Before Patlabor, before Ghost in the Shell, and before he was known for his particular brand of philosophically minded anime, Mamoru Oshii released an utterly bizarre, wholly original science-fiction/neo-noir black comedy mashup called The Red Spectacles. A cat-and-mouse thriller if it had been directed by French New Wave-era Jean-Luc Godard and Robocop‘s Paul Verhoeven, Oshii’s early-career curio is both a serious reflection on the militarization of a surveillance state as much as it is a kooky screwball satire.

The Red Spectacles is sH๏τ almost entirely in rich black and white chiaroscuro. The 4K restoration, which just had its North American premiere at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles, is impeccable, accentuating cinematographer Yousuke Mamiya’s harsh treatment of dark, light, and shadow. Being that Oshii’s film traffics so much in the murky line between morality and depravity, the restoration is an especially welcome update.

Mamoru Oshii’s First Live-Action Debut Is An Endlessly Entertaining, Surrealist Fever Dream

In a dystopian near-future (sH๏τ in 1987, taking place in 1991), Tokyo has become unrecognizable, overrun by “urban crime.” In response, the Anti-Vicious Crime Heavily Armored Mobile Special Investigations Unit, aka “Kerberos,” is formed to battle evil. Clad in mᴀssive, heavily armored, pitch-black suits with the bright, neon red spectacles that give the film its name, Kerberos agents have gotten out of control and caused widespread ire over their brutal tactics. The state decides to disband Kerberos, but Koichi (Shigeru Chiba), Midori (Machiko Washio), and Toribe (Hideyuki Tanaka) refuse to lay down their weapons, so committed are they to their aggressive pᴀssion against evil.

In the film’s opening brawl — one of two sequences sH๏τ in color — Midori and Toribe are injured, insisting that Koichi escape so long as he vows to return to them. Three years later, he finds a Tokyo so transformed in the wake of Kerberos’s absence that the city now seems like a constantly shifting fever dream. In pursuit of his friends’ trail, he finds the city has recently banned stand-and-eat soba noodle bars in the name of protecting decency. So comically over-the-top is the state’s fascism that these once common establishments have been relegated to the status of heroin dens.

Though the film is live-action, Oshii’s background and eventual mastery of anime is on full display here. The Red Spectacles is nothing if not cartoonish. At one point, the leader of the evil hitmen known as Cats, Bunmei (Tessyo Genda), breaks into a mambo dance. In an early ᴀssᴀssination attempt, Koichi dispenses with a seemingly endless horde of would-be killers on what appears to be a fashion runway set. One especially noxious running joke is that Koichi’s food is perpetually laced with laxatives, so there are several sequences of our hero scrambling out of the room with agonizing diarrhea.

These repeated scenes of buffoonery are amplified by the kind of sound and visual effects synonymous with anime: the clack of shoes in an empty hall, the profuse expression of shock or pain on a close-up of a face, the suspension of time, the complexity of world-building (The Red Spectacles was followed by two sequels and a manga series). Fans of Ghost in the Shell will recognize the paranoia here over totalitarianism and Oshii’s play with light and flatness of image. But they might not recognize just how glib and jovial the film is, despite its unflinching dark presentation of modern society.

Oddly enough, considering the timing of the release of this 4K restoration, The Red Spectacles does share much in style of satire with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which similarly features a former rogue agent returning to the site where once he was king. Pulled out of the shadows, Koichi is placed in the degraded center of a convoluted struggle between good and evil. Here, that struggle is stretched to its maximum, a taffy-like digression whereby these binaries no longer have any meaning.

The Red Spectacles is not always successful. It is overlong, and frequently bogged down by its irreverance. But at its core, the film functions as a fundamental question about whom, or what, is responsible for the pervasive evil in any society. Is the government responsible for the degradation of its people, or do the people detract from the government’s ability to provide care? Who profits from rot? In its most provocative form, Oshii’s film poses the existential possibility that if our world feels like a constant, surrealist fever dream, perhaps it really is. Perhaps we are dancing our way through a circus-like nightmare.

The Red Spectacles screened at the 2025 Beyond Fest.