This week has consisted of me working or writing future trailer posts because next week I’ll be at the gallery every day plus I’m starting the winter 2014 anime season guide for AUKN… I am very much conscious that my anime first impressions are late for this season and the only title tackled so far has been Samurai Flamenco but that’s because out of all the titles I picked it was one of two that really, really impressed me. Anyway, this week I posted about Asian film releases in November, my Republic of Thieves Read-along answers and a review for the sci-fi film Ku_On. I also did a bit of charity work in response to the typhoon that battered the Philippines. If you want to donate money, head over to the British Red Cross or Unicef.

Jinx!!!                                    

Japanese: ジンクス！！！

Romaji: Jinkusu!!!

Running Time: 122 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Naoto Kumazawa

Writer: Yukiko Manabe, Naoto Kumazawa (Screenplay)

Starring: Kurumi Shimizu, Kento Yamazaki, Hyomin, Kazuya Takahashi, Sanae Miyata

The big release for this weekend is from the director of Kimi ni Todoke and the awful Oyayubi Sagashi… What a horrifyingly dull film. Anyway he’s back with one about two Japanese finding love Korean style. The two Japanese lovers are Kurumi Shimizu (The Kirishima Thing) and Kento Yamazaki (Another, Control Tower) while the gorgeous Korean girl getting them together is Hyomin, member of K-pop group T-ara. I meet quite a few Koreans at work and their Japanese is usually rather excellent.

University students Kaede (Shimizu) and Yusuke (Yamazaki) are in love with each other but they are so quiet and reserved that they cannot express their feelings. Enter South Korean exchange student Ji-Ho (Hyomn) who knows of their plight and gets them together through a Korean style romance.

Website

Again                                                   

Japanese: ゆるせない、　逢いたい

Romaji: Yurusenai Aitai

Running Time: 107 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Junichi Kanai

Writer: Junichi Kanai (Screenplay)

Starring: Aoi Yoshikura, Yuya Yagira, Dankan, Yuko Araki, Mayumi Asaka, Kei Nakano

A romance starring Yuya Yagira (Nobody Knows), Dankan (Eyes of the Spider, Boiling Point), Aoi Yoshikura and Yuko Araki (both in Schoolgirl Complex).

Hatsumi (Yoshikura) is a high school student who lives with her mother, her father having died. She meets an 19-year-old name Ryutaro (Yagira) who works in waste collection and the two fall in love. The two lose contact and Ryutaro assumes that Hatsumi has dropped him and when they met again he loses control of his emotion and a horrific incident occurs. Hatsumi is in a quandry.

Website

Don’t Lose Heart             

Japanese: くじけないで

Romaji: Kujike naide

Running Time: 128 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Yoshihiro Fukagawa

Writer: Yoshihiro Fukagawa (Screenplay), Toyo Shibata (Original Work)

Starring: Kaoru Yachigusa, Tetsuya Takeda, Ran Ito, Rei Dan, Mana Ashida, Mizuho Suzuki, Pierre Taki, Ariei Umefune, Yusuke Kamiji

Yoshihiro Fukagawa, director of Girls for Keeps and Into the White Night, is back with a film about Toyo Shibata, a woman who published a bestselling book of poetry when she was in her 90’s! Playing Toyo Shibata is Kaoru Yachiguse (The Great Passage), little girl singer and actress Mana Ishida (Pacific Rim, Confessions) and Rei Dan (Ninja Kids!!!). Unfortunately Shibata died earlier this year but her work lives on in this film.

Toyo Shibata (Yachigusa) is a widow who lives alone in the suburbs of Tokyo. At the suggestion of her son Kenichi (Takeda) she takes up poetry and finds that her first collection of poems “Don’t Lose Heart” (“Kujike naide”) sells over a million copies. We see her at different stages of her life, as a child (Ishida) and a young woman (Dan).

Website

Shinokubo Story                      

Japanese: 新大久保　物語

Romaji: Shin Ookubo Monogatari

Running Time: 117 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Kenichi Fujiwara

Writer: Kenichi Fujiwara, Yuta Takahashi (Screenplay), Toyo Shibata (Original Work)

Starring: Gunwoo, InSoo, SeYong, JunQ ChaeJin, Izumi Fujimoto, Haru, Yasukaze Motomiya, Erika Asakura, Mai Watanabe

Kenichi Fujiwara, director of the half good half bad High School Girl Rikka: Zombie Hunter, has a tale set in the Shin Okubo area of Tokyo (Korean Town).

ChaeJin and InSoo want to work in show-business and escape their jobs as tour guides in Shin Okubo where there are a lot of Korean restaurants and stores. Gunwoo, JunQ, and SeYong are part of a failing Korean band called “NOBODYS”. Enter Utako (Fujimoto) who works for a talent agency and has knows of the “NOBODYS” through a friend. She sees their potential and wants them to make their debut in Japan with the named… er… “MYNAME” but family troubles and SeYong’s back injury threaten their dreams.

Website

Pecoros, Goes to Meet His Mother      

Japanese: 新大久保　物語

Romaji: Shin Ookubo Monogatari

Running Time: 113 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Azuma Morisaki

Writer: Akune Tomoaki (Screenplay), Yuichi Okano (Original Manga)

Starring: Ryo Iwamatsu, Mitsuko Baisho, Naoto Takenaka, Kiwako Harada, Kensuke Owada, Toshie Negishi, Ryo Kase

This is based on a self-published manga created by Yuichi Okano (Iwamatsu) which contained notes and anecdotes he made while after he returns to Nagasaki to look after his divorced 85-year-old mother Mitsue (Baisho) who has Alzheimer’s disease.

Website

There’s Nothing to be Afraid of    

Japanese: なにも　こわいことわない

Romaji: Nanimo Kowaiktowanai

Running Time: 110 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Hisashi Saito

Writer: Hitomi Kase (Screenplay),

Starring: Saikiko Takao, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Nao Okabe, Akira Emoto, Kinuwo Yamada, Kazue Tsunogae, Ryu Morioka

Hisashi Saito has worked with a number of my favourite directors as screenwriter of Bicycle Sighs (Sion Sono), Tokyo Fist, Sunday Drive (Shinya Tsukamoto), and Chaos (Hideo Nakata). A diverse number of films that are a far cry from this art-house drama about a couple, Eri (Takao), is a cinema attendant who hates her boss, and her husband Fumiya (Yoshioka) who decided not to have children and the life they share together.

Website

Yokohama Story              

Japanese: ヨコハマ　物語

Romaji: Yokohama Monogatari

Running Time: 110 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Ichiro Kita

Writer: Ichiro Kita (Screenplay),

Starring: Kie Kitano, Eiji Okuda, Nahana, Megumi Saeki, Yoshie Ichige

Nanami Matsuura (Kitano) is a 25-year-old who grew up in an orphanage and now works as the manager of an amateur music group. She is broke and behind on her rent.

Yoshinori Tanabe (Okuda) is a 65-year-old grounds-keeper at a football stadium who becomes a widower on the day of his retirement when his wife passes away.

The two meet and Nanami moves into Yoshinori’s house. Without warning she brings in a single mother named Aoi and her 5-year-old son, a woman who works at a real estate company and an unemployed woman. This is the tale of the warmth of people in Yokohama.

Website

Kingdom of Dreams & Madness  

Japanese: 夢　と　狂気　の　国

Romaji: Yume to Kyōki no Ōkoku

Running Time: 118 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Mami Sunada

Writer: Mami Sunada

Starring: Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Toshio Suzuki, Hideaki Anno, Goro Miyazaki

This is a documentary about the acclaimed anime company Studio Ghibli and the three major figures behind the studio, directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki as they work on Ghibli’s latest film The Wind Rises and The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Director Mami Sunada was prepping to do a fiction film but when offered the chance to do this documentary immediately stepped up. Miyazaki and Takahata have been very complimentary about the title. Here’s another video.

Website

Fukushima: Record of Living Things                      

Japanese: 福島　生きものの記録　シリーズ1 被曝

Romaji: Fukushima Ikimononokiroku Shirīzu 1 Hibaku

Running Time: 76 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Masanori Iwasaki

Writer: Masanori Iwasaki

Starring: N/A

This 3/11 documentary records the effects on the environment and ecology of wildlife in Fukushima after the accident at Fukushia Daiichi nuclear power plant. We hear the Geiger counter ticking in the trailer, the empty roads populated by herds of cattle and apes. Some strong images in here.

Website

Naked Cousin                        

Japanese: 裸　の　いとこ

Romaji: Hadako no Itoko

Running Time: 130 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Gitan Otsuru

Writer: Gitan Otsuru (Screenplay)

Starring: Kokone Sasaki, Takeyuki Yue, Yuki Kubota, Yuki Kazamatsuri, Mayuko, Kazuhiko Kanayama, Yuya Miyashita

The director of this mystery drama is Gitan Otsuru and according to IMDB he was in The Land of Hope as a cop! Not only that but he appears to be a novelist as well as a screenwriter. In his latest work he follows a debt-ridden man who goes on te run with a woman and everything he owns and ends up in the earthquake affected areas of Fukushima where his aunt resides. He works as a reconstruction volunteer, hiding from his painful reality, but when he meets his cousin he finds his desire to live again and swears to come back! The film stars Kokone Sasaki (Hello My Dolly Girlfriend).

Website

Tenei Village Fukushima        

Japanese: 天　に　栄える　村

Romaji: Ten ni Sakaeru Mura

Running Time: 106 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Masaki Hara

Starring: Kimiko Yo (Narration)

Another documentary about the March 2011 nuclear disaster only this time the focus is on the trials and tribulations of Tenei village which is located around 70 kilometres away from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The dominant occupation for the 6000 people is farming and now the radiation has hit their farmland. Despite having no assistance from their government, the farmers continue to grow food.

Website

Tenshin                      

Japanese:　天心

Romaji: Tenshin

Running Time: 122 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Katsuya Matsumura

Writer: Katsuya Matsumura, Masayoshi Azuma (Screenplay)

Starring:  Shido Nakamura, Naoto Takenaka, Hirotaro Honda, Megumi Kagurazaka, Hiroyuki Watanabe, Ichiro Hashimoto

A historical drama about Okakura Tenshin, a man who is considered “father of modern Japanese art”. In his lifetime he was credited with saving traditional Japanese painting from western influence, he was involved in the reconstruction of Buddhist temples published books of philosophy (The Ideals of the East), ex-pounder of Pan-Asianism and was founder/appointed principal of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now known as Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music).

Website

Great Adventure on Pirate Island           

Japanese: 十五少年漂流記　海賊島DE！大冒険

Romaji: Jūgo Shōnen Hyōryūki Kaizoku Shima DE! Dai Bōken

Running Time: 122 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Ryutaro Nakamura

Writer: Shigeru Yanagawa (Screenplay), Jules Verne (Original Work)

Starring: Rika Matsumoto, Karin Ono, Aki Toyosaki, Hiroki Matsukata

An anime adaptation of Jules Verne’s Two Years’ Vacation where a group of school children get shipwrecked on an island full of pirates. This is updated but the story is the same as the group split up and feud as they try to escape the island. They are also cats. The director appears to be recently departed Ryutaro Nakamura, the chap behind the brilliant anime Kino’s Journey/Serial Experiments Lain… but I thought his last work was Ghost Hound…

Website

A Sparkle of Life                   

Japanese: 燦燦　さんさん

Romaji: Sansan –san-san

Running Time: 81 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: Bunji Toyama?

Writer: Bunji Toyama? (Screenplay),

Starring: Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Akira Takarada, Manabu Yamamoto

This played at the Skip City Film Festival and is about a woman (Yoshiyuki) who is a widow and has been in a care home who wants to get married again. She faces opposition from her friends and family but goes out on blind dates.

Website

Yokoyama ken shippūkeisō-hen                        

Japanese: 横山健　疾風勁草編

Romaji: Yokoyama ken shippūkeisō-hen

Running Time: 117 mins.

Release Date: November 16^th, 2013

Director: MINORxU

Starring: Ken Yokoyama

Ken Yokoyama, member of the hardcore punk band Hi-STANDARD and a solo artist. Here’s a documentary about his work.

Website

Winter is a time for ghost stories and the BFI has its Gothic season underway across various venues in the UK. The real meat is down in London where there are lots of talks and films that three Japanese film screened at the BFI Southbank over December. A fortnight ago I posted about Ringu and then blogger HS reported that there were screenings for the 1959 version of The Ghost Story of Yotsuya and Kaneto Shindo’s classic Kuroneko. Here’s the info on the films. Just hit the titles to get to the official pages and from there you can purchase tickets.

