... aka: Bersaglio che ride (Laughing Target)
... aka: El mundo de Rumiko: La diana risueña (The World of Rumiko: The Laughing Target)
... aka: La sposa demoniaca (The Demonic Bride)
... aka: Laughing Target, The
... aka: Rumik World 3
... aka: Rumik World: Laughing Target
... aka: Rumiko Takahashi's Rumic World: The Laughing Target
... aka: Smiling Target
... aka: Warau Hyouteki
Directed by:
Motosuke Takahashi
High school student Yuzuru is dating Satomi, who's a little jealous that, as popular captain of the school archery team, he always has an audience of freshmen girl "groupies" standing around giggling and fawning over him. But just wait until she finds out he already has a fiancée! And that his fiancée is also his sheltered country cousin, Azusa! And that his cousin / fiancée is also a demon! Years earlier when Yuzuru was just six years old, his domineering aunt, who has also staked claim as being leader of the entire family, struck up an agreement with Yuzuru's father that their children would be betrothed to one another. Something is mentioned about Azusa being the Shiga family's only daughter and, per family tradition, she cannot marry outside of their "clan." However, seeing how the aunt has recently passed away (under mysterious circumstances natch) and the now-teenaged Yuzuru claims he has no intentions of actually carrying through with the union, Satomi can rest easy. Or so she thinks.
Azusa, who has spent her entire life up to this point living in seclusion at her mother's remote mountain home, is forced to come stay with Yuzuru and his family in Tokyo. Having not seen his cousin in five long years, Yuzuru is taken back by how beautiful she now is. But, ya know, she's still his cousin after all! Nonetheless, Azusa is determined to see their marriage to fruition. She starts attending Yuzuru's school and is so shy she trembles whenever other boys try to give her attention. Noticing how clingy she is with her boyfriend, Satomi starts getting jealous all over again. Yuzuru ensures her that Azusa's just never been around boys before and that she will ease off once she notices all of the other options around. That also does not happen.
But Satomi finds herself having real reason for concern whenever she's accosted in the locker room by an enraged Azusa, who gives her a small taste of her supernatural abilities before threatening her life if she ever dares tell Yuzuru what has occurred. During a flashback it's revealed Azusa was almost raped by a boy when she was younger and then bashed his head in with a rock. She has a similar thing in store for three other men who pull her into a warehouse and attempt to rape her. And she has an army of flesh-eating, glowing, "hungry ghost" slugs (!?) at her disposal who can strip a victim down to the bones in just minutes.
Despite Satomi sticking with Azusa's initial demands of not telling Yuzuru about her being not-quite-human, Azusa starts terrorizing her and attempting to kill her. She shatters a window in her face, tries to shoot her with arrows and shows up at her home long enough to rip the throat out of her barking dog. Damned if she does and damned if she doesn't, a terrified Satomi decides to finally just come clean to her boyfriend about what's really going on, which leads to a final confrontation between the love-obsessed demon and bow-armed hero.
Though the story is simplistic and mostly predictable and the finale disappoints somewhat, this is given a colorful and surprisingly cinematic presentation by the animators that helps considerably. The flashbacks, which sometimes utilize black-and-white and even smearing the outside edges of frames to make them blurry (which I've seen used many times in feature films but seldom in animation), are very well done. Good use is also made of slow-motion at times. The Azusa character is presented in a rather enigmatic fashion as we're not quite clear if she's a victim of heredity, a victim of her environment or perhaps a victim of both. The opening scene points to her becoming possessed by something out in the woods when she was a little girl but that doesn't quite explain her mother's involvement nor the childhood marriage pact.
This 51-minute OVA (original video animation) release was made specifically for the home video market and is based on a standalone 1983 comic by the prolific Rumiko Takahashi, who is one of Japan's most successful and well-known manga artists (also one of the countries wealthiest women). The director previously served as an animator and animation director on the author's long-running TV series Urusei Yatsura (1981), which became something of a sensation in Japan. Target received an English-subtitled VHS release here in America in 1993 on the U.S. Manga Corp. / Central Park Media. There was also an English-dubbed version with British voice actors released in the UK and elsewhere. Takahashi's 60 page manga was also released in English.
★★1/2
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