Yatterman: live-action movie (2009) December 6, 2009
Posted by ayasawada in Anime, Film.Tags: Japanese movie, Tatsunoko, Yatterman
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I’ve been waiting a long time to see this live-action version of Yatterman, if only to find out what on earth the show is about. It’s one of those anime we overseas otaku hear about quite a lot but will never in a million years get to see through official means.
Here’s what I knew beforehand (mostly from playing Tatsunoko vs Capcom on the Wii ^^;). Yatterman is an extremely popular masked superhero anime from that factory of franchises, Tatsunoko Productions. There are two ‘Yatterman’ heroes: No.1, the boy, and No.2 the girl. There’s some kind of giant robot dog mecha (Yattarwan) they can call on.
They fight against the Doronbo gang, three idiotic villains in the shape of the scantily clad beauty Doronjo and her two ugly henchmen, one fat, one skinny. So far, so Pokemon (or indeed Nadia).
Curious then that Japan’s king of the extreme, Takeshi Miike, would choose to make a live-action version of such a generic series. There’s obviously something about it that’s weird to attract him, and very soon it becomes clear what that is — sex. (more…)
Love Exposure (2008) November 30, 2009
Posted by ayasawada in Film.Tags: Film, Japanese movie, Movies
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Love Exposure is a four hour cross-genre epic about an innocent misguided young panty photographer trying to relate to his father and win over his one true love.
It sounds pervy and completely batshit insane, and in some ways, it is. But its a film well worth seeing. Exciting (in both senses of the word), touching (in both senses of the word) and moving (in both senses of the word), Sion Sono’s opus combines contemporary Japanese perversity with romance, empathy and sensitivity, delivering comic moments, disturbing moments and downright perplexing moments.
SPOILER ALERT
Lalapipo (2009) November 15, 2009
Posted by ayasawada in Film.Tags: Film, Japanese movie, Tetsuya Nakashima
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There are only two types of people in the world, those who take chances and those who don’t. The trouble is, more often than not, those chances still land you in a stinking pile of shit.
That’s essentially the premise of Lalapipo, the title of which alludes the ‘lot of people’ in Tokyo. It’s a film about the dead-end lives of several Tokyoites stuck in the city’s sex industry — that weird underbelly of Japanese society that’s seemingly always in your face, but which people try not to talk about in everyday conversation.
It’s perfect subject matter then for Tetsuya Nakashima (of Kamikaze Girls and Memories of Matsuko fame), who excels at bringing out the weird, funny, but painful, reality of Japan’s hopeless. (As it happens, Nakashima was just the screenwriter on this one, but his fingerprints are all over this. There’s even a car-crash scene in which one of the main characters gets tossed in the air à la Momoko in Kamikaze Girls).
(SPOILERS AHEAD) (more…)
20th Century Boys Part 1 (2008) March 4, 2009
Posted by ayasawada in Film, Manga.Tags: 20th Century Boys, Film, Japanese movie, Manga, naoki urasawa
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Twentieth Century Boys is perhaps one of the most famous manga, if not literature, in Japan. Widely praised and penned by the ‘master of the thriller’ Naoki Urasawa (who wrote Monster amongst other titles) it is now the biggest budget movie in Japanese cinema history, with the story being adapted into a trilogy of films, each released over a 12 month period.
The story revolves around a group of old school friends who discover that an apocalyptic scenario they wrote as children seems to be coming true. The scenario features everything from bombings and killer viruses to laser guns and giant robots. All the while, Japan comes under the grip of a mysterious cult led by ‘Friend’, a masked man who uses the same symbol the kids once adopted. And at the centre is Kenji, a washed out wannabe rock-star, who may be world’s only hope.
It’s a densely plotted, multi-stranded, multi-flashback, multi-character thicket of a thriller spanning some 22 volumes. Quite how that’s going to pan into nine hours of cinema will be interesting to see, but it seems to be going well so far.
(WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead)
タイヨウのうた (Song of the Sun) November 24, 2008
Posted by ayasawada in Film, Music.Tags: Film, Japanese movie, Yui
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- Poster
In keeping with my Yui-fest this month I finally got around to watching her feature film debut, Taiyo no Uta, which I picked up on DVD in Malaysia over the summer.
The story is about Kaoru, a teenage girl with the rare xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) disease. Since UV light would kill her (or at least accelerate her nervous system’s breakdown) she sleeps in the day and lives at night, writing songs and playing her guitar. In between sunset and sundown she watches a young boy she’s interested in from her hill-top home, wishing she could one day meet him.
Of course, she gets the chance and that’s when things change, for better and for worse. And yes she does sing live and record a CD and all the other cliches you would expect from this sort of movie, especially a Japanese one. But cliched as it is, it is really sweet and done in good form. There were few moments I found really cringe-worthily melodramatic, which is more than can be said for some Japanese movies I’ve seen, and overall I thought the story was portrayed really sensitively and well. It helps that it’s all reasonably slow moving and good natured with decent, if not really outstanding, performances from the cast.
What you really want to know is if Yui can act. IMHO, despite the potentially melodramatic plot, she doesn’t really have to stretch any acting muscles that hard in this and is her usual semi-reserved self (some would call it bland. Not me — I love Yui!). It’s sweet for the right moments and of course she really comes into her own in the singing parts. Look out for the Yokohama street live with Skyline, and you’re guaranteed to have Goodbye Days (the signature track) playing on repeat for days after seeing this.