Kuroneko                                

Japanese: 藪　の　中　の　黒猫

Romaji: Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko

Running Time: 99 mins.

Release Date: February 24^th, 1968

Director: Kaneto Shindo

Writer: Kaneto Shindo (Screenplay),

Starring: Kiwako Taichi, Nobuko Otowa, Kichiemon Nakamura

This is Kaneto Shindo’s follow-up (in horror terms) to Onibaba and is drawn on from a classic folktale (kaibyo – Ghost Cat). I have seen this and planned to review it for Halloween but decided to go with Penance instead to cap my Kiyoshi Kurosawa season. Filmed in black and white this film is creepy but very, very beautiful with its atmospheric visuals, great lighting and creative sets.

A mother (Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Taichi) live in a remote house next to a bamboo forest which makes them easy targets for a band of samurai who rape and murder them. Their spirits return in the form of vampiric black cats who lure samurai into a bamboo grove and murder them! 

The film will be screened on December 17^th, 2013 at 6:10 PM and December 22^nd, 2013 at 8:40 PM. Tickets are on sale already and seats for the Tuesday event are being snapped up!

The Ghost Story of Yotsuya                                  

Japanese: 東海道四谷怪談

Romaji: Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan

Running Time: 76 mins.

Release Date: July 1^st, 1959

Director: Nobuo Nakagawa

Writer: Masayoshi Onuki, Yoshihiro Ishikawa (Screenplay), Nanboku Tsuruya (Original Novel)

Starring: Shigeru Amachi, Noriko Kitazawa, Katsuko Wakasugi

The BFI’s page for this seems to display information on Kuroneko but thankfully the film was at the 2013 Terracotta Far East Film Festival which I posted about earlier this year and is where I get the trailer, description and story from! No poster, just a DVD case.

A the most famous Japanese ghost story of all tie, Yotsuya Kaidan has been remade multiple times (30 times!!!) with the most recent example being Kaidan directed by Hideo Nakata. This one is the 1959 version directed by Nobuo Nakagawa, the man who would later go onto to film Jigoku. It is based on a Kabuki play written way back in 1825 and follows the misfortunes of two families locked in a deadly curse.

The film will be screened on December 16^th, 2013 at 8:40 PM and December 22^nd, 2013 at 6:20 PM. Tickets are on sale already and seats for the Monday event are running out!

I have watched most of the films/TV shows in the season (thanks to a mother who loves the supernatural) but only reviewed The Woman in Black and Nosferatu the Vampyre. I’d really love to watch The Innocents and Night of the Demon at a cinema

Hello once again dear audience and welcome to the penultimate Republic of Thieves read-along where revelations are revealed, Sabetha and Locke get closer to doing the horizontal tango and there were major twists and turns. The revelations are so major we have been requested to hide spoilers so when you get to question 7 just highlight the text. Anyway, this week’s questions come from Andrea from The Little Red Reviewer who has split them into different timelines – Espara and Karthain – and she used the term cockblocking – it’s so cute when a woman uses it… unless it applies to me. Fortunately it applies to Locke and Sabetha who were still orbiting each other when we last saw them! Week one was all about getting to know the characters again while week two was all about revealing Sabetha, week three was all about Espara and now we get to the real meat of the story where the Sabetha and Locke match wits in the election and the theatre production is about to go on the road. Here are the questions:

Let’s start with the Espara timeline.

1. We finally know why Sabetha dies her hair, and that’s so disturbing even the Thiefmaker under Shade’s Hill was disgusted by it. Too dark for this world? Or just right?

When I began reading the passage I was irritated by Sabetha’s overreaction – you just want to sleep with me because I have red hair! Boo men!

Boo Sabetha, more like! Yes red heads are sexy and demanding¹ but Locke isn’t as base as that!!! As she explained her feelings more it sort of made sense why she may react like that and I was chilled to the bone when she gave her reasons. It came out of the blue and I would have appreciated more foreshadowing but then maybe my reaction was meant to be similar to Locke’s?

Anyway, I think it fits in with the world at large. This is a hard land full of superstitions, horrible traditions and brutality. Hands get cut off, people get executed in the street… Children get the noose! It fits. Furthermore it solidifies my impressions of gender inequality. Women may hold positions of power in the world Locke and Sabetha inhabit, they are captains, spy masters etc. but I still get the impression of inequality between the sexes. They still have to fight harder and they still get looked at like dolls. So yeah, it fits, it made me sympathise with Sabetha and it unnerved me. I hope Locke and Jean bring down the country where this tradition that Sabetha fears persists. Better yet I hope Sabetha does it.

¹  My favourite red-head is a fictional one called Sawa Nakamura, the most demanding red head in existence! And her hair colour isn’t even natural.

http://aanniimmee.tumblr.com/

“Get changed and do some False Facing, Locke!”

2. The “Asino” brothers are drunken idiots, but they’re not blind. What did you think of the little rendezvous they helped arrange for Sabetha and Locke?

Finally. Get Sabetha and Locke together so they can blow off steam and mellow out!

The Sanzas’ risked looking like huge louts in this book – drinking, whoring, fighting and acting like thick-headed young men -  and I was wondering when they might show signs of maturity. Then they started acting in the theatre and seemed to grow a little. The rendezvous is further proof that they have matured – they notice other people’s emotions and feelings and their method was hilarious play on their usual behaviour – throw Locke and Sabetha in a room together… On top of each other if they can – and let nature take its course! Everyone looks down at them but through their methods – bash heads together – they seem to have solved what looked like an intractable problem.

3. Locke managed to get everyone out of the Boulidazi mess we discussed last week . . . what do you think of this latest Boulidazi complication?

I don’t know… At first I was not totally surprised because it was building to something like that – Boulidazi was acting like the evil lord cliché in relation to the way he treats people/women of lower status – but I expected Jean to be the person who drew the steel. It was a great twist but it was resolved to quickly and people fell into line too easily. The mess is created and everyone is in MAJOR trouble. I can understand the GB’s being able to rely on their training to keep them cool but Jenora should have been more traumatised… she shook herself back into action quick sharp and Boulidazi’s henchman was quick too toddle off without providing too much of a hindrance.

The reason I mention this is because this is a moment when Locke and Sabetha take charge so the two are firing on all cylinders together and it’s great to see. This is the moment for them to make their mark and it just seemed too easy, too convenient. There’s no tension.

And back to Karthain (I’m jumping around in time here, leaving the most important bits for last)

4.Time is flying, and the election is getting closer. Desperation calls for cheap tricks. I think my favorite so far is Sabetha’s special roof guards. What’s your favorite election dirty trick so far?

The special roof guards could be dealt with by using alchemical dust to make them go to sleep, surely. Look, call me callous but old people are fair game. They are old so they should know better. If they want to step into the arena then they best be prepared to get rolled over! RAWR! I mean would you be nice to a pervy old man? You’d kick him in the nuts!

My favourite dirty trick was Sabetha trapping Locke in the carriage full of snakes. That was genius. I didn’t see it coming and it was very funny!

5.There’s a mole in the Deep Roots. Was that person’s identity a surprise to you? And how did you like Locke’s method of identifying the person?

No. I figured that Nikoros and his dust addiction would crop up at some point and as soon as it looked like there was a mole the only person it could be was him since he’s at the nexus point for all decisions made and he was threatened with jail. It’s just like Sabetha to strike at something as open and vital as that. It just proves how ruthless she is. Go Sabetha!

6.What’s so important about this Lovaris fellow? The election is right around the corner, so why introduce someone new so late in the game? 

The book is running out of pages and Locke and Jean have yet to deal out body-blows to Sabetha and the Black Iris party. I can only assume that this Lovaris fellow is going to be their one last trick up their sleeve… The guy who will tip the election in their favour when all seems lost. Go Locke!

7. It’s so nice that Locke and Sabetha can finally have some nice, normal dinner dates. He even cooks her dinner! But that sneaky Patience, always interrupting everything! Finally, she promises some answers. that’s nice. what, Locke is WHO? Locke is a WHAT? How much of it do you believe?

Talk about stunned. I thought he was an excellent thief because of fate/some greater plot and Patience had knowledge of this. It wasn’t fate but Bondsmagi and I think I prefer this to the Gods deciding how things pan out for him. I believed everything or want to believe everything because this mysterious past is hugely interesting. It places him in the middle of Bondsmagi’s concerns and suggests that he might have some hidden skills that can be developed. I also choose to believe this because I get the sense that Patience has been forced to reveal the truth to keep Locke from doing anything naughty.

I felt sorry for Locke because he was finally going to get laid after all these years and by the only woman who matters and Patience chooses then to spoil everything (maybe Sabetha’s his spiritual sister… eeww). And then he decides to lash out at Sabetha… Locke really needs a handler when he opens his mouth in front of Sabetha. Every time he talks I have a reaction similar to Malcolm Tucker…

Enough from me, here are the opinions of the rest of the Lynch Mob!

The Little Red Reviewer

Over the Effing Rainbow

Violin in a Void

Lynn’s Book Blog

Theft and Sorcery

Dab of Darkness

All I Am – a redhead

Many a True Nerd

Tethyan Books

Joma’s Fantasy Books

Kyousogiga has been mentioned on this blog multiple times, the first was with the ONA that was released back in 2011 followed by a joyous post when I found out that the one-shot ONA was due to get more episodes. I loved it. I hoped for more Kyousogiga and Toei saw fit to give it to us. And thank the anime Gods because this is my second favourite anime of the Autumn season a real breath of fresh air in a season mired with middling shows!

The ONA for Kyousogiga was hard to describe, hard to put into a glib synopsis because the anime races along at a break-neck pace, dazzling the audience with crazy visuals, bright colours, a fun atmosphere and obscure symbolism connected to Buddhism and Lewis Carol’s Through the Looking Glass. The setting is a mirror world version of Kyoto and we were watching a girl named Koto as she blasted into the city with her familiars A and Un and, with her giant glass hammer, bashes things and causes chaos while battling an army of gun-toting goons.

It was fun and sometimes incomprehensible. A quick one-shot that brimmed with promise. The TV anime builds on the ONA and provides context and grounding but never at the expense of magic or fun that fans savoured. So the TV anime starts with episode 0 effectively the ONA before launching into the story proper:

Once upon a time, when the countless worlds bordered on each other, there was a certain family whose story of love and rebirth we will follow.

Mirror Kyoto didn’t come from nowhere. The city comes from the drawings of a Buddhist monk named Inari, a man with fox-blood in his veins and an outcast from the real life version of Kyoto.

He has red eyes and magic which allows his drawings comes to life. This gets him exiled from Kyoto and so he resides in a temple in the mountains with his loyal dog and continues to draw pictures including a huge drawing of an alternative Kyoto. One such drawing is Koto, a black rabbit with red eyes who spends her time watching Inari.

Koto falls in love with Inari and a compassionate Bodhisattva, a being who has gained an enlightened and wishes to help others do the same, allows Koto to temporarily use her body to obtain a human form which will allow her to express her feelings to Inari and for Inari to return them.

Ai? Ai!  

愛してるね

Fast-forward some time and the two have children.

The first is Yakushimaru, an excitable somewhat irascible tearaway. Then came two more children, both born from Inari’s brush and both older than Yakushimaru: Eldest Kurama, the level-headed one, the leader and pragmatist followed be middle-child Yase, a beautiful girl who just happens to be able to transform into an ogre.

Their lives at the temple run along smoothly but not unnoticed and the same people who forced Inari out of Kyoto move again to force him and his family to flee. Where? To Inari’s mirror Kyoto, a realm where nothing changes…

Mirror Kyoto is a place where nobody grows old or dies, everything that breaks is fixed again and humans and yokai live together. And so the family live happily together but remember that bit about Koto’s use of the Bodhisattva’s body being temporary? She has to give it back when Inari returns her feeling and because Inari genuinely loves her he refuses to let her go without him. So together they go and leave their children behind in mirror Kyoto with the promise that they will be back…

The three children grow older and protect mirror Kyoto, running the affairs of humans and monsters alike. As the real world advances, so does mirror Kyoto and people join them from other dimensions. Kurama develops into the leader of the siblings and has his team of science nerds with giant robots while Yase becomes more ladylike and runs the affairs of the Yokai on the other side of town. Meanwhile the human Yakushimaru dons the robes of a Buddhist priest, rides around on a Vespa and does a bit of womanising.

