Overrated and overhyped

Don't listen to the negative reviews

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I'm surprised many reviewers are even positive about this movie. This has got to be one of the worst movies I've seen. It's incompetent but fails to even relish in its awfulness. In the end, this movie has left me with the question, "Why?"Let me preface this by mentioning that I have read the manga and am a big fan of Junji Ito's work.The story: The introduction is short and lacking. Introducing the main character, Kaori, and her two friends takes about two minutes. A few more minutes in we're already headfirst into the action. Considering a total running time of 70 minutes, I would overlook this if it weren't for my next point. The movie makes terrible use of its time. Many scenes drag on unnecessarily and there are many scenes that simply aren't relevant to the movie at all, while some interesting scenes from the manga are omitted in their favour and many others that are supposed to be key points are cut short. As a result, much of the original detail is lost and certain scenes feel disconnected from the story. In the same vein, the movie makes changes to the original story that just don't add anything to it.The movie has an overall even pace and is neither slow nor fast, I'll give it that. It does a pretty decent job of switching between calm and action scenes, never really giving too much or too little of either. That didn't stop me from pausing about halfway in to watch The Voice out of sheer boredom, though.Unnecessary motivational speeches and monologues. I'm pretty sure there's like five of them, if not more, and the movie is only 70 minutes long. We get it, you can't wanna give up. One monologue would have sufficed.Awful, awkward and unnecessary sexualisation. I'm not even gonna explain this one, just look at the octopus scene. The lacking visuals and characters and the watered down story cause it to completely fail as a horror. If anything, it's just gross. But whereas many seriously intended bad movies result in unintended comedy, Gyo, sadly, fails in this as well. It's too badly written to be taken seriously, but it's still too sensical to be funny.The characters: All the characters are underdeveloped. They're boring and flat. None of them have a real personality, most can be summarised in one personality trait. None of the characters are really likeable. I couldn't get myself to care for any of them.All the characters except for Kaori have vague, nonsensical or seemingly no motivation to do anything. They assume unlogical things and say things in awkward ways.Characters are added and introduced unnecessarily and either fade out or are killed off without even serving a plot point. The biggest let-down was the fact that Tadashi's scientist uncle, who serves a major purpose in the original, was stripped of most of his relevance, but they added him to the movie anyway.The main character is swapped for no reason. In the manga, Tadashi is the main character and Kaori a side character with basically the same story arc as Tadashi in the movie has. In the movie it's swapped.The visual and sound design: The visual style is bland and flat, sometimes even bad, and generally inconsistent. The line-art is often awkward or crudely drawn, resulting in unintended hilarity. The colour palette is boring and matter-of-factly, and doesn't add anything to the story. There is hardly any detail. The animation is incredibly inconsistent, sporadically jumping from mediocre to bad and lazy to completely excessive. The animation of subtle body language is downright awful. The quality level is about the same as you'd expect from a short-running low-budget anime series, which shouldn't be the case for a movie.The CGI is just bad and looks completely out of place in a 2D animated movie. I get that they used it because it's a lot easier and cheaper to animate than regular 2D animation, especially with the quantity of all the fish, but the end result just looks awful.The movie completely fails to capture Junji Ito's iconic style, the atmosphere hardly holds up to the creepy and disgusting atmosphere from the manga.The sound design is mediocre. The voice acting is generally okay. The sound effects are tolerable at best, albeit sparse. The music is what you'd expect from a low-budget drama anime and fails to capture the creepiness that the movie intends, often even ruining the atmosphere of a scene; I feel it would have done better even without the music. Going in my expectations were low but Gyo still managed to shatter them. The movie barely even tries and fails to live up to a cult classic.If you're looking for a creepy, absurd story, just skip this movie and read the manga, or do yourself a favour and watch Sharknado.

College friends Kaori, Aki and Erika have just graduated and are celebrating by taking a holiday in Okinawa. When they get back to the house they are staying in they notice a foul stench, something akin to the smell of rotting corpses! They then see a strange creature running round the room; it is a fish with legs! This was just a little one but soon there are fish with legs, including sharks, everywhere. Kaori is determined to get back to her fiancé in Tokyo so flies back leaving her two friends in Okinawa. Something strange starts happening to Erika after she is attacked by a shark and Kaori discovers that her fiancés uncle is involved with the events we are witnessing.This OVA is rather strange to put it mildly; the idea of fish growing legs and rampaging around major cities is odd enough then things get even weirder when their victims mutate and behave in a strange way. At just over seventy minutes in length the story doesn't outstay its welcome… to be honest I thought it could done with being slightly longer. There are plenty of fairly disturbing moments; especially what happens to the victims as they mutate. Given its short length the characters are developed fairly well; especially Kaori and the photojournalist she meets on the plane back to Tokyo. The animation isn't the best I've seen, some of the CGI is particularly obvious, but it is good enough. Overall I'd hardly call this a must see but if you want a bizarre animated horror it is strangely compelling.

This movie's audience is obviously looking for more "Sharknado" than "Silence of the Lambs," and thats what it delivers: a silly, scary good time. It's creators push the boundaries of the B-movie genre to hilariously stupid limits. You don't watch a movie about fish with fart-powered spider legs and expect a philosophical mind- bender. This is a horror movie that a seven-year old boy would dream up.That being said, the film succeeds in creating more than just silly scares. Edge-of-your-seat terror is nicely punctuated by dark comedy in the first half. The second half mixes character development, conflicting origin theories, and post- apocalyptic thrills. All of this is accomplished while paying homage to slashers, body-horror, zombie movies, and even tentacle porn.No, this is not a movie to be watched with your parents. No, it has no relevance to serious film criticism. No, it is not a classic that I would watch multiple times. But it is a good movie that delivers on its promises, and then some. As a huge fan of horror and anime, I would certainly recommend this movie.

Giant fish on mechanical legs invade land and... well, that's more or less about it really. Apart from the farting green multi-corpse cyborgs, of course. And intelligent gas. And zombie circus clown musicians. And...I've not seen the source manga that this is based on (if indeed there is any such thing), but i'd hazard a guess a lot of it has been lost in the translation to anime.With a name like "Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack" i didn't sit down to watch expecting a highbrow classic, but still felt distinctly underwhelmed after the 70-odd minutes were up.The animation was in places pretty good, more often somewhat average, and somewhat let down by some cheap-looking CGI, and the story was decidedly offbeat, to say the least - which is normally a good thing with me. However, it's all just a bit too random and tenuous, even for a film i'd expect to have all the depth of a puddle to start with.If you are hoping for a coherent plot, or the occasional credible explanation as to what the hell is going on, then i would say this maybe isn't the film for you. On the other hand, if just watching a man fight a giant mechanical spider-squid that just unexpectedly fell out of a tree on him is your thing, then fire in.Pros: This is the only film i've ever seen have a leading character savaged by an angry mob containing zombies, a cow and a shark at the same time.Cons: The rest of the film makes as much sense as the above.