ikami Reiko is a highly successful exorcist. With a team of helpers, including a priest, a vampire, a spirit and a lecherous wuss named Yokoshima (who Mikami uses as monster-bait), she takes on demons, spirits, zombies or anything else she's paid to fight. Unlike her noble samurai predecessors, Mikami is motivated only by money, which she's collected a great deal of thanks to her skill. Even when one of those noble predecessors contacts her from beyond the grave to tell her that Nosferatu, the most powerful vampire in history, is about to be resurrected, Mikami's first question is what she'll be paid for fighting him.
Eventually, the long-dead samurai offers her a suitable bribe, so she and her coterie troop off to Nosferatu's hidden lair, which is surrounded by ravaged wolf corpses. Although they've been briefed about the depth of Nosferatu's evil power—unlike most vampires, he drains his victims of energy as well as blood, turning them into staggering zombies—the group seems surprised when the wolves rise up to defend Nosferatu's resting place. Mikami fights her way through them, but is attacked by a white spider, which scratches her, drawing blood, and then returns to the vial it was protecting. Suddenly, Nosferatu rises from the vial, energized by the unusual strength in Mikami's blood. After a desultory battle, he retreats, creates a mighty fortress, and decides Tokyo will make a nifty base as he consolidates his power and takes over the world. Craving more potent blood like Mikami's, he sends his spider-demon servant, Ranmaru, out to collect exorcists.
Mikami and company are in the hospital, recovering from their last battle, when a news broadcast alerts them to the vast hordes of Nosferatu-created zombies taking over the city. After the pope confirms that Nosferatu is behind it all, a $50 million reward is offered to anyone who can destroy the super-vampire. Contemplating the dollars-to-yen conversion rate, Mikami drools, but she's got competition: Everyone in the Ghost Sweeper business wants the reward, and is heading for Nosferatu's newly mutated castle to claim it. Of course, large numbers of tasty exorcists are precisely what the power-hungry Nosferatu wants.
Old-fashioned anime combat
This 60-minute "movie" is part of an extensive Ghost Sweeper Mikami continuum, including a lengthy manga series and television show, and the creators clearly assume that viewers already know the characters and their stories. But within the context of this goofy slapstick-fest, it doesn't really matter how O-kinu became a disembodied spirit, or why Mikami really keeps the cowardly Yokoshima around. It's mostly about watching Ranmaru (who is far more impressive than his singing, dancing, blood-guzzling, grinning boss) get into explosive fights and watching Mikami repeatedly appall her ghost-sweeping partners so thoroughly that they all collapse.
Comic pratfalls, firehose jets of tears, exaggerated jerky flailing and lengthy comic takes are all standard fare for Ghost Sweeper, but it does occasionally reach for slightly more involved (though no less goofy) humor. When the first exorcist to reach Nosferatu's new-grown castle proclaims himself to be "Dr. Chaos," and brags to his agreeable robot sidekick that he's going to slay the vampire, earn the reward and pay off their back rent, the show briefly threatens to turn into an episode of The Tick, with a parade of Z-grade theme heroes poking their noses into the fray. Unfortunately, the idea doesn't go far. (Still, a later scene, where the bare-chested Nosferatu basks in the sun at a barbecue, guzzling garlic-flavored blood, as a frantic Ranmaru cooks below and a contingent of waiter-zombies force-feed his "seasonings" to Chaos and other exorcist "donors," is pretty hard to top for laughs.)
Ghost Sweeper Mikami was produced by Toei Animation in 1994, but the animation is more sloppy than visibly dated. With the characters constantly warping into boneless shapes, expanding their eyes to dinner-plate proportions, firing sweat-drops in all directions and achieving skin colors not found in nature, it's hard to say that things don't look realistic enough. Generally, events are moving so quickly that the flaws aren't too noticeable, though the simplistic coloring does get a bit grating. Actually, those not in the mood for low comedy may find this entire movie grating. But for a bucketful of cheap laughs and a bunch of high-impact supernatural fight scenes, Ghost Sweeper Mikami makes a decent evening's entertainment.
As brainless fun goes, Ghost Sweeper Mikami is pretty cute. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for the similarly silly, similarly action-packed satire of Devil Hunter Yohko, another old series which just made a DVD comeback.
— Tasha
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