Belladonna of Sadness

Hardcover, 220 pages 9 × 12 in. 22.86 × 30.48 cm. Belladonna of Sadness, the final film in the adult-orientedAnimerama trilogy, is one of the great forgotten masterpieces of Japanese anime. Loosely inspired by Jules Michelet’s 1862 history of witchcraft and the occult, La Sorcière, Belladonna of Sadness tells the story of a young woman who makes a pact with the devil to exact revenge after being raped and driven from her home. This brief synopsis, however, does no justice to the visual spectacle of the film, which proceeds as a series of still images flashing onscreen. Spectacular watercolor paintings, by Kuni Fukai, marry the art nouveau artifice of artists like Aubrey Beardsley to ’60s psychedelia; the film’s North American distributor, Cinelicious Pics, describes it as “equal parts J.R.R. Tolkien and gorgeous, explicit Gustav Klimt-influenced eroticism.” A legendary cult classic, Belladonna of Sadness has never been officially released in the United States—until now. This publicati