(IMAGE: HS Productions)
HS Productions, 2022. 120 minutes. Family/Action.
Grade: 1 out of 4
The Divine Protector: Master Salt Begins could easily be mistaken for a live-action anime adaptation; in fact, it bears some resemblance to Vampire Princess Miyu and many others in its depiction of a supernatural woman who draw out demons and battles them. Summoned by a high school’s occult club when one of their members is assaulted by an invisible strangler, Master Salt (Rin Kijima) is a disciple of the Great Buddha in Kamakura, and tells us – via some truly terrible expository songs on the soundtrack – that she’s been in the human world 800 years. By the time she’s summoned, she has become an urban legend, albeit one so easy to summon it’s a wonder nobody seems to have tried it for eons.
The demons she faces are found in run-of-the-mill bad people. Is somebody swindling old people out of their savings? It must be a demon inside them. Drunken spousal abuse? It’s another demon doing it. Atheism? Demon again (we’ll come back to this one). With the incantation, “Repel, return, and protect. Yey!” Salt draws the demon out of the human body, and vanquishes it, usually with the admonition “Reflect on yourself!” And then she victim-blames as well.
This is an interesting conundrum, because it’s fair in at least one instance to both-sides the issue a little bit. An arrogant schoolgirl will draw the ire of shy classmates, for example, and while the actions of jealous foes are their own, humility can defuse the situation. But when Salt blames a battered wife for being too short-fused and not understanding her husband enough, it rings sour.
And that’s before we get into God’s Not Dead territory, with a science professor who’s arrogant enough to suggest – gasp! – that fireballs are naturally occurring, and not the escaping souls of the dead ascending to Heaven. Brave free-thinking radicals among his students challenge this apparently unreasonable view, with Salt eventually yelling at him, “I won’t let blasphemers like you in the field of education!” The Professor, of course, yells back at her like he’s the villain of a Jack Chick tract, only to eventually see the light when his own inner horned devil is removed.
If this whole business of purging evil spirits sounds a bit like Scientology, you’re not too far off. Master Salt is actually bankrolled by a similar but unrelated Japanese cult called Happy Science, known for conservative politics, arguable quack medicine, and a founder who believes in aliens and that he’s the reincarnation of Jesus, Buddha, and other deities over the centuries. It’s this founder, Ryuho Okawa, who’s credited as executive producer and original story writer on The Divine Protector. Happy Science’s previous film, released under their “HS Productions” banner, was a fictionalized biopic of Okawa, entitled Immortal Hero.
All that considered, Master Salt ought to be wackier than it is, rather than just oddly conservative at times, yet inconsistently (One of the demons wants to end welfare for old people). It’s biggest fault isn’t any attempt at indoctrination, but a predictability that’s akin to playing a fighting game. Opponents appear one at a time, they lose, and eventually there’s a final boss who’s a bit more difficult. Master Salt’s seeming evocation of both Buddha and the Christian God seems a bit weird, but once you know Happy Science believes they’re the same person, it makes some sense.
Director Hiroshi Akabane films the intro like a sentimental anime, and the initial evil spirit stuff like J-horror, up until Master Salt shows up with the Flash logo on the back of her shirt and decidedly unscary demeanor. The reliance on song lyrics on the soundtrack to spell out the plot is insipid and needless, but subtlety isn’t really in the cards here.
Clearly, the hope is for a franchise here, with “Master Salt Begins” sounding like a threat in the title. Should the faithful decide to continue, permit me to suggest brevity and a less episodic structure. And they need to feel free to be more weird. Even if the cult creeds prove off-putting to potential converts, they’d at least make a wilder story.