So where does the hammer-wielding Koto fit into all of this? As a representative of an inter-dimensional agency called SHRINE, she is tasked with keeping dimensions running normally and she’s on the hunt for her sempai, a man with red eyes who wears a fox mask.

She bursts into mirror Kyoto and causes chaos, battling yokai and the science team alike, but she may be connected to the three siblings in ways nobody expects.

And that is my interpretation of Kyousogiga after about 5.5 episodes. For people new to this anime I think the closest comparisons I can make are FLCL, Summer Wars, and Mawaru Penguindrum. Every week there have been twenty-five minutes of symbol saturated crazy zany adventures where Koto, A and Un encounter the three siblings and get into fights and adventures and uncover a family drama.

Visually the anime is splendid. I mean it.

The visuals are God-tier. So much happens, so much is on screen, and there are so many interesting angles to view this visual sugar overdose from!

From http://bewareofmpreg.tumblr.com/

Mirror Kyoto is a hugely outlandish place that allows the animators to bring a level of visual imagination that calls on the aforementioned titles. When I say imagination, I mean imagination of the most epic and interesting kind.

The animation is an exciting and stimulating mixture of traditional Japanese art and storybook images. Scenes have background which are painterly, detailed in a watercolour style but with moments of sharp details and with huge doses of the surreal and absurd. I have never been to Kyoto but the locations seem to be a mixture of the real life city and fantasy mixed together. As episode 5.5 shows, there are a lot of real world locations and people (Myoue, for one) who do show up. It makes me want to visit the city.

Truly dazzling. No frame is wasted, no second lacks something beautiful or interesting to look at and amidst all of the chaos there are the enchanting details of the locations. Everything from the way that the lighting is used, the way that camera angles and editing keep things fresh and reveal fun details or are just plain good-looking and enough to make me emotional for all the ways they help frame the characters during their most beautiful moments.

From http://secretotaku.tumblr.com/

Director Rie Matsumoto is relatively new but the show reveals so much confidence that I would throw money at her to create new anime. The visuals dazzle much like Mawaru Penguindrum and like that anime Kyousogiga has a story that is all about the connections between people and as the story builds and the characters appear, the anime gains power and meaning. Kyousogiga is not just a pretty face. The details and locations of the ONA which seemed throw-away at the time thanks to the chaos are all coming into play as the creators are getting to flesh them out and expand the world Inari created and the siblings inhabit by hooking everything into a narrative about a family that has been split up.

The mirror world of Kyoto may look pretty but it has different meanings for those who inhabit it. For Koto, an interloper, this strange place is like a colourful playground but for the three siblings who have been there for a long time it is a prison and a cruel reminder of their parents and their abandonment. The mirror world changes alongside the real Kyoto but not in any meaningful way, the constant state of renewal prevents any real change and it is reflected the arrested development of the lives of the siblings.

This place is like a cage for the siblings as they wallow in the memories of their parents. They live static lives hoarding items with connections to their parents. We find out slowly but surely thanks to the screen-writing which is of the non-linear variety. Every week we get to find out about how everything fits together in an interesting way. Each episode is dedicated to fleshing out a particular character and their perspective of the world and this is what the writing is good at, detailing the way that the characters, particularly the siblings are bonded to each other. Through Koto and her seeming interference in the sibling’s routines and beliefs we see how they balance each other and the way that their abandonment by their parents has affected them and how Koto leads them to some form of enlightenment and growth.

Revealing things from their point of view lets us see that behind the facades and first impressions lies the fact that these three people miss their parents. Myoue seems relaxed, tough on the outside, but there is a sense of self-destruction that can be scented in his indifference. Kurama is like a blank slate but his personality is a cover for his desires to leave and the emptiness he feels because he was reliant on his mother and father’s approval and support to help him achieve this.

Yase’s episode was probably the most tragic.

She is the classiest figure in town, chauffeured around in a limo, wearing her frilly pink dress, constantly sipping tea but s given to fierce temper tantrums and acts of spitefulness.

She seems like the least sympathetic character because she is petulant and turns into a childish demon powered by rage, a demon hag at and gets to go on a rampage and shout a lot but episode four made her the most sympathetic character going as we find out that Yase’s emotions are driven by the same things as her brothers. She feels uneasy about being a yokai and misses her parents. She needs her mother’s support more than the two boys realise and in a series of scenes we see how her mother’s unconditional love gave her succour.

She goes from monster to child.

I defy viewers not to sympathise during episode four’s memory flashbacks when we see why Yase hangs onto things!

The law of contagion that states that people or objects who come into contact maintain connections and the more time invested the closer they get. It’s why we venerate a saint’s objects or use voodoo dolls that have the hair of a target. Nothing is as close as family, so Yase’s desires are both tangible and understandable, right? The emotions are pretty brutal at points, both in the love depicted and the emptiness that the characters feel.

These episodes and things seem unconnected at the outset but an emotional picture is building and it is potent stuff. It’s the family scenes that strike the hardest, the emotional body-blows. It could all be dark, dark stuff but the visuals, the seemingly un-orchestrated chaos and the manic characters keep everything light enough to maintain the sense of fun. It’s magic and fate and family drama we’re watching and it’s impressive and the characters are so much fun to be around!

All the characters are loveable in their own way. I dig the way A and Un are totally different from each other much like the real life shrine guardians they are based upon.

A being the more hyper of the two, continuously grinning as he bounces around in every scene while Un is more chilled, hands thrust deep in his pockets and a look of indifference plastered on his face.

And Shouko, lovely, lovely, otaku super genius scientist Shouko.

She is the manic scientist stereotype with a motor-mouth, a huge ego and an army of goons she gets to direct but the performance is charming enough that she is loveable! I love her so much I used the word love more than I should have! She controls her giant robot with a PSP handheld game console and has a team of magical girls on call!

I just cannot get enough of Koto with her fresh-face and her propensity to beat people up with her hammer and heave people into space with not a care. She’s a genki girl, an oddball like Hajime Ichinose, always charming and fun to watch. Her big eyes make my heart melt and seeing her joyous application of violence is always welcome, never tiring.

In a season where glib or no characterisation seems to be commonplace, where the styles are easy to nail down, Kyousogiga is ambitious. Kyousogiga dares to have characters who are complex and visuals that will baffle just as much as they amuse. In the end all will be solved and a re-watch will be in order.

Kyousogiga is a win. Do yourself a favour and join the winning side by watching this!

I’m splitting this trailer post up again but not because there’s too many in number but too many interesting films. The real meat comes tomorrow but just ahead of their release is one great looking title – Oh Madame Marmalade, how I love thee, I wish you were a video-game character then I could play with you… Uh… I mean the game! – and two others. Looking at the title of the post, this could be a light novel that would get an anime adaptation… It All Began When I Met You Madame Marmalade my Mysterious Lovecraft Girl.

Before the trailers, a little summary of the posts this week: 

This week I posted about two more Japanese films screening as part of the BFI’s Gothic season. They are the mighty Kuroneko and The Ghost Story of Yotsuya. I also my fourth entry in the Republic of Thieves Read-along and babbled out an incoherent post about the brilliance of Kyousogiga. Messy and undignified but heartfelt. I’m also went looking for the games Ruin Arm and Lady Stalker Apocalypse Engine, and Wonder Project J2. Bringing things back to films, I went to see Gravity last night and it was a fantastic film. Exciting, tense and straight to the point, no messing around. I’ll be going to see the Korean film Flu next which actually has a UK release!

Here they are!

It All Began When I Met You                                   

Japanese:　すべて　は　君　に　逢えた　から

Romaji: Subete wa Kimi ni Aeta Kara

Running Time: 106 mins.

Release Date: November 22^nd, 2013

Director: Katsuhide Motoki

Writer: Atsuko Hashibe (Screenplay)

Starring: Hiroshi Tamaki, Rin Takanashi, Fumino Kimura, Masahiro Higashide, Tsubasa Honda, Miwako Ichikawa, Emiri Kai, Saburo Tokito, Ryutaro Yamasaki, Nene Otsuka, Chieko Baisho, Nenji Kobayashi

This looks like one those awful Hollywood romance flicks packed full of actors that were released a few years ago. New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day or whatever they were. Bah! I’m a cynic so I hate that stuff. Katsuhide Motoki, director of the comedy Drugstore Girl, is here with an omnibus movie containing six love stories set in and around Tokyo Station to celebrate its 100^th anniversary. It opened in 1914. Anyway, characters include a bullet train driver, students and what not. Actors include Rin Takanashi (Goth Love of Death), Masahiro Higashide (The Kirishima Thing) and Nene Otsuka (The Foreign Duck, Kiseki). And… Oh my God.. Hiroshi Tamaki, the guy from the utterly indescribably dull low-budget J-hora Ghost System, a film so dull I never thought I would mention it again… He’s certainly gone up in the world!

Website

Madame Marmalade’s Mysterious Puzzle Answer Version 

Japanese: ナゾトキネマ　マダム・マーマレードの異常な謎　解編

Romaji: Madamu Marmalade no Ijo na Nazo: Kaito Hen

Running Time: N/A

Release Date: November 22^nd, 2013

Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura, Norio Tsuruta, Daiki Ueda

Writer: Yoshihiro Nakamura, Norio Tsuruta, Daiki Ueda (Screenplay),

Starring: Haruna Kawaguchi, Atsuko Takahata, Hajime Yamazaki, Narushi Ikeda, Shiro Namiki Tamae Ando, Koko Mori, Noriko Nakagoshi, Ippei Kanie, Maika Hara, Noriko Eguchi, Hana Sugisaki

Time for some fun with a foxy detective! This is the follow-up to last month’s puzzle omnibus film which demanded audience interaction to solve a mystery hidden in a series of short films held together by the framework of an investigation conducted by Madame Marmalade. For each short film there were different directors including Yoshihiro Nakamura (The Foreign Duck, See You Tomorrow, Everyone) probably doing drama, Norio Tsuruta (Ring 0: Birthday, Dream Cruise) probably doing horror and an unknown in Daiki Ueda. With this Answer Version of the film the audience gets to find out the answers to some questions posed by the last film and the people who got the questions right get their names placed in the film. Awesome.

30 years ago, Shunnosuke Todo, the master of the film world revealed to his wife that there is a secret in three short films which contained a love story before he passed away. Now his wife is on the verge of death so she hires Madame Marmalade (Kawaguchi) to find the secret!

Website

Love Craft Girl                                

Japanese:　ラブクラフト　ガール

Romaji: Rabukurafuto Gāru

Running Time: 91 mins.

Release Date: November 22^nd, 2013

Director: Katsutoshi Hirabayashi

Writer: Keiko Kanome (Screenplay)

Starring: Sei Ando, Tomoya Nakamura, Masako Chiba, Yuki Sakurai,

LOVECRAFT GIRL??? Oh, it’s about women’s sex toys and not Cthulhu. Take it from me working in an office full of women where you’re the token male can be sanity shattering when they talk about sex never mind actually meeting Cthulhu… Anyway, Katsutoshi Hirabayashi (director of Penguin Fufu) is not trying to brainwash us into joining the Esoteric Order of Dagon or anything else Lovecraftian, he’s put this sex comedy together. Sei Ando, actress in Orpheus’ Lyre and Air Doll, acts alongside Tomoya Nakamura who came in Rampo Noir and Quirky Guys and Gals.

Akane Ogura (Ando) has joined a company that produces women’s sexual products as a designer. Since catching her boyfriend cheating on her she can focus on creating the best product on the market.

Website

 This is my second trailer post of the week! The first post contained a quirky selection of titles but this is where we get to the big names, anime and alternative programming. In anime terms we have the much hyped Persona 3 movie and the cult title Bayonetta Bloody Fate full of supernatural action. The big anime release has to be Isao Takahata’s Princess Kaguya, his first work as a director in fourteen years. The more I see of it the more I want to watch it. Other interesting titles include Tamako in Moratorium and The Extreme Sukiyaki which have writers, directors and actors who have been in plenty of quality titles I have already reviewed. We’re talking about Nobuhiro Yamashita and Shiro Maeda, Kengo Kora and Shuichi Okita, Atusko Maeda and Arata. If I had to choose one to see it would be Tamako in Moratorium because it has the quirky sense of humour and easy to identify with character plus it looks so freaking adorable.

