The destruction of Tokyo has been a famously recurring trope of Japanese sci-fi and fantasy cinema for decades - the capital being most famously trashed by Gojira (aka Godzilla) and his fellow beasties created by the effects whizzes of Toho Studios. Nothing if not resilient, Tokyo is still being wiped out today - albeit usually in rather quieter and more discreet style. Internationally-acclaimed auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa has proved particularly adept at giving the ever-present Japanese fear/embrace of apocalypse a particularly chilly millennial spin: his Pulse and Charisma culminate with visions of a Honshu armageddon that are all the more powerful for being so beautifully, eerily restrained.

And now Toshiaki Toyoda (Blue Spring, Pornostar) takes up the baton with his latest feature, 9 Souls - chronicling the escapades of nine escaped prisoners - which is released this month by Artsmagic DVD (www.artsmagicdvd.com). The film begins with a gliding, aerial fantasy sequence showing the mind-bogglingly vast Tokyo cityscape (presumably filmed from a helicopter) in which the buildings gradually shimmer and disappear, to be silently replaced by grey-red piles of ash. It's a breathtaking, transcendent opening - elevated to something approaching greatness by the way Toyoda scores it to the propulsive guitar soundtrack by someone (or something?) credited only as "dip".

This prologue seems to justify - all on its own - the breathless critics' quotes emblazoned on the DVD box: "Demands to be seen and is truly deserving of a wider audience"; "Should be revered as a masterpiece"; "An extremely affecting film"; "A masterpiece - period"; "If I see one film this year to surpass it, it will be a great year for cinema"; "Every once in a while a film comes along that enriches your life. 9 Souls is one such movie". Given such an ecstatic reception, one might be forgiven for wondering why Toyoda's film didn't obtain a theatrical release in either the US or the UK - until you look a little closer at the individuals behind the quotes, and realise that every one comes from a website: names like itsonlyamovie.co.uk, Screaming Stoner Video Review, jpreview.com.

Admirable institutions each and every one, no doubt, and there's obviously a space in the world of movie-reviewing for such outlets - by fans, for fans, if you like. But in the cold financial reality of commercial film distribution, such reactions make relatively little impact - especially in contrast to the "trade bible", weekly US magazine Variety, whose reviews carry enormous weight with distributors on both sides of the Atlantic. Their critic Robert Koehler gave only a lukewarm thumbs-up when he saw 9 Souls during its international premiere at 2003's Toronto Film Festival: "A whimsically perky road movie following a motley crew of prison escapees turns sour... Miscalculations are bound to hamper theatrical routes into most non-Asian territories, with only eager Toyoda cultists willing to take the ride."

Taking 9 Souls in its entirety, most viewers will probably have reactions closer to Koehler's than to, say, mandiapple.com's Alex Apple ("as close to perfection as one can get"). It's telling that 9 Souls most effective moments tend to be the ones where the enigmatic 'dip' is most to the fore, especially in conjunction with Junichi Fujisawa's immaculate cinematography. Toyoda is on much less sure ground with his screenplay, however: the anything-goes comedy of the first hour gives way to some dog-eared philosophising in the second half. The sheer number of principal characters means he bites off rather more than he's currently able to chew - despite some marvellous moments (not least Tokyo's disappearance) the two-hour running-time does end up feeling like a bit of a stiff sentence.

In welcome contrast, Takahisa Zeze's Raigyo - made in 1997, but only released on DVD this month by the estimably enterprising Salvation Group (www.salvation-films.com) under their Sacrament imprint - clocks in at a brisk 74 minutes. And this time the DVD box is decidedly short on frothing quotes of the mandiapple.com ilk: "Murder, sex, blood and designer eroticism meet head-on in this perverse tale of sexual alienation in nineties Japan", according to www.pinkfilm.org - the (unnamed) reviewer doesn't seem to have registered the opening titles which make it clear that what we're seeing takes place, very specifically, in March 1988 (as with recent Korean entry Memories of Murder, this 'dateline' adds a 'truecrime' element - Raigyo is reportedly based on an actual case).

Also, despite Salvation's description - "a shining example of 'Pink Cinema'" it's debatable whether Raigyo qualifies as a "pink film" at all. For the uninitiated, "pink film" (or 'pinkku') is a genre of Japanese cinema neatly described by one observer (on www.brightlightsfilms.com) as "Mild to wild porn - made as feature-length movies for adults (of course) depicting scenes voyeuristic, brutal and sometimes beautiful. Lots of fetish types like schoolgirls, Geishas, nurses and housewives are displayed in various stages of undress."

There's a strict low-budget limitation for pinkku - around $35,000 - while running-times aren't supposed to exceed an hour: and if the 74-minute Raigyo was indeed made for such a paltry sum, then director Zeze is clearly a master of economy. Finally, only the most ascetic of observers could describe his film as 'porn' - it's the story of an emotionally disturbed woman (Moe Sakura) whose path crosses that of a randy, amoral bloke (Takeshi Ito) whose wife is just about to give birth. The man and woman have sex in a 'love hotel' - with fatal consequences for one participant. The survivor goes on to meet a man (Takuji Suzuki) still grief-stricken over the murder of his child - and this encounter will also conclude in yet another death.

Bleak, grim and unremitting in its exploration of fragile people in various states of mental distress, the patiently-unfolding Raigyo is far from easy viewing. But it's very much worth the effort - presumably it's only the 'unorthodox' running-time (reckoned too short for western audiences) which has prevented this distinctive film from featuring in Tartan's Asian Extreme series shown around UK multiplexes. Zeze's control over his (potentially lurid) subject is commendable - as are the absolute matter-of-fact seriousness of his script ("I loved a man I happened to meet, and I killed a man I happened to meet") and the way he grounds his damaged characters in a damaged, brutalised environment.

Fume-belching factories dominated the horizon of this half-urbanised rural waterland (Zeze's imagery prefigures that of both Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Memories of Murder's Bong Joon-Ho), whose polluted rivers are brimming with the corpses of poisoned fish. The title, Raigyo, refers to one particular species of eel-like fish - unpopular in restaurants because its flesh is so easily "corrupted". Though not without a whiff of pretension, this Japanese title is much more in keeping with the film itself than the catchpenny subtitle which appears rather half-heartedly on the actual surface of the DVD: The Woman in Black Underwear. Any sensation-seeker drawn in by this come-hither moniker is in for a bracing shock - then again, perhaps that wouldn't be such an undesirable outcome...

Neil Young

31st December, 2004 [seen on DVD, Sunderland, 26th and 27th December]

9 SOULS : [5/10] : Japan 2003 : TOYODA Toshiaki  : 120 mins
RAIGYO : [7/10] : aka The Woman in Black Underwear : Japan 1997 : ZEZE Takahisa : 74 mins