Bagi, Monster of Mighty Nature

Bagi, Monster of Mighty Nature is an anime by Tezuka Osamu about Ryosuke (Ryo) and Bagi, a human/lion hybrid. The movie was created as a criticism of DNA manipulation.

Synopsis
As the movie begins, Ryo and a boy called Chico are stalking a monster terrorizing the countryside. While they wait for Bagi to appear, Ryo explains that he knows her well, and tells the boy about how he first met her, and why is he now trying to kill her.

The teenage Ryo was a delinquent son of a crime reporter and geneticist, who are too busy with their professional lives to pay him any attention. His motorcycle gang pursued a woman who turned to be a human/lion hybrid, strong enough to give serious injuries to the whole band except for Ryo with ease.

Later, the gang found her hiding place and tried to have their revenge, to be swiftly defeated again. The terrified Ryo ran home, but Bagi followed him. There she explained to him that she is the same pet he had years ago. She started showing intelligence to the point of learning to write her own name, which made people suspicious, so she ran away to avoid creating problems for Ryo.

Bagi was very interested in finding out where she came from and whether there are more like her, so she and Ryo went to visit the place where she was found, near Ryo's mother's lab. By talking to people in the area, Ryo finds that around the time Bagi was found, animals escaped from the lab and were ruthlessly exterminated.

Ryo and Bagi sneak into the laboratory and force the director to talk. They find that Ryo's mother was the creator of the experiment, and that Bagi was one of the escaped animals, and the only survivor. They also find Ryo's mother is now at South America, and travel there to demand explanations.

In South America they are captured and brought into the laboratory. Ryo's mother is unrepentant and wants to kill and dissect Bagi. While she's demonstrating her genetically improved rice to the president of the country they're in, she discovers her experiment failed and the rice is poisonous. However, the president is happy with that as well, and wants to use it to poison the resistance.

Meanwhile, Ryo manages to free Bagi, but discovers she's going feral and already finds it difficult to stand and speak.

Realizing what she has done, Ryo's mother changes her mind, and sacrifices herself by giving Bagi all the poisoned rice. She is killed by the president for this, but Ryo mistakenly believes Bagi did it, and spends several years training with a gun to have his revenge.

Back to the present, Bagi arrives, and after eliminating everybody but Ryo fights with him. However she still recognizes him and doesn't deliver a blow, allowing Ryo to stab her. Ryo then finds his mother's last words in a note Bagi carried in a locket on her neck, realizes what actually happened and cries with regret.

The next day, her body is gone and tracks lead to the mountains. Ryo is happy to have her live away from humans.

Production
The movie set in the present. Moreover, a special technique is used to improve the story's reality; the story synchronizes with actual time, as in the old A Duel at Midday or the recent Nick of Time.


 * Original English title: Bagi, Monster of Mighty Nature
 * Original Japanese title: 大自然の魔獣 バギ - Daishizen no Majyuu Bagi
 * Director: Tezuka Osamu

There is no guest appearance of Tezuka Osamu`s popular characters as before. Here, Tezuka Osamu concentrates on depicting a "crisis of the present." Tezuka Osamu's zeal is apparent in his participation in nine roles, including original plan, story line, rendition, character design, animation director, original pictures, motion pictures and color design. The "present crisis" involves the gene recombination crisis. This film was produced in 1984, as the 7th animated program for a 24-hour broadcast, when the Japanese government formally approved gene recombination experiments.

Trivia

 * Bagi's name is a reference to Bagheera from the Jungle Book


 * Bagi's species is a human/cougar hybrid. At one point in the movie she is referred to as an "American lion", as in mountain lion. This is why she ends up in South America. It is her species' native environment.


 * "Chico" is probably not the boy's real name, it means "boy" in Spanish.