The Story of Princess Kaguya  

Japanese:　かぐや　姫　の　物語

Romaji: Kaguya Hime no Monogatari

Running Time: 137 mins.

Release Date: November 23^rd, 2013

Director: Isao Takahata

Writer: Isao Takahata, Riko Sakaguchi (Screenplay)

Starring: Aki Asakura (Kaguya), Kengo Kora (Sutemaru), Nobuko Miyamoto (ouno), Takeo Chii (Okina)

This is the big release for the weekend, the latest Studio Ghibli project! It’s helmed by Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, writer and director of Only Yesterday, Pom Poko Grave of the Fireflies and Little Norse Prince Valiant. I can vouch for them all being very good since they come on British television regularly.

What is he bringing his considerable talents to? An adaptation of a famous ancient Japanese folktale originally called Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) which is about a princess named Kaguya who is discovered as a bab inside the stalk of a growing plant by a bamboo cutter and adopted. Joe Hisaishi (The Kids Return, Spirited Away) is composing the film’s soundtrack. Check out Alua Luna’s fascinating post about the different re-tellings of this folk-tale.

Website

Tamako in Moratorium         

Japanese: もらとりあむ　タマ子

Romaji: Moratoriamu Tamako

Running Time: 78 mins.

Release Date: November 23^rd, 2013

Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita

Writer: Kosuke Mukai (Screenplay),

Starring: Atsuko Maeda, Suon Kan, Keiichi Suzuki, Kumi Nakamura, Yasuko Tomita

Director Nobuhiro Yamashita and writer Kosuke Mukai have collaborated on a lot of excellent films like Linda Linda Linda, No One’s Ark and My Back Page so it comes as no surprise that I’m excited about this one. This stars Atsuko Maeda, former AKB48 superstar and lead actress in Yamashita’s 2012 film, The Drudgery Train. I did not really know about it until Tired Paul, a fellow Japanese film afficianado told me about it. The film’s genesis started with short film segments on the TV channel MUSIC ON! TV. I thought they were so adorable I downloaded a bunch.

Tamako (Maeda) is a university graduate who lives with her father. She spends her days lazing around.

Website

The Extreme Sukiyaki       

Japanese: ジ、　エクストリーム、　スキヤキ

Romaji: Ji, Ekusutori-mu, Sukiyaki

Running Time: 111 mins.

Release Date: November 23^rd, 2013

Director: Shiro Maeda

Writer: Shiro Maeda (Original Novel and Screenplay),

Starring: Arata, Yosuke Kubozuka, Mikako Ichikawa, Kana Kurashima, Kengo Kora, Shuichi Okita, Daisuke Kuroda, Toru Okada

Shiro Maeda is a writer who crops up a lot on this blog thanks to his scripts for The Story of Yonosuke and Isn’t Anyone Alive? and now he is directing his first feature film. Well done, Shiro! The film stars a plethora of top acting talent including Arata and Yosuke Kubozuka, both of whom starred in the hilarious comedy Ping Pong. Other names include Mikako Ichikawa (Tokyo Oasis), Kana Kurashina (Dreams for Sale), Kengo Kora (The Drudgery Train), and the director Shuichi Okita (The Woodsman & the Rain, The Story of Yonosuke).

Horaguchi (Arata) is a failure. 15 years after leaving university he has achieved nothing and let time pass. Time to give up. He tries to commit suicide but even that fails. For Horaguchi his best days were at uni and so he yearns for those days. Yearns for them so much that he finds an old friend from university Ohkawa (Kubozuke). Things are a little awkward between them because of an incident in their past but they soon warm up to each other and plan a trip to the sea. Ohkawa’s girlfriend Kaeda (Kurashina) and Horaguchi’s ex Kyoko (Ichikawa) join them and bring a sukiyaki pot. They start to get along on their trip but Horaguchi has a secret reason for seeing his friend…

Website

Honto Ni Atta! Noroi Video 55                          

Japanese: ほんとにあった！呪いのビデオ55

Romaji: Honto Ni Atta! Noroi Video 55

Running Time: 106 mins

Release Date: November 23^rd, 2013

Director: N/A

Writer: N/A

Starring: N/A

Welcome back Honto Ni Atta! Noroi Video, a documentary-style horror movie series that has been going since 1999 and it involves an investigation team track down “cursed videos” which have caused misfortune. This is based on real life stuff and some of it is grisly. Most of it is also fake. It’s best viewed with a girl/boyfriend and a willingness to endure jump-scares and people screaming.

Website

Ties            

Japanese: 晴れのち晴れ、ときどき晴れ

Romaji: Hare Nochi Hare, Tokidoki Hare

Running Time: 117 mins

Release Date: November 23^rd, 2013

Director: Akira Uchikata

Writer: Hiroyuki Yatsu (Screenplay),

Starring: Matsu, Miho Shiraishi, Karen Miyazaki, Yasufumi Hayashi, Tamao Sato Ryuichi Ohura, Takaaki Enoki, Yumi Takigawa, Katsuhiko Watabiki

Sadatora Ogata (Matsu) left his hometown to become an action star but failed spectacularly and ended up being a marriage swindler. Unemployed and fleeing creditors he returns and tries to hook up with his first love, a high school teacher named Izumi (Shiraishi) but when he enrols at high school he meets a girl named Miwa (Miyazaki) who claims to be his daughter…

Website

Persona 3 The Movie #1 Spring of Birth  

Japanese:　ペルソナ3

Romaji: Perusona 3

Running Time: 91 mins.

Release Date: November 23^rd, 2013

Director: Noriaki Akitaya

Writer: Jun Kumagai (Screenplay)

Starring: Akira Ishida (Makoto Yuki), Megumi Toyoguchi (Yukari Takeba), Kousuke Toriumi (Junpei Iori), Rie Tanaka (Mitsuru Kirijo), Hikaru Midorikawa (Akihiko Sanada), Mamiko Noto (Fuka Yamagishi), Isamu Tanonaka (Igor), Miyuki Sawashiro (Elisabeth)

I’m a fan of the Persona 3 (even though I haven’t completed the game… I’ll get to it next year!) but I’m a little weary of the anime adaptations. Persona 4 was fun but Devil Survivor left me cold and this… well it looks okay. I must admit that I have yet to play Persona 3 all the way through yet…

There is a hidden time known as the “Dark Hour” that exists between one day and the next when all movement in the town of Iwatodai stops and terrible creatures known as Shadows room. A group of students from Moonlight Hall School are drawn to fight these creatures and expore the mysterious tower of Tartarus with their special weapons called Evokers which they use to summon Persona.

Website

Bayonetta Bloody Fate                          

Japanese:　 ベヨネッタ ブラッディフェイト

Romaji: Beyonetta Buraddi Feito

Running Time: 89 mins.

Release Date: November 23^rd, 2013

Director: Fuminori Kizaki

Writer: Mitsutaka Hirota (Screenplay)

Starring: Atsuko Tanaka (Bayonetta), Daisuke Namikawa (Luka), Mie Sonozaki (Jeanne), Miyuki Sawashiro (Cereza), Norio Wakamoto (Balder), Tessho Genda (rodin), Wataru Takagi (Enzo)

Wow, two anime adaptations of video games and wow, another game I have not completed. Not only have I not completed the video game Persona 3 but  have not completed Bayonetta which lies unopened in a box. Anyway the story is about a witch named Bayonetta (Tanaka) who is fighting angels.

Website

No Voice                             

Japanese: ノー・ヴォイス

Romaji: Nō Vu-oisu

Running Time: N/A

Release Date: November 23^rd, 2013

Director: Shun Furujin

Writer: Midori Sato, Shun Furujin (Screenplay),

Starring: Hidekazu Ichinose, Junko Okura, Aya Yoshioka

This is a drama/documentary which relays the facts behind discarded dogs by crafting a story of a young man who goes to work in an animal shelter after discovering an abandoned dog. The young man learns about the precious relationship that can develop between pet and owner and a narrator and interviews with foster parents and people who work at animal shelters helps to ground this.

Website

The War Doctor (John Hurt): “Hello”         

Doctor Who (David Tennant): “I’m the Doctor”

Doctor Who (Matt Smith): “Sorry about the Dalek”

Clara: “Also the showing off”

Spoilers (slight ones, at least)

I used to write about Doctor Who (and even the Sarah Jane Adventures) here when I first started this blog but stopped because there was little that grabbed my attention (okay there was the Van Gogh episode and last season’s one about the haunted manor) and I wanted to focus on films and anime. All that changed with last night’s episode celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Doctor Who. It is worth writing about because this episode was really well done.

This episode was meant to be big. The last episode of the last season ended on this stunning revelation:

News and trailers and one-off mini episodeswere steadily released by the BBC. David Tennant and Billie Piper were coming back. Ace actor JOHN HURT was going to play The War Doctor in the heart of the Time War. It was going to play in a cinema as a 3D feature.

This felt like a game-changer that would go to the heart of Doctor Who mythology and reset things. In a way it did bring all of these things together successfully and change the timeline of the show and set up the Christmas episode and the introduction of the 13^th Doctor.

The show was good, like one of the better episodes with enough darkness and action and a twisting timey-wimey plot.

It opened with an action-packed sequence full of spaceships and explosions as Daleks blew stuff up (all donewith decent CGI) and we see John Hurt in action before the show slinked back into the standard whimsical adventures featuring Matt Smith and Clara being called up by U.N.I.T. to halt an invasion of Earth from the past where David Tennant was cavorting with a sexy Elizabeth the First. Somehow the war in Gallifrey and the invasion of earth were all pulled together in a complex story that was fun and breezy but with plenty of depth.

It worked and was never confusing. Doctor Who is at its most interesting when the storylines include actual time travel. He is a time traveller so seeing the Doctor and his assistants think their way out of danger or entrapment or an awkward plot twist through clever manipulations of time and space is always intellectually engaging because some of the solutions can be inspired whether they utilise the Tardis or not.

It was fun seeing the Doctors gallivanting in present day London, London of the Elizabethan era, and Gallifrey in a complicated story made dark by allowing the viewers to see the Doctor’s crucial actions during the Time War. It packed full of emotional resonance that fans will salivate over. Furthermore the transitions between lightness and darkness were handled well thanks to the great acting off the Doctors.

The three actors at the heart of this episode worked well together. We had the gravitas of John Hurt playing off against the banter between the two younger (older in the storyline) Doctors. His world-weary and battle scarred Doctor playing the curmudgeonly adult to two silly boys who dread growing up and run away from the dark past he represents. The dramatic climax which the series kept alluding to was emotionally rewarding as the Doctor finally faced his demons.

As someone who grew up watching Doctor Who (mine was Sylvester McCoy) and the re-runs of older episodes featuring Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee I’m familiar with how inspired the aliens can be and how dark it can get and that’s the Doctor Who I love. The evil monsters like the Autons, Weeping Angel, Clockwork Droids and the original Silurians (not the new ones) and it was great to see the Zygons make a comeback, gooey shape-shifters from the school of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. These chaps are truly creepy to look at and their abilities made the plot that little bit trickier much like the Japanese film Ku_On. Nothing mind-boggling but it altered the structure of the story enough to make it even more interesting.

My one complaint is that I would have liked to have seen more of the old Doctors and the negotiations between humanity and the Zygons and their impact on The War Doctor rather than seeing them get dropped. That’s a minor gripe. I don’t expect or want the show to take itself too seriously and people who pick holes in the plot need to relax – this is aimed as much at kids as it is adults these days.

So overall I found it rather good.

I think I have mentioned on this blog and others when I’ve encountered Doctor Who filming around by my house/place of work. Parts of the 50^th episode were filmed where I work… Here’s some pictures of my workplace…

It doubled as the National Gallery down in London but the paintings – Joshua Reynolds! Gainsborough! Hogarth! – that chaise lounge (owned by Lord Clive of India) are objects I walk by nearly every day. See that corridor at the back – leads to the Impressionist collection. I was in work at the time it was filmed and I saw the extras and the crew but I didn’t meet Matt Smith or get to be a guest star – ;_; I guess I’m not awesome enough yet – or weird looking enough to be an alien (yay?). Still, I have my memories of almost meeting him when he first took the role!

