“Forgotten” OAVs #14: “Crystal Triangle” (1987)

Crystal Triangle (Kindan no Mokushikiro [Forbidden Revelation] Crystal Triangle), directed by Seiji Okuda. 86 minutes. July 22, 1987.

This OAV, released by Sony Video Software International and a co-production of Animate Film and MOVIC, came out about six years after Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was dismissed as an exaggerated imitation of it.

Supposedly when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, he also gave mankind a secret message that contained world-ruling power. This message was hidden. Ever since, would-be world rulers – Julius Caesar, Napoleon. Adolf Hitler – have sought it in vain.

Two wisecracking archaeologists, Professors Koichiro Kamishiro and blonde Juno Cassidy, travel through the Israeli desert to a recently-uncovered ancient site. They are suddenly attacked by guerillas with automatic guns and heat-seeking missiles, whom they kill by blowing up the ruins. The destruction uncovers a mysterious cube with writing in the Ancient Language. Koichiro & Juno get to a plane to fly to Tokyo, but the guerillas take over the plane. Juno kills all the guerillas while Koichiro naps, in a battle that demonstrates the folly of shooting automatic weapons inside an airplane at high altitude. It crashes into the ocean.

In Tokyo, Koichiro’s two students Mina Katsuki and (blond) Isao Murakami mourn his supposed death, until the live Koichiro reappears. He doesn’t know how he survived, or what happened to Juno. The young daughter, Miyabi Koto, of his former mentor, Professor Koto, comes to be his new assistant.

At Koichiro’s research institute, the four watch his colleague, Prof. Numata, try to open the cube. He finally cuts it open with a laser. The cube contains two crystal triangles covered in writing in the Ancient Language. An ominous mystery man is seen spying on them.

Koichiro identifies the Ancient Language as what God’s Message is written in. A second mystery man dressed in traditional Japanese robes, in a tree outside, sends a psychic message to Miyabi that the writing on the crystal triangles refers to Nostradamus’ prophecy about the ancient Yamatai high priestess Himiko of the volcano Mt. Aso on Kyushu. The second mystery man destroys the first’s car with his breath and escapes.

The first mystery man reports to his superiors at Hakone. They are from the Japanese Ministry of Intelligence. The agent reports that Koichiro, who they have been watching because he knows the ancient Tibetan art of Ubanishad, is finding the clues to God’s Message; but he is being watched by agents of both the Soviet Union’s KGB and the U.S.’s CIA, including Juno Cassidy. The second mystery man is a Hih tribal priest. The head of the Japanese Ministry of Intelligence, “the Old Man in Hakone”, phones his top agent, Ginji Iwagami, to protect Koichiro and his assistants.

Koichiro & Company go to Mt. Aso, where he sets up a psychic meter to detect the psychic traces of the ancients. They are watched by Genho, the Hih tribal priest, and his mystic acolytes who open the ground under Koichiro and his assistants, revealing an ancient temple, Himiko’s shrine. They find the Sacred Mirror, Yatanokagami, hidden by Jehovah, which can prevent mankind’s destruction. They are immediately challenged by Juno Cassidy, who wants the Yatanokagami for the CIA; Grigori Effemovich, the grandson of Rasputin, Code-named Urga, who wants it for the KGB. Juno and Grigori fire automatic weapons and rockets at each other, destroying Himiko’s shrine, which releases the spirit of Himiko who possesses Miyabi. She says that the Yatanokagami was taken 1,000 years ago by the Evil One, Kukai. The rest of the underground shrine is destroyed by the Hih mystics who intend to kill everyone. “Those who dare violate the Forbidden Message are punished with Death!” The Hih mystics are battled by the Ministry of Intelligence’s gunship and Ginji who kills Genho, while Koichiro and his assistants escape.

Koichiro worries that his assistants may be killed in all the battling by great powers, but they insist on continuing the search for the Yatanokagami. Koichiro says they will next go to the Mitsurin Temple in Kyoto, where Kukai practiced mystical Buddhism 1,000 years ago.

Koichiro and his assistants are going to Kukai’s Temple when they are stopped by Ginji who offers to protect them with a carful of guns. Koichiro says that if Kukai’s monks are who he thinks they are, guns will be useless against them.

They continue to the Mitsurin Temple, where Ginji unmasks the head monk as a disguised inhuman monster. The monster boasts that when the proper sun, Nemesis, returns to the skies which happens every 26 million years, they will take over Earth from the humans. The monsters are the true form of the Hih tribe. They defeat Koichiro’s assistants and Ginji, but Koichiro unleashes his Ubanishad powers on them. The Hih monsters are all killed, but they say that they are only a small portion and that their larger numbers will surely win.

The disappearance of the Hih reveals a 1,000-year-old statue that contains the Yatanokagami, but it is inscribed with a message leading them to a sacred jewel in the furthest north. The mirror also mentions Nemesis. Koichiro says that the 26 million year period matches the mass extinctions on Earth, and that some scientists believe it coincides with the approach of the rogue star Nemesis.

Koichiro’s party takes the ferry to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Juno, Urga, the Pentagon, the White House, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, Soviet missile batteries, the U.S. and Soviet air forces, and Ancient Gods all come together for a spectacular conclusion.

This title was licensed for the U.S. by Central Park Media, and released on video and laser disc on its U.S. Manga Corps as Crystal Triangle: The Forbidden Revelation in July 1992. As far as I can tell, its license was never renewed and was not picked up by anyone else when it expired.

Next week: “Forgotten” OAVs 15.