© Image Entertainment.

The story is like Marvel Comics' X-Men concept stripped of any depth and exaggerated into absurdity. In 2007, children and teens all over the world start developing immense mental powers. Since normal humans hate and fear mutants, I mean psychics, all adults start killing everyone under voting age, except for those powerful enough to defend themselves. By 2010 all cities look like Berlin in April 1945, reduced to battlefields between ruthless commando squads of human soldiers and teen psychics with cool super-character costumes and improbable hair styles. Back in 2007, 14-year-old Burn Griffith befriended a gentle psychic visionary, Keith Evans, and helped him escape from government Men In Black killers. Burn, now 17 years old and developing his own "flame on!" powers, searches for Keith who hoped to create a peaceful refuge for psychic youths. Instead Burn finds Keith as the messianic leader of a nascent totalitarian psychic nation. Keith is actually a naive figurehead manipulated by his sinister secretary, Richard Wong. Burn must fight his way through Wong's murderous psychic henchmen with names like Booladon to reach Keith, who has been misled into believing that it is Burn who is the evil villain who must be destroyed.

Aside from Burn, Keith, Wong and a token girl named Sonia (her power controls sonic waves), there are fleeting glimpses of others whose presence is pointless except that they are major characters in the arcade game so they had to make at least a token appearance. This is clarified in the DVD extras, which total almost as much running time as the movie itself. A 4-minute "promotional video" is really a nice music video of the theme song, "Friends." The real explanations are in the "Special Interviews" with the voice actors of Burn, Keith and Wong, and a long video documentary of the "Psychic Junky Fair Three" in Tokyo on April 5, 1998, where 700 fans gathered to meet the actors and character designer/director Kenichi Onuki. The commentary identifies some of the other game characters briefly seen but not identified. The actors talk about the different personality interpretations they had to portray in this direct to video drama, which differed from those for the same characters in the radio or CD dramatizations. Apparently some star Keith and Burn as young pals at the beginning of adolescence (the phrase "guy friendship" is used often), while others feature them as older teens interacting more with the female psychics like Sonia and Wendy. Psychic Force is an interesting example of trying to create personalities for video game cyphers. Too bad the plot is shallow and implausible even by comic book superhero standards.

The SoulTaker. V.1, The Monster Within. V.2, Flickering Faith. V.3, Blood Betrayal. V.4, The Truth.
TV series (13 episodes), 2001. Series director: Akiyuki Shinbo. V.1-3, 3 episodes/75 minutes; V.4, 4 episodes/100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Pioneer Entertainment.

Here is a stylish anime series in which the plot is not nearly as gripping as the imaginative animation. The SoulTaker was a late-night (Pioneer's age guide is 16+) 13-episode sci-fi/horror thriller broadcast from April 4 through July 4, 2001, produced by Tatsunoko Pro. "You've come a long way since Speed Racer, Tatsunoko!" 17-year-old Kyosuke Date, who believes himself to be a normal youth, is unexpectedly murdered by his dying mother "to save him." He revives when a giggly teenage girl digs up and opens his coffin. Kyosuke is still recovering from this trauma when she is kidnapped, and he is attacked by a psychotic supervillain in an operating-room gown who materializes out of thin air screaming that he is a doctor and he must cut Kyosuke open. Kyosuke horrifiedly finds himself mutating into a devilish monster to defend himself. The audience and the bewildered Kyosuke do not even begin to understand what is going on until the end of episode 2.