My first Doctor was Sylvester McCoy and my first assistant was Ace who was played Sophie Aldred. Now that I look at the dates he was in the role I wonder if they were re-runs because I was very young when he took over…

Oh, and I saw a Tardis on a castle on my way to work today

Hello once again dear audience and welcome to the final Republic of Thieves read-along post where the curtain is brought down on Sabetha and Locke’s romance, the play in Espara and the election in Karthain. This week’s questions come from Tethyan Books and they have been split them into different timelines – Espara and Karthain – much like last week. Week one was all about getting to know the characters again while week two was all about revealing Sabetha, week three was all about Espara and now we get to the real meat of the story where the Sabetha and Locke match wits in the election and the theatre production is about to go on the road, week four was all about cock-blocking and we see the results of the election this week! I think we need some epic music for the conclusion of the book so play this track while reading my answers:

Here are the questions:

In Espara…

1. The Republic of Thieves:  It’s the first and final performance!  What did you think of the play?  Were you entertained, or eager to get on with the rest of the story?  Also, how do you feel about how the play fits in the novel, in terms of the story and the characters who play the parts?

I was hooked by the events in the Espara timeline and the twists and turns they took. It helped build characters up and was entertaining to read but when I look back at it I wish there was more time spent on the election plus I did notice some interesting aspects like the priest claiming that the characters from the play were real and are unquiet ghosts!

2. The Other Performance:  Of course, the GB and company had another important performance to get through—the one that ensures none of them end up hanged!  What was your favourite part of this scheme?  Do you agree with their plan for dealing with Moncraine’s treachery?

Last week I mentioned how the whole situation felt underwhelming, too neatly wrapped up. The henchmen were too easily fobbed off, the aristocracy too easily dodged and all thanks to Sabetha who showed some boobs. I was hoping for some more life and death stuff considering we are in the land where you lose a hand for punching a noble but then it wouldn’t have been half as funny as it turned out to be. I think all of these lessons helped the boys become better thieves. Sabetha didn’t need these lessons because she always guided the gang.

My favourite part of the scheme? The plan for dealing with Moncraine at the end! I always hated that guy and was genuinely surprised when he did what he did. Well he certainly won’t be able to go anywhere near Espara or Camorr and I suspect he may crop up in another book.

In Karthain…

3. The Election:  It seems Lovaris was indeed the final trick, and the election is over.  Are you satisfied with how things turned out? Do you wish that the election had focused more on the political problems of Karthain, or are you satisfied with the mudslinging and pranks that went on between Locke and Sabetha?

I think more time on the politics might have been interesting. That written it might have been boring. We’re all in this for the tricks that Sabetha and Locke play on each other. Seeing them display political acumen might have been interesting but nothing beats seeing Locke get stuck in a carriage full of angry snakes. The Lovaris scheme was a good one and one spotted by a few bloggers and it was nice to see a draw between Sabetha and Locke and Jean. Of course we’re leaving the city and it seems as if it will get knocked over by a rival state so seeing how the government reacts to the absence of the Bondsmagi would have been interesting.

4. The War: Do you have any speculation on what specific issues might have escalated the two Bondsmagi factions rivalry into this kind of violence?  What do you think the surviving Bondsmagi will do next, with all their gathered money and knowledge?

It’s all about the Eldren. The rivalry is based on forbidden knowledge that the exceptionalists desire and Patience wants to supress. The Bondsmagi will disappear like the Templar and crop up from time to time, orchestrating conspiracies or hiding away researching Eldren stuff, and I bet Locke will encounter quite a few.

Props to Coldmarrow for taking the exceptionalists with him!

5. Patience: Given the final revelation that Patience does hate Locke for what he did to the Falconer, what do you make of her behaviour towards Locke throughout the book?  Do you think her plan of vengeance is well suited to Locke?  What do you make of the Black Amaranth story now, as well as the prophecy she threw on top? 

Her behaviour calculated to hurt Locke. She needs to keep Locke on a leash, keep her faction happy in her treatment of their tools, and to make Locke think she is willing to work with him. She behaved in a sanguine manner enough for her to sneak past Locke’s incredulity and hostility to strike very deeply and hurt him. It totally floors Locke and it floored the readers of the book.

Her prophecies hint that Locke will develop connections – riches, people, power – and lose them all. Very tantalising stuff much like the things she told him about his past.

6. The Epilogue: Speaking of vengeance, do you think the Falconer’s vengeance against his mother was merited or excessively cruel, given the circumstances?  On that note, how do you feel about the Falconer’s transformation and possible status as a continuing villain?

We all knew the Falconer was a nutter but this took the cake because it was so extreme. Fitting but extreme. I think we have to see this in the context of the fact that his mother has always exercised some control over him, she knows his name and she has thwarted his ambitions since he was a child. Furthermore his mother had basically booby-trapped his mind so he would lose his powers. You can see why he might be mad. The fate Patience suffered was awful but totally in line with the Falconer’s evil acts especially when we see him as taking out his frustrations on her.

HOLY SMOKES! When I read the whole I immediately thought of the T-1000 from The Terminator. This guy seems way too unstoppable now and I don’t know how they can fight him unless Locke gets powers or hooks up with some strong Bondsmage.

7. Wrapping up:  Thus ends the third book in the Gentleman Bastard sequence.  How do you think it compares with the first two?  In the end, do you prefer the Espara storyline or the Karthain storyline, or did you like them both equally?

I started out interested in the book and Sabetha, I wanted to know more about Karthain and Espara, I liked the Karthain sections a lot because they contained interesting stuff about the Eldren. Overall I enjoyed reading the book and tore through it.

Here are the rest of the Lynch Mob:

Little Red Reviewer

Thethyan Books

Violin in a Void

Lynn’s Books

Massive Spoilers

It has been five days but I’m still trying to recover from episode seven of Samurai Flamenco. In the future, when humanity lives in their sky cities maintained by tsundere robotic maids, historians will look back at the greatest achievements of the post-modern age, this episode will be forever remembered for having the greatest WTF moment in the history of ANYTHING.

The moment was special.

The moment made me yell “OH MY GOD!”

It was the moment when anime said “f*ck you” to reality and I laughed so hard I almost choked on a cake!

It is a moment I remember when it is least appropriate and a big stupid grin spreads across my face and I so desperately want to whisper Guillotine Gorilla.

Come on those of you who have seen it… Whisper it… GUILLOTINE GORILLA…

Let me rewind back to before the episode.

I was so tempted to post about this anime after episode five because I’m totally in love with Samurai Flamenco as a slice-of-life show with lots of meta references to Japanese entertainment. Something for 20-somethings uncertain of their position in a world of cynicism, and indifference. Funny and good-natured and with characters I could identify with and want to be around.

From episode five we are introduced to the crazy media frenzy surrounding Samurai Flamenco and, more importantly, a female hero… or should that be a vigilante… named Flamenco Girl.

She is someone who grew up with mahou shoujo stereotypes and has crafted a frilly colourful costume and a huge magical wand which actually hides tasers and tear gas. The big reveal was that she was the idol Mari Maya. Her day job is singing and her new night job is busting evil’s ball’s. Literally.

Flamenco Girl actually seems to have deep-rooted problems with men as can be seen from her desire to save women from sexual assault and punish men with ultra-violence and repeated kicks to the balls which she does so with complete relish.

From http://spring-gloom.tumblr.com/

With her entrance the anime veers even further into black humour and darker territory. It goes from the absurdity of Masayoshi tackling minor crime to graduating to tackling real criminals in red-light districts… and then getting chased by a public eager to scoop the reward for revealing his identity. While seeing Samurai Flamenco dodge getting caught by the mobs with the help of military-grade stationary, my eyes were on Flamenco Girl and her bandmates who are roped into her lunacy.

I loved the way the anime cleverly drew comparisons with the duality of people/superheroes through Mari Maya and her career as an idol – like superheroes, idols have two identities and they have to go through intense physical and mental training, learn complex moves and master the art of putting on a show to create a public persona. As absurd as it sounds AKB48 could be a real life Justice League/Avengers if they spent their time training to break jaws and not sell records.

Flamenco Girl became the character that drew me in because she was so extreme it was funny. Off-hand comments and Mari’s increasingly brutal behaviour threw her super-heroics into a different realm from Samurai Flamenco. This is her blowing off steam and exercising much darker impulses, always fun to explore.

It’s also fun seeing Mari exercise her sexual powers.

From http://0ddj0bs.tumblr.com/

The anime didn’t go too far off the deep end because amidst all of the action and comedy the script continued to draw the line between civic duty and vigilantism, childish enthusiasm and reality, in funny and well-observed ways. such as the a journeyman-director of a super-sentai show bursts Masayoshi’s superhero fantasies by telling him that it’s just his job to churn out episodes, how every woman rescued by Flamenco Girl runs away in terror at the violence she metes out and the police having to deal with a potential PR crisis by creating a unit that just files paperwork and other make-work tasks to keep the citizens happy who are either irritated by the heroes or constantly mobbing Samurai Flamenco for the reward offered by the celebrity website High Rollers Hi.

So yeah, it was all ticking away nicely and by episode seven it had all of these elements, the meta-references, media frenzy, fun characters and the absurdity of the scenario, and it could have been sustained for the 22 episodes the show is running for.

Episode 7 seemed set to signal that the anime was set to transcend these things as characters. Crime is down, the police PR campaign is over and the cops are bored, the characters in the show have a moment to be introspective. By the midpoint of the episode the script introduced a revelation about Masayoshi’s background – his parents were murdered. It’s the superhero cliché but Masayoshi’s reaction is fascinating because he is apathetic about the news. He feels nothing because his memories are so tenuous and false. This casts him into an interesting bit of soul-searching about the meaning of justice.

He thinks about the murder of his parents but cannot do anything about it. It happened in a foreign country, too far in the past and the local police have forgotten about it. Worst of all, he feels no compulsion to bring justice in the case of the murder of his own parents! Talk about existential crisis! Can he be a superhero and deliver justice if he is as apathetic as everybody else?

It’s totally rooted in reality and quite bitter.  Goto offers friendly advice (those quiet conversations are just so expertly handled!), he prefers the Masayoshi who isn’t just a hero but a person beset with problems and uncertainty like everybody else.

Then we get to THAT sequence. Goto and Masayoshi take part in a police PR stunt “Chief For a Day” where Samurai Flamenco shows up at the beginning and end of a drug bust and gets his photograph taken by the media.

The police bust down the door and start arresting people. One perp gets away and grabs some pills and transforms into a GIANT ARMOURED GORILLA!

Not just any GIANT ARMOURED GORILLA but one with a GUILLOTINE IN ITS GUTS!

WTF?

Guillotine Gorilla.

The anime goes nuts as police start getting decapitated and thrown at walls and out of windows. Prior to this sequence, everything was firmly rooted in reality and there was never any violence like this. At this point I was stunned and couldn’t decide whether to like it or not and just yelled “OH MY GOD” and laughed.

I honestly expected the pills to be medicine for some condition and for the perp to die or something normal and present Masayoshi with more challenges to his ideas of justice on top of his own apathy. But no. A giant gorilla with a guillotine for a gut.

The only way Goto and Masayoshi get out of the situation is to blind the giant armoured gorilla by throwing a bag of cocaine into its eyes and push the thing out of the window where he lands on a police car.

Things aren’t over as the gorilla gets up yells “VIVA TORTURE” and self-destructs.

Then some floating chap appears and declares himself “King Torture, the source of all evil.” Masayoshi and Goto are stunned. I was stunned.

This came out of nowhere. It was a surprise. The sudden shift in the show from reality to fantasy was sudden. Prior to this slice-of-fantasy it was a well-established slice-of-life about dreams and reality, careers and private lives, the viability of superheroes in real life and the media furore surrounding them, friendship and duty. For about 19 minutes of episode seven it continued in this vein and then it suddenly veered into superhero and supernatural shenanigans and I’m desperate to see what the anime does next because it was such a sudden shift…

Was it a dream? I don’t think so.

It is the biggest and sharpest twist I have seen in an anime for a while. I can see how it might work and with the series having 22 episodes, all of the themes mentioned above be expanded upon alongside the crazy action. Still, I think I would have really loved a series based purely on normal people trying to live their dreams… Let’s put that aside for now and see the next episode when it’s released! Until then… Tenterhooks. Was this a dream? I need to know! Until then I’m like this…

This is a reaction post to episode 8 and it follows up yesterday’s post analysing my thoughts on the direction of the series because… Samurai Flamenco has truly gone off the map? I’m still trying to digest this episode but the whole King Torture and evil animal supervillains thing is being played with a straight face. I’m not sure I like it as much as I thought I would but I didn’t hate it.

