Extraneous Matter – Complete Edition 
異物–完全版– 「Ibutsu – Kanzenhan – 」
Release Date: January 15th, 2022
Duration: 60 mins.
Director: Kenichi Ugana
Writer: Kenichi Ugana (Screenplay),
Starring: Kaoru Koide, Shunsuke Tanaka, Momoka Ishida, Kaito Yoshimura, Makoto Tanaka,
It was hard being an anime fan in the 90s due to perceptions that the medium was little more than tentacle sex (thanks for the bad rep, Legend of the Overfiend (1989)!) but strange sex and tentacle monsters can have a greater point, as explored in Extraneous Matter: Complete Edition.
Dealing with the second part of the title first, writer/director Kenichi Ugana created four short films set in a world where disgusting-looking creatures with wavy penile appendages appear. These were combined into one film. The first part of the title, the Extraneous bit, points to these creatures but over the course of each story, something a bit grimmer emerges, a lack of emotional fulfilment as characters are seen to be living lives without feeling and functioning regardless.
The strangeness begins with a young woman (Kaoru Koide) whose experiences largely set up the themes and tone of the film. In the opening seven minutes, we see her life of listlessly leafing through magazines, brewing a coffee, running a dating scam website from her apartment, and waiting upon an unkind boyfriend who silently downs dinner and ditches her on date nights.
Throughout these sequences, the look on her face is despondence and it only changes at the seven-minute mark when she opens her closet and discovers a mysterious octopus-like alien. Ugana then makes no bones of showing the sexual potential of this thing by quickly getting straight to tentacles wrapping their way around the woman’s body and the creature causing her to have a heightened sense of pleasure she soon submits herself to, a gift the creature then offers to her co-workers and her boyfriend as people fall into lust.
The three following episodes also feature emotionally unfulfilled characters experiencing a shift from staid reality to erotic peculiarities as other aliens emerge all over Japan. Although there is some nudity and bodies contorted in erotic ways, this is less sexy and more dry sci-fi comedy with a bitter edge.
Mention tentacle monsters and two films come to mind, The Untamed (2016) and Possession (1981) and just like those films, a strange creature allows an entry into the lives of unhappy people. The how’s, what’s, and whys, of their appearance is never explored. It is, indeed, extraneous to the story as the emphasis is on showing the dichotomy between stagnant lives and the alien’s ability to create escape through passions evoked by sex. Thus, as people vacillate between the everyday and the abnormal, it feels like the extraneous part of the title points to emotion in their everyday lives and the film tragically threatens a return to an emotionally bleak reality towards the end as authorities deal reimpose normality.
It isn’t deep but in depicting it, Ugana shows impressive discipline in deploying controlled visual and aural elements to achieve the contrasts.
By shooting in Takasaki, he makes the most of everyday nondescript location like apartments, shotengai, and recycling centres to suggest the average tenor of life that the aliens disrupt and make uncanny. The black-and-white sheen and 4:3 aspect ratio help to drain life from the screen for emotionless effect while lending a B-movie/Twilight Zone feel to the scenario. It also covers for some rather goofy-looking monster effects of the creatures with tubular penile appendages that wave around with squelching sound effects. Some comedy is found in how they adapt to regular life but their destructive aspects aren’t explored so this is about spreading joy to enervated lives.
More impressive are the cast who are good at tamping down their emotions with only Dankan as a recycling centre operator showing anything like a sense of humour. Their coldness and stiltedness makes the moments of physical and emotional connection fostered by the aliens more meaningful. Their deadpan reactions create humour, as seen in one set of characters, a recently-split couple at a bar (Kaito Yoshimura and Makoto Tanaka) who experience intimacy regained through extra-terrestrial means while they gamely play along with the tentacles for funny visual gags as the alien eats parfait.
Later on there is a tongue-in-cheek reference to ET and if you can take the phallic tentacles seriously, there’s a romantic denouement for the woman of the first story outside a bar with snowflakes falling. This is Ugana’s sly sense of humour and an acknowledgement that people need to get weird every so often to find happiness. at just an hour’s duration, it moves smoothly and effectively creates a weird sci-fi story.
