Worlds collide when an upper-class writer takes refuge among the denizens of a seedy flophouse in this directoral entry from Genjiro Arato, longtime producer for Seijun Suzuki and Junji Sakamoto. “Thru me you pass into the city of woe,” reads the cheery blackboard welcome at Amagasaki Railway Station, and such is the case for recent arrival Yoichi Ikushima (Takijiro Onishi), who quickly lands a room in a boarding house filled with end-of-the-line prostitutes, the dying, and the walking dead. “You're a pretty thing,” someone cackles through misshapen teeth at Ikushima and his obviously patrician cheekbones. But Ikushima wants nothing to do with anyone until he meets Aya (Shinobu Terajima, Vibrator), the mistress of a tattoo artist and a woman with a death wish as radiant as Ikushima's own. With gorgeous CinemaScope images capturing each slow-burning moment of its characters' doomed lives and loves, Akame is a tribute to classic melodrama, whether 1950s cinema or Edo-period plays.