Those cops really did get decapitated and it wasn’t a TV show? Yep. And there are funny-looking monsters showing up to do battle with Samurai Flamenco!

I’m not sure I like where this is going. As mentioned previously, I loved it as a slice-of-life but this episode continued with the fantasy elements. Dramatically it was the weakest episode of the series thus far although I did laugh quite a bit.

It’s still maintining certain themes and motifs like idol and media business and apathy as represented by the emergency government meetings starting off dramatic and responding to every threat until the ministers vote to shelve to a fortnightly thing because Samumenco and the Flamenco Girls are on top of crime.

I’m keeping further opinions on hold because this was only episode 8 of 22. The writer could be doing something interesting like Gatchaman Crowds… I want to see the next episode!

I’m splitting the trailer post up again and will continue doing this because it’s better to have shorter posts than huge ones with lots of videos and text. There are three Japanese films released today in Japan and more tomorrow. The big hulking beast is the latest SPEC movie so a lot of the other releases seem to be counter-programming. Don’t like the big-budget flashy SPEC films then you get documentaries, comedies, and anime.

The SPEC films are a phenomenon of their own. They are based on a television series which started with Keizoku back in 1999 and has had numerous television series and movie adaptations.  They look fun but my viewing habits are fragmented so I won’t be embarking on watching them.

I must admit that I have no idea what’s going on with the films at this point because there are so many of them!

SPEC: Close – Crisscross Version                                              

Japanese: 劇場版 SPEC 結（クローズ）　爻（コウ）ノ篇

Romaji: Gekijō-ban supekku yui (kurōzu) 爻 (Kō) no-hen

Running Time:  85 mins.

Release Date: November 29^th, 2013

Director: Yukihiko Tsutsumi

Writer: Yumie Nishiogi

Starring: Erika Toda, Ryo Kase, Raita Ryu, Kazuki Kitamura, Chiaki Kuriyama, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Yuko Oshima, Takahiro Miura, Kasumi Arimura,

This is the follow-up to last year’s SPEC: Heaven film and this year’s SPEC: Close – Progress Version film which featured a lot of the same cast, the same director and the same writer. This movie intends to reveal more secrets.

Detective Saya Toma (Erika Toda) has an IQ of 201 and works together with veteran detective Takeru Sebumi (Ryo Kase) in the Unsolved Crimes Unit taking on and cracking mysterious cases that others have given up on.

Website

Asa Hiru Ban                           

Japanese: あさひるばん

Romaji: Asa Hiru Ban

Running Time:  110 mins.

Release Date: November 29^th, 2013

Director: Juzo Yamasaki

Writer: Juzo Yamasaki

Starring: Jun Kunimura, Itsuji Itao, Mirei Kiritani, Keiko Saito, Koichi Yamadera, Yoichi Nukumizu, Akiko Hinagata,

Manga writer Juzo Yamasaki makes his debut as a film director at the age of 71 in this film starring Jun Kunimura (Vital, Why Don’t You Play in Hell?), Mirei Kiritani (Ace Attorney), Keiko Saito (Mitsuko Delivers), and Itsuji Itao (I’m Flash!, Be My Slave).

30 years ago, Asamoto (Kunimura), Hirukawa (Itao), and Bando (Yamadera) were ace baseball players known as “Asa Hiru Ban” and each was in love with their manager Sachiko (Saito) but it all went wrong when their team lost a game. Now they are middle-aged men leading their own lives but a letter from Sachiko’s daughter Yumiko (Kiritani) brings them together with news that she is sick!

Website

Story of a Butcher Shop                         

Japanese: ある　精肉店　の　はなし

Romaji: Aru Seiniku-ten no Hanashi

Running Time:  108 mins.

Release Date: November 29^th, 2013

Director: Aya Koketsu

Story of a Butcher Shop is a documentary set in a butcher shop in Osaka. This shop has been owned by the same family for generations and during the film we see it get passed down to a new generation.

Website

This week was a bit of a transitional period, wrapping up the Republic of Thieves read-along, sating my desire to write about Samurai Flamenco and getting my reactions before and after episodes 7 and 8, and posting about the latest Doctor Who 50^th Anniversary special. It’s all in preparation for a Christmas period when I up the ante and post lots of reviews for films. More on that next week. What did I watch in film terms? South Korean disaster flick Flu and that was it. I’m preparing the finishing touches to the latest winter anime guide which will be released by Anime UK News and my thoughts on the other titles from the autumn season.

Yesterday’s trailer post was about three films, all of which were totally different from each other but today’s post features lots of documentaries.

Flying Bodies – a Hiroyuki Nakano Nonfiction Film

Running Time: 78 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Hiroyuki Nakano

Bodies fly in coordination alongside some visual special effects as the all-male super-technological rhythmic gymnastic troupe of Aomori University led by Issey Miyake in a performance in Tokyo earlier this year. I’m not one for dancing but this looks kind of fun. You’ll have to go to the website for a trailer!

Website

Travelling Projector                            

Japanese Title: 旅　する　映写機

Romaji: Tabi Suru Eishaki

Running Time: 105 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Keiko Morita

Keiko Morita’s film is all about film projectors during a time when the digitisation of films is rapidly underway in Japan. Keiko heads to small town Urakawa, Hokkaido and explores the history of a cinema with the staff at the theatre who maintain it.

Website

Save the Club Noon                                  

Running Time: 93 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Moriro Miyamoto

Starring: Hanaregumi, Seiko Ito, ILL-BOSSTINO, Yoshie Nakano, Nanao Tabito,

Moriro Miyamoto, director of Uzumasa Jacopetti, is here with a documentary recording the efforts over four days of artists to save a club called NOON. We get interviews and performances.

Website

Ghost in the Shell: ARISE border:2 Ghost Whispers 

Japanese Title: 攻殻機動隊　ARISE border:2 Ghost Whispers

Romaji: Koukaku Kidoutai ARISE border:2 Ghost Whispers

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Running Time: 56 mins.

Chief Director:  Kazuchika Kise, Episode 2 Director: Atsushi Takeuchi

Writer: Tow Ubukata (Screenplay)

Starring: Maaya Sakamoto (Motoko Kusanagi), Kenichirou Matsuda (Batou), Tarusuke Shingaki (Togusa), Ikkyuu Nakai (Daisuke Aramaki)

The new adaptation of Shirow Masamune’s manga Ghost in the Shell continues. Character designs come courtesy of the series director Kazuchika Kise (Patlabor) and this episode is directed by Atsushi Takeuchi, a chap who has worked on the recent Captain Harlock film and Sky Crawlers. This is written by Tow Ubukata who has created fascinating works like Samurai Astronomer Tenchi, Mardock Scramble and Le Chevalier D’eon. Plus there is music by cool DJ Cornelius.

Website

Maria Roaring Song                      

Japanese: マリヤ　狂騒　曲

Romaji: Maria kyōsō kyoku

Running Time: 88 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Ido Kishu

Writer: Ryyta Kawasaki

Starring: Maki Mizui, Mutsuo Yoshioka,Yuko Hosoe, Naohiro Takeda, Atsushi Oda, Takuya Sakurai

Maki Mizui (Never Ending blue) and Mutsuo Yoshioka (There’s Nothing to be Afraid of) star in Ido Kishu’s latest film about a guy named Kohei (Yoshioka) who goes after the killer of his ex-girlfriend Futaba when her ghost shows up and asks for help. A mysterious girl named Maria (Mizui) helps him out. One of Kishu’s other films is called Lazarus

Website

Gebaruto                           

Japanese: ゲバルト

Romaji: Gebaruto

Running Time:  90 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Takayuki Yamaga

Writer: Takayuki Yamaga

Starring: Yuta Ozawa, Hidetoshi Kubota, Takashi Nagayama, Ren Ozawa, Maria Yoshikawa, Arihara Kanna

F*ck you desk! According to this trailer, being a male high school student is all about fixating on sex, formation dancing, violence and a cute idol (Arihara Kanna of the group C-ute) blasting you with a laser gun! That wasn’t my experience but this is the live-action adaptation of a manga called Yankee Kouno Kouji persuades me that it must be fun. The manga remains untranslated in the west.

Website

Kotatsu, Orange, Murderous Intent and Meow           

Japanese Title: こたつと、みかんと、殺意と、ニャー。

Romaji: Kotatsu to Mikan to, Satsui to, Nya

Running Time: 60 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Ryutaro Kajino

Writer: Ryutaro Kajino (Screenplay)

Starring:  Yui Minami, Ran Sakai, Noriko Kijima

I’m going to use the word lesbian in every sentence… Deep breath. Here I go! This is the sequel to a lesbian drama released back in March and like the last this stars gravure idols fondling and kissing each other only this one has more murder and less fondling. These films are directed by Ryutari Kajino who has made one other major film called Sea Food Girl Maiko which was another lesbian drama! Again, a relatively unknown cast acting out male fantasies of lesbians is led by the more experienced Noriko Kijima who has appeared in Yuriko’s Aroma, The Machine Girl and Shyness Machine Girl. Blue is the Warmest Colour this ain’t but it has lesbians. As much as I like looking at beautiful women this doesn’t interest me much at all… er… lesbians.

Website

Cinema Kabuki Harukyon Mirror Lion      

Japanese: シネマ歌舞伎　春興鏡獅子

Romaji: Shinema kabuki Shunkyōkagamijishi

Running Time:  70 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: N/A

Writer: N/A

Starring: Kanzaburo Nakamura,

The Cinema Kabuki series continues with this tale of the Mirror Lion which is apparently a famous dance.

Website

Senpuku                              

Japanese: 潜伏

Romaji: Senpuku

Running Time:  96 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Nobuhiko Hosaka

Writer: Yuko Watanabe, Michiko Oishi,

Starring: Takako Tsuchiya, Takeshi Nadagi, Mayuko, Masumi Amakawa, Yumi Fukuda, Ako, Kanichi Hiraga, Yuya Miyashita, Rika Satsuki

This is drama based on a true story about a woman who was once in a cult that took part in an ‘incident’ (not described) but escaped and flees her past life and now experiences latent emotions blossoming. Nobuhiko Hosaka has been directing films for quite a while but this is his first internationally recognised credit since 1986!

Website

Tobidase Shinsengumi             

Japanese: とびだせ新選組！

Romaji: Tobidase Shinsengumi

Running Time: 83 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Sho Nobushi

Writer: Sho Nobushi

Starring: Risa Aragaki, Toshiya Nagasawa, Atsushi Miyauchi, Ryuji Shomi, Tomohiro Arakawa, Sasaki Minami

Risa Aragaki stars as an actress who is taking part in a historical play about the Shinsengumi (the Shogun’s secret police) only for a group of those dudes to appear from 149 years ago and make friends with her. Awesome.

Website

Negative: Nothing – Step by Step for Japan

Japanese: ネガティブ：ナッシング　全てはその一歩から

Romaji: Negatibu: Nasshingu Subete wa Sono Ichi-po Kara

Running Time: 78 mins.

Release Date: November 30^th, 2013

Director: Jan Knuesel, Stephan Knuesel

Writer: Jan Knuesel, Stephan Knuesel

Starring: Thomas Koehler, Andre Zimmermann, Hiroshi Mizohata, Kohei Isohata

Technically a Swiss film starring a Swiss man but it takes place in Japan and the man in question loves the country. The youtube page describes it thusly: March 11th marks a turning point in the life of Swiss travel agent Thomas Köhler. After the Tsunami and the nuclear disaster in Japan he loses all his customers, and eventually his job. Nevertheless, giving up is not an option. He decides to walk through Japan, 2900 kilometers from north to south, in order to show that not all of Japan is Fukushima. A trip of a lifetime starts through a country trying to cope with its biggest crisis since the end of World War II, but never losing hope for better days. The documentary film «negative: nothing» is a journey that changes the life of a travel agent forever and gives hope and strength to a nation. Even the longest journey starts with a single step

Website

This is my annual Christmas season post but I should be honest and call it the catch-up season. Last year I was able to watch lots of Korean horror films  but this year I will be posting lots of reviews from the film festivals I attended back in October. Due to the autumn anime schedule and changes in my work schedules I pretty much ran out of time and into chaos when scheduling posts. So there will be reviews for Sake-Bomb, Our Shunhi, Gravity, You’re Next,  Insidious 2, The Conjuring, Rurouni Kenshin, Flu, The Ravine of Goodbye, Shady, Remiges, Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, Galileo Donna, Beyond the Boundary. Gosh. There will also be director interviews which I got from the Raindance Film Festival.

