Directed by Akio Jissoji and based on the source material by Hiroshi Aramata, the film begins in 1000 A.D.. A sinister chap going by the handle of Masakado was executed in his native Japan for 'crimes against humanity.' Though he started off with the best of intentions, his failed attempts at uniting the country failed and left him a bitter and evil man, giving the officials not choice but to put him to death. Unfortunately for the citizens of Tokyo, his soul is a restless one and it just won't go away as over the last few years he's turned Tokyo into the most haunted city in the entire world.

Oddly enough, Masakado's grave is in what is now the Ministry of Finance building. A renegade psychic named Yasunori Kato intends to disturb Masakado's grave and unleash the horrible results upon the city. When a prophet finds out about this soon to be happening spiritual invasion in Japan's largest city, he teams up with a physicist and the finance officer named Eichii Shibusawa (Shintaro Katsu) to protect the city. They must work together to stop Kato before it's too late. Luckily, a young lady named Yukari might just be the one with the ability needed to stop Kato's attacks on the city but it's going to take all they've got to get her out of Kato's control.

If the plot sounds a bit confusing, that's because it is. The film bounces back and forth between characters and as soon as we start getting to know and care about one character, more are introduced and it gets to be too much. The ideas and visuals in the film are great though, as long as you have a tolerance for eighties style Japanese effects. Giger's designs are evident throughout and the film has a very interesting and unique look to it that goes a long way to making it at least watchable (even when the movie isn't making a great deal of sense, it at least looks really cool!).

Ultimately, while the movie really does try quite hard to suck you into it's bizarre world of spirits, psychics and monsters it is a bit too ambitious for it's own good. If they'd narrowed down the focus to just a few characters and worked to develop them a bit more the film would have been great. The ideas behind the core of the story are quite interesting and there is a nice sense of dread that serves to create a pretty decent atmosphere throughout. The filmmakers ambitious attempts at creating a truly epic film are admirable but ultimately lackluster despite some nice visuals and interesting cast members.

Final Thoughts:
The film plays around with some interesting ideas and some of the visuals are impressive but for the most part, Tokyo – The Last Megalopolis just isn't as interesting as it should have been and it's hard to care about characters when they're really not given much of a chance to develop. Rent it.

Yukari (Haruka Sugata), the sister of westernised businessman and architect Tatsumiya (Jun'ichi Ishida), is kidnapped by Kato and psychically impregnated with his doomed offspring. Despite the contemporary values of 1920s society, it requires a fortuneteller, a student of sociology, and heroic priestess Keiko (Mieko Harada) to face the challenge to authority and order presented by Kato's attacks on Tokyo - including a spate of brutal murders, and an artificial earthquake. The construction of Tokyo's subway is delayed by dangerous gremlins, and a golden robot man drives an engine to exterminate them, but spiritualism, new science and technology, and even the female shaman's magic fail, at first, to counteract Kato's evil plot to resurrect Japan's most accursed ancestor. "The most dreadful things have not happened... yet."

Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (aka: Teito Monogatari) has a screenplay by Kaizo Hayashi, based on the novel The Tale Of The Capital by Hiroshi Aramuta. This live-action film was followed by a popular cartoon version, the anime serial Doomed Megalopolis (1991-2), which elaborates on the story and themes of this probably unique movie, a blend of urban historical and fantasy horror centred on the great disaster of 1923, which plays like Capra meets Argento, with an oriental twist. Boasting impressive designs contributed by Swiss artist H.R. Giger, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis is a surreal yet always fascinating gothic urban nightmare, during which forces of psychic darkness are manifest in Lovecraftian proportions.

There are unearthly creatures in Harryhausen's stop-motion style, a scene of gross unpleasantness as the raped Yukari pukes up a huge worm, symbolic vistas of seasonal change that are highly significant in Japanese culture, Indiana Jones style adventuring, philosophical theories concerning destiny and circumstances, and speculations about movements in geo-spiritual energy not unlike ley-lines.

Despite its erratic tone, seriocomic emphases, abrupt changes of mood, and the stumbling block of its somewhat unsophisticated visual effects techniques, this film is full of genuine surprises and moments of awesome cinematic power. As a principal shape of malevolence, the dark and sinister Kato (whose military uniform and rigid bearing suggest the hate figure of a maniacal Gestapo officer) makes a frightening villain, while the young heroine Keiko (eschewing feminist attire for her traditional Shinto robes), is nonetheless his equal - as the devoted protector of what Kato is so eager to destroy, though she must sacrifice herself to defeat such a formidable enemy...