it is revealed that most of the events of the film were a dying dream, as Todome was attacked and killed shortly after returning to Tokyo.

Cast
Shigeru Chiba as Kōichi Todome
Machiko Washio as Washio Midori
Hideyuki Tanaka as Sōichirō Toribe
Tessho Genda as Bunmei Muroto
Mako Hyodo as Young Lady
Hideyo Amamoto as Moongaze Ginji 
Offscreen actors as Hamburger Tetsu, Beefbowl Ushigoro, Medium Hot Sabu, Baked Bean Pastry Amataro, and Crepe Mami
Ichiro Nagai as Middle-aged man in billiards, taxi driver's voice
Yasuo Otsuka as Taxi driver
Oikawa Hiroe as Oriental Hotel receptionist
Fuyuki Shinada as Soba Udon cook
Fumi Hirano as Airport announcer
Kintaroh Sakata as Umibōzu

Production
Several of the cast members are voice actors and appeared in Urusei Yatsura, which Oshii worked on as chief director and head writer.

The Red Spectacles is probably Oshii's most literate feature work. Not only, dialogue and narrative parts are prominent over drama but the film contains a variety of philosophical concepts such as free will and determinism, mentioned through fables, like "The Magnet and the Iron Sands" and "The Ogre Saved by the Fisherman", or through classic poet-authors quotes, Shakespeare and Pushkin. The characters refers to European medieval tales and Greek mythology, such as oral versions of Little Red Riding Hood and the three-headed watchdog of Hell Cerberus.

Releases
The Red Spectacles premiered on February 7, 1987 in Japan.

On February 25, 2003, the DVD edition was made available in Japan as part of the Mamoru Oshii Cinema Trilogy anthology box set, which contained four DVDs and one soundtrack CD. On November 4 of the same year, a subtitled version of Akai megane was released in North America as both a single DVD and also as part of a US release of the box set. The US version of the trilogy box set has different box artwork and lacks the "Revisited Scene & Production" DVD of the Japanese version.

The American The Red Spectacles DVD edition was reprinted in 2004, and since then is only available in the box set which was printed three times as of 2006 and remains the only edition released outside Japan.

Reception
The A.V. Club, reviewing it as part of the 2003 DVD release with the other parts of the trilogy, called the story "alternately hilarious, bizarre, and incoherent, right up to the disappointingly conventional ending."

References

External links
 Kerberos saga official website (Japanese)
 

1987 films
1980s science fiction thriller films
Japanese black-and-white films
Films directed by Mamoru Oshii
Films set in 1995
1980s Japanese-language films
Japanese independent films
Kerberos saga
Japanese political thriller films
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department in fiction
Films scored by Kenji Kawai
1987 independent films
1980s political thriller films
Japanese science fiction thriller films
1980s Japanese films