Just like the last two years I will also be posting my best film, game, and anime of the year which is the best way to let you know that I have finally put together a Top Ten Anime of the Year page where I have linked reviews, first impressions and final thoughts to every series and film and TV anime I have seen this year. I will also be posting my Winter Anime Guide 2014.

Something new for this year is my post for films I wish I had seen (like some of this selection) and a gallery of all the film posters for films released in 2013. I do try and get the information for every Japanese film released in Japan every weekend and while my translations are occasionally… mostly awful, I’m pretty certain that I have covered most.

Also, I hope everyone is excited about 47 Ronin! I know I am!

Log Horizon   

Director: Shinji Ishihara, Series Composition: Toshizo Nemoto, Original Creator: Mamare Touno, Character Designer/Chief Animation Director: Mariko Ito, Art Director: Yuki Nomura, Story: Syouji Masuda

Voice Actors: Takuma Terashima (Shiroe), Tomoaki Maeno (Naotsugu), Emiri Kato (Akatsuki), Jouji Nakata (Nyanta), Minami Takahashi (Asuka), Nao Tamura (Minori)

Studio: Satelight

Synopsis

The fantasy MMORPG Elder Tale is a hugely popular slice of entertainment but when 30,000 Japanese gamers and countless thousands around the world find themselves trapped in the fantasy world it becomes a very real slice of life complete with all of the dangers, mobs and grinding. Shiroe is one of the gamers trying to survive alongside his friend Naotsugu, a beautiful assassin named Akatsuki and Nyanta, a mysterious player who looks like a cat.

While Kyousogiga and Samurai Flamenco continue to keep me enthralled I dropped this so I could focus on other titles as I wade through my other Autumn selections.

Log Horizon was one of the autumn season anime I was willing to give three episodes to impress me. I love JRPG’s and I had just completed Etrian Odyssey on the Nintendo DS so I was ready for an anime which used the genre to good effect but the overall experience was lacking for me.

Five episodes in and the best I could say was that I didn’t hate Log Horizon. The obvious thing is to point out how the concept of the show is similar to Sword Art Online with the idea of characters being trapped in an online MMORPG and engaging in a game of survival.

I watched Sword Art Online for a while before dropping it but Log Horizon seemed like a good bet because it differentiated itself and scored big points with me by being less ponderous and by being very JRPG literate and I wanted something that would remind me of Etrian Odyssey and the cast of kawaii characters I grew attached to over the course of many hours directing in that horrible labyrinth.

The proliferation of on-screen text and GUI’s is pretty accurate and, if we’re honest, easy to get right just as much as the absurdly innocuous enemies faced in these games – levelling up by beating rats and slimes etc.

Anybody who has played Etrian Odyssey will have tales of being murdered by a seemingly cute but incredibly violent and deadly pack of rabid squirrels or rolled over by a devilish-looking mole at the beginning of the game never mind towards the end when things start getting really tense and you break into a nervous sweat and start shaking as you’re chased down crystalline tunnels with some psychotic Succubus or the Teralich breathing down your neck.

What really hooked me about Log Horizon was its visual setting. The art animation and characters were simply great looking.

Character designer Mariko Ito and art director Yuki Nomura pretty much nail the visual aspect of the show perfectly. It’s very well animated and the setting is an evocative alternative fantasy world which would pass muster with the many RPGS.

Having come off the back of Etrian Odyssey I loved the monsters and some of the fights did look good unfortunately the writing was, for me at least, pretty dull.

The setting and characters were hurriedly introduced with little effort to build or shine a light on potential overarching narrative to keep me interested.

The characters didn’t make much of an impression beyond being archetypes. Shiroe is very intelligent, a great strategist and his brain is a weapon and he provides the info-dumps and explains plot points.

Akatsuki is deadly and CUTE and can be the waifu to draw the otaku audience in.

Naotsugu is a tank, a brawny ecchi character who provides the comedy.

Nothing offbeat or original to keep me watching, all totally familiar. Again, nothing wrong with that but it didn’t hold my interest especially as the adventures seemed so small-scale and lack any urgency.

Being stuck online in an MMO should be a earth-shattering thing but there was little mention of how or why people were trapped in the game and what happened to people’s physical bodies outside of it, how the authorities were dealing with the issue of people being stuck online. It turns out dying in game can lead to re-spawning so all of the tension dropped out of the show. At least Sword Art Online did tackle these ideas and the fact that people dying in game died in the real world. Furthermore there seemed like goals were established in the first episode while this Log Horizon meanders around.

Five episodes and the biggest problem the characters faced were player-killers who stalked lower level players and food which tasted really bland. A rescue mission was launched to save a moe maid girl who was being bullied by some overpowered character and that was it.

The world and the battles may have looked good but in the effort to show faithfulness to MMO’s the execution and the dialogue characters babbled made me feel like I was watching a “let’s play Etrian Odyssey video” on YouTube without amusing commentary or the tension of playing through the nightmarish levels.

Shiroe would calmly talk at his enemies and the audience as he narrated every encounter and battle explaining the moves and how tactics and classes, how buffs and debuffs, passive skills and all that technical stuff worked. If you’re playing the game then that stuff is fascinating but watching anime is a passive experience. Sure it adds depth and for anyone interested in the mechanics of videogames or totally unaware of how things operate it must be reassuring to hear long-winded explanation but it’s not the most exciting thing to watch or listen to as characters talked at each other. It didn’t add anything like a personality to the world or the characters.

At 25 episodes I’m totally open to the idea that this is world-building and things will improve later on and the anime’s potential has yet to be revealed but despite this promise I cannot justify spending 25 minutes a week watching this when I don’t feel a thing for what is going on unlike Samurai Flamenco and Kyousogiga which always, always get a reaction from me. Yes the world was inventive, beautiful and engaging but the writing and characters weren’t. I have a lot of films, anime and doramas to watch.

Sake-Bomb                                                                           

Seen as part of the Raindance Film Festival     

Running Time: 91 mins.

Director: Junya Sakino

Writer: Jeff Mizushima (Screenplay),

Starring: Gaku Hamada. Eugene Kim, Marlane Barnes, Josh Brodis, Samatha Quan, Hiroyuki Watanabe

A Sake-Bomb is a type of drink created when a cup of sake is balanced on chopsticks on a glass of beer. When the table is hit the chopsticks move and the sake falls into the beer and the beer is then drunk in one go. Effectively this is a mixing of East and West (through alcohol) which is what this film hopes to achieve in what is almost a refreshingly new take on a comedy staple the road-trip movie.

Naoto (Hamada) is an unassuming looking chap who works at a brewery in a rural part of Japan. Because his soon-to-retire boss (Denden) considers him the best employee at the brewery Naoto finds himself named as the successor for the business. Before that can happen his boss tells him to take a week off and do something he has always wanted to do so he can settle down and devote his life to brewing alcohol. With this advice in mind Naoto heads to America to track down a former girlfriend who taught him English before disappearing without a trace.

Naoto arrives in LA and heads to his uncle’s (Watanabe) house where he meets his cousin Sebastian (Kim) who has recently been dumped by his girlfriend for various reasons including the fact he is an unemployed porn obsessed loser and something of a self-loathing internet troll who uploads videos attacking American stereotypes of Asians. Sebastian’s father takes Naoto’s quest to meet his ex-girlfriend seriously and, sensing the need for Sebastian to get in touch with his Asian roots and refresh his life, suggests Sebastian travels with Naoto as a guide around California.

The set-up of Sake-Bomb is the typical road-movie where two different guys hit the highways and by-ways of California to get to a specific destination but the journey changes them. This is nothing new. What makes this different are the characters involved and their cultural backgrounds.

Western comedies featuring Asians are not exactly prolific and there are even fewer which use cultural relations and misunderstandings between Americans, Asian-Americans and Japanese as material so this feature does carry some interest for people wanting to see a culture-clash comedy from a different perspective.

The film comes from Junya Sakino, a Japanese director who lived in America for some time, and writer Jeff Mizushima, a Japanese-American. Their cultural backgrounds mean that they are able to effectively succeed in providing some insightful moments that effectively skewer social media trends and common stereotypes from white guys looking for exotic Asian women to cosplayers bubbling with excitement over meeting Naoto (a real Japanese person!!!) and an ignorant sheriff who confuses Japanese and Chinese stereotypes and boils everything down to oriental massages.

Other than the focus on East Asian culture and the use of social media the film is pretty formulaic as the boys get involved in different situations on their way to see Naoto’s ex-girlfriend. For a road-trip movie to really work we need characters to care about and this is where the film hits a bumpy patch.

The problems come from Sebastian, a character given to vitriolic rants of such force that whatever interesting thoughts he does have are lost in a sea of aggression and self-hatred.

The film gives him space to sound-off on Asian stereotypes like submissive women and Asians being bad at sports as he records his monologues for videos he posts on the internet. During these moments, shot direct-to-camera, we witness him work himself into a lather telling us things we already know and in a way so offensive and ham-fisted it would most likely get him banned from most video streaming sites and lots of negative comments.

At first I felt like he could be a character moulded on the younger and angrier Eddie Murphy of the 80’s, a comedian using vituperative to smash racial and sexual stereotypes and smuggle in sharp, intelligent and funny commentary on race-relations but the script never quite reached that level in terms of the way Sebastien acts and develops. This could have been problematic, a real turn-off, but Eugene Kim is charismatic enough to prevent him from turning into a disaster and he does get some redemption towards the end.

Perhaps the most incisive comedy and commentary comes not from the social commentator but the social outsider, Gaku Hamada’s character Naoto. He is essential in balancing out the negativity of Sebastian and the situations he gets into exposes the difference between fantasies westerners have of exotic Asians and the realities. As mentioned in other film reviews the chap radiates an innocence and good-nature so he is utilised as the light to Sebastian’s darkness, the civilising influence who is meant to bring Sebastian back from the depths of hatred but the more interesting moments in the film were when he was confronted by strange westerners and their adoration for Japanese stereotypes. Despite my antipathy for Hamada, he does a good job adding a bit of much-needed sweetness to the film. To be honest, more of him would have been welcome because he delivers great performances in the key dramatic moments.

Unfortunately I did not quite buy the relationship dynamics between Naoto and Sebastien because the latter was almost relentlessly unpleasant it almost derailed the film. Watch the road-trip movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Both Steve Martin and John Candy are playing characters are both a little over the top in terms of their odd-behaviour respectively but the audience can still identify with and like them because whatever their quirks, they are evenly balanced with lightness and humanity. Here’s another suggestion, watch The Drudgery Train and see how to write an unpleasant but sympathetic character who the audience can root for.

Overall the film is well-shot and with some moments of fun and things to say. Junya Sakino manages to make everything look good and some of the central cast, Gaku Hamada in particular, do charm.

3/5

While I was at the Raindance Independent Film Festival 2013 I got the chance to interview two directors. The first one I interviewed was Junya Sakino, director of Sake-Bomb which I reviewed yesterday. Here’s the trailer:

With the help of Israel from Korea Affinity I got a ten-minute interview recorded on camera but decided to type the interview out. This was the first time I had conducted an interview with a director but Junya was a gracious interviewee and Israel gave me excellent support an advice. Thanks go out to Adam Torel of Third Window Film for arranging the interview and Junya for being a really great guy. Here’s the interview:

Genki Jason: My name’s Jason, also known as Genkinahito and I’m here with Junya, director of Sake-Bomb, thank you for agreeing to do this video.

Junya Sakino: Thank you for inviting me.

GJ: So Sake-Bomb, where did you get the idea from because I have seen very few films that deal with the clash between the experiences of Asians and Asian-Americans.

JS: When I was a long way from Japan and I moved to the States to live alone, one day I went into a sushi restaurant and there I witnessed people mixing sake and beer and having a great time. I was puzzled about this. I think I know Japanese culture but I had never seen something like that before so I thought they were some really disgusting foreigners [laughs] but it was also interesting to see a new Japanese culture being born in the States and I thought this could be a great concept for a film. I thought about it some more and it became an Asian West meets Asian East story and that’s how Sake-Bomb came about.

GJ: You don’t really see films about the Asian-American experience on screen.

JS: We tried to put all of these counter-stereotype characters in there.

GJ: The film is quite funny but I found the protagonist Sebastian is very hard to like because of his anger. Where did his anger come from?

