Resident Evil Goes to War – This Week in Anime

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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 Yūgo Kanno‘s score also provides a lot of weight to the scenes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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