One is a 20-minute theme park ride attraction from 2000 that was only ever shown in Japan, somehow directed by the man behind Genocyber. The other is the first full-length CGI Resident Evil film made to actually sit within the game continuity, one that reunites Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield for the first time since Raccoon City blew up.
Together, they represent the two milestones for Resident Evil animation: the first CG Resident Evil movie and the first feature-length CG Resident Evil movie.
This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover both back to back.
Biohazard 4D-Executer (2000) is set concurrently with Resident Evil 2 and 3 and follows a five-person UBCS squad sent into Raccoon City to locate a missing Umbrella scientist named Dr. Cameron and retrieve her research. The Cameron Virus she was developing turns out to function like The Thing: it infects any living creature, jumps between hosts, and produces increasingly nightmarish hybrid forms. But, as it was designed as a 3D motion-seat attraction for Japanese theme parks, everything zombie decides to jump at the camera, rather than the characters. It also features a first-person POV sequence from inside a zombified cockroach, which might be a new sentence.
Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) is a different animal entirely. Set one year after Resident Evil 4, the film opens with Claire Redfield caught in a T-virus outbreak at Harvardville Airport when a crashed plane releases infected passengers into a crowded terminal. Thankfully, the most American man ever made, Leon S. Kennedy is dispatched to handle it.
The pair reunite in almost exactly the same way they met in RE2. But, this isn’t any regular zombie outbreak, as Leon and Claire quickly find themselves entangled in a conspiracy that features the shadowy WilPharma Corporation, the G-virus, a man named Curtis Miller who is the most Capcom-looking man ever created.
We dig into the history of Resident Evil on film, talk about what Executer says about where the franchise was at the turn of the millennium, and question how Degeneration holds up as the first serious attempt at a game-canon RE film.
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Toonami Absolution is a weekly podcast where Alyx, Jon, and Sam revisit the Toonami and Adult Swim shows that made them, and you, you.
From the block's early days with shows like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Transformers: Beast Wars to the imported anime that made Toonami and Adult Swim appointment television for a generation of kids, such as Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball.
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