JS: His anger comes from everything. He hates being Asian and he hates anything he deals with in life so we see a mix of constant feelings he’s had since he has grown up.

GJ: How did you find the actor for Sebastian?

JS: We had an open audition and a lot of actors came to me but we were very lucky to have Eugene Kim, the first time he came he nailed it and we had a couple of auditions after that.

GJ: He’s very charismatic so even though he’s angry he’s still funny.

JS: That was the thing. I tried to keep the balance between an unlikeable character who is funny and makes sense. People don’t usually say these things but he does which is what makes his character so interesting.

GJ: Gaku Hamada is a famous actor in Japan and I tend to associate him with innocence. Did you need him to counterbalance Sebastian.

JS: Absolutely. If you have a really obnoxious angry character you’ve got to have a nice sweet character. That was the whole point of having the balance between these two characters and cultures.

GJ: How did you get him involved in the project.

JS: I didn’t know about Gaku Hamada until my producer told me and I watched a couple of his films so I asked my producer if there was any way of talking to him so we got the script translated into Japanese and sent it to his agency and he read the script and liked it. Last winter we had a Skype meeting and we had an exchange where we talked about the characters and he agreed to do it.

GJ: It must have been a major development to get Gaku Hamada on board.

JS: Yeah, absolutely.

GJ: I also noticed you had Denden.

JS: Yeah, yeah, yeah [laughs]

GJ: How did he get involved?

JS: I’m a fan of Cold Fish, it’s a great film and I wanted to work with him. When we were shooting the scene in Japan we didn’t know whether he was going to be able to make it or not but he was available that day and he was there for five hours.

GJ: He still makes an impression.

JS: Oh yeah, he does because it’s a funny scene.

GJ: And the American actors, did you go through auditions?

JS: We had a casting director and we had a series of auditions and a lot of people came to read but we managed to get the cast.

GJ: You mention that you had moved to America early in your life so were your experiences reflected in the script particularly through Gaku Hamada’s character?

JS: Let’s just say that I moved to the states and Jeff Mizushima, our co-writer is Japanese-American so we collaborated our ideas so the characters can be seen as part of us.

GJ: It’s a movie about a culture clash so how do different audiences react to it? How does a Japanese audience and western

JS: I haven’t released the film in Japan yet. I’ve been going around the festival circuit right now and the response has been pretty amazing. It’s not just about the comedy, it’s also a social commentary and I have been enjoying the responses.

The first trailer post for December is a continuation of my breaking the weekend releases into two posts because there are usually a lot of releases for readers to wade through. I would normally chuck every trailer into a single post and hope that the big titles draw visitors in and they take note of some of the documentaries and smaller, more obscure projects. Perhaps I’ll start highlighting the more interesting films from the weekend on the Friday and the rest on the Saturday or maybe vice versa. Just like previous weeks my translations remain sketchy. Fortunately info on these releases was easy to find and I have provided website links. Enjoy.

Ask This of Rikyu                              

Japanese: 利休　に　たずねよ

Romaji: Rikyuu ni Tazuneyo

Running Time: 123 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Mitsutoshi Tanaka

Writer: Kenichi Yamamoto (Novel)

Starring: Ebizo Ichikawa, Nao Omori, Miki Nakatani, Yusuke Iseya, Riko Narumi, Danjuro Ichikawa, Clara, Seiji Fukushi, Tomoka Kurotani, Rei Dan, Akira Emoto

Ask This of Rikyu is a historical drama set in the 16^th Century and is about a man named Sen no Rikyu (Ichikawa) who grew from being the son of a fish shop owner to a master of the Japanese tea ceremony thanks to his studies. He comes to the attention of the most powerful man of the period, Hideyoshi Toyotomi who, due to circumstances, asks him to commit seppuku.

Website

A Girl in the Apple Farm                              

Japanese: りんご　のうか　の　少女

Romaji: Ringo Nouka no Shoujo

Running Time: 42 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Satoko Yokohama

Writer: Satoko Yokohama

Starring: Toki, Masatoshi Nagase, Youki Kudoh, Kazuya Nagasawa, Gareth Burns,

Satoko Yokohama is a female director who I am unfamiliar with. She first came to my notice due to her inclusion in this year’s Raindance Film Festival and when her film Ultra Miracle Love Story was featured in a trailer weekly by Alua. This short is her latest title and it looks to be a quirky title about a 14-year-old named Rinko (Toki) who lives on the family apple farm but decides to run away.

Website

Passion                     

Japanese: 受難

Romaji: Junan

Running Time: 95 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Ryoko Yoshida

Writer: Ryoko Yoshida (Screenplay), Kaoruko Himeno (Novel)

Starring: Mayuko Iwasa, Yasushi Fuchikami, Kumiko Ito, Kanji Furutachi

As far as weird concepts go I have read and seen weirder but this one still gave my stomach a little flutter. It all centres on Francesca (Iwasa) a woman who grew up in a monastery and now lives life as an extremely lonely woman curious about sex and relationships between men and women. One day she notices a bump in her genital area that resembles a human face… Looks kind of fun… FRANCESCAAAAAAA

Website

Lupin the Third vs. Detective Conan the Movie         

Japanese: ルパン　三世　vs 名探偵　コナン The Movie

Romaji: Rupan Sansei Vasasu Meitantei Konan

Running Time: 110 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Mitsutoshi Tanaka

Writer: Kenichi Yamamoto (Novel)

Starring: Kanichi Kurita (Arsene Lupins III), Minami Takayama (Conan Edogawa) Daisuke Namikawa (Goemon Ishikawa), Kiyoshi Kobayashi (Daisuke Jigen), Megumi Hayashibara (Ai Haibara), Natsuna Watanabe (Claudia)

LUPIN IS BAAAAACK!!! And as funky as ever. The two most important figures in (anime/manga) crime meet! Lupin tries to outfox Inspector Zenigata and Inspector Megure to steal the Cherry Sapphire. There’s one hitch in his plan. He’ll meet Conan Edogawa! Edogawa learns that Jigen, Lupin’s loyal friend, has slipped into the entourage of the popular idol Emilio who will be attending a live event connected to the Cherry Sapphire!

Website

I spent this week getting the Genki Christmas season reviews underway in the build-up to my films and anime of the year! First I actually had to make the announcement of my Genki Christmas season before starting with a first-impression and dismissal of the anime Log Horizon. I followed that up with a review for Sake-Bomb on Wednesday and an interview with the director on Thursday and the first of the trailer posts (two posts a week from now on) on Friday. I also finished my Winter 2014 Anime preview for Anime UK News so that’s live (visit there to see more) and I’ll follow it up with a post about my picks from the next season some time during next week. I’ll also post info for Gigan magazine tomorrow. Gigan covers Japanese indie-films so you can find out more about it there!

Also here’s a link to a review of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest film The Seventh Code. I haven’t mentioned it yet but it has started winning awards at film festivals around the world! Kurosawa comes back from the supposed debacle that was Real!

The trailers start off pretty steamy so turn the volume down and the screen away from those pretty easily offended.

1BR Love Hotel                           

Japanese: 1BR-らぶほてる

Romaji: 1BR- Rabu Hoteru

Running Time: 76 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Hiroshi Onishi

Writer: Asako Fukai

Starring: Yuka Yamagishi, Fumio Moriya,

This is a drama about a man and woman who spend time in a love hotel and have fun. The trailer is NSFW.

Website

Chai Koi                                  

Japanese: チャイ　コイ

Romaji: Chai Koi

Running Time: 97 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Hidehiro Ito

Writer: Shimako Iwai (Novel), Mukku Akazawa (Screenplay)

Starring: Naomi Kawashima, Kisuke Iida, Shiori Kitagawa

Maiko is a lonely novelist in Bangkok who runs into a Muay Thai boxer named Ha Neul and the two drown in their desires.

Website

Polar Circle Consisting Unknown Cartoonist Omnibus    

Japanese: ポーラーサークル　未知なる漫画家オムニバス

Romaji: Chai Koi

Running Time: 104 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Masuno Koichi, TimeRyosuke, Kōichi Masuno,

Writer: N/A

Starring: Junko Sawa, Reina Aoi, Kazuki Takahashi, Shiori Inoue, Chie Nomura, Sana Hattori, Kotono Matsui

Gender wars, dislike of kissing and alien invasions abound in this low-budget omnibus film. My translations are off so be careful. I’ll have to work with someone better at translating than I am.

Website

Kissing                             

Japanese: キスして。

Romaji: Kisu shite

Running Time: 66 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Hataru

Writer: Hataru

Starring: Hataru, Takeshi Ito, Koichi Imaizumi, Kenji Uchikura

The director HAtaru wants to create a beautiful film that highlights the landsapes of the minds of his characters. A woman marries an older husband at the age of 20 but desires to get away from her daily reality and start a new life with a new lover but the figures of her father and the older man cast long shadows…

Website

Fallujah Iraq War Japanese Hostage Crisis… and then  

Japanese: ファルージャ　イラク戦争　日本人人質事件…そして

Romaji: Farūja Iraku Sensō Nihonjin Hitojichi Jiken… Soshite

Running Time: 95 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Megumi Ito

Writer: N/A

Starring: Naoko Ito, Noriaki Imai

In 2004 while the conflict in Iraq was underway, three Japanese aid workers were kidnapped in Fallujah. This formed the basis of the film Bashing (2005) directed by Masahiro Kobayashi. This documentary takes a look at the incident and the post-traumatic stress suffered by those involved and social consequences they faced when they returned home to Japan and were bashed by the media for being thoughtless.

Website

The next four films come from the same producers who unite new actors with experienced directors and the trailers are the same because they contain clips of each film.

008

Japanese: 008

Romaji: 008

Running Time: 36 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Yasunobu Takahashi

Writer: Yasunobu Takahashi

Starring: Haruki Takano Gen Ogawa, Yui Okamoto, Kiichi Sonbe, Akira Kurekawa, Maki Daimon, Satoru Shinjo, Isamu Kurihashi

Two men and a girl encounter a ‘ target’ for an experiment on animals in the deep woods. They are hired as part-time workers with mobile sensors to find the animal case which was set free in the nature. The job was supposed to be easy with good money, that is those three’s only motivation. But the sensors they hold react to not animals, but a human being, a man lying on the ground without consciousness. As they bring him to a cabin to treat him, he wakes up and tells them to cut his left arm…

Website

Tokyo Bitch, I Love You

Japanese: トーキョービッチ，アイラブユー

Romaji: Tōkyō Bitchi, Airabuyū

Running Time: 70 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Kohki Yoshida

Writer: Kohki Yoshida

Starring: Yoshio Kojima, Koichi Ito, Kenji Takemoto, Haruki Takano, Shun Sugata, Yuko Kageyama

A film based on a play of the same title performed by theatre unit Austra Macondo. Setting CHIKAMATSU Monzaemon’s Bunraku narrative “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki” in modern-day Tokyo, it tells the story of a sex worker’s fleeting romance.

Website

Nice!

Japanese: いいね!

Romaji: Iine!

Running Time: 17 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Daisuke Yamaoka

Writer: Daisuke Yamaoka

Starring: Kaori Masui, Ryota Horiuchi,

This short is about a woman who finds a man living in a gap between a building after she tries to obtain a picture of a cat… I think. Anyway she takes a picture of the guy and he becomes a celebrity.

Website

In the Basket

Japanese: 籠の中

Romaji: Kago no Naka

Running Time: 35 mins.

Release Date: December 07^th, 2013

Director: Izuki Hajime

Writer: Izuki Hajime

Starring: Ryo Sato, Ayaka Matsumoto, Abe Ayano, Asako Ota,

Eimi lives alone in Tokyo but is reunited with Tatsuya and the two begin a physical relationship but cracks start to appear between them.

Website

I’ve briefly mentioned that I write for Gigan magazine in previous posts but neglected to tell you guys just what it is.

Gigan magazine is named after a monster that fought Godzilla. The magazine is dedicated to promoting the latest Japanese films and providing information on film festivals and releases. Rent-a-Neko, Like Father, Like Son, The Kirishima Thing, Friendship, and Remiges are some of the titles we have covered as well as bringing a focus on the Japanese films screened at different types of film festivals like the recent Raindance Independent Film Festival. What makes this magazine unique is that it has a focus on Japanese films, particularly indie ones, and it is available in English. This focus is not seen in other English-language magazines and websites. Furthermore the content is the most up to date information available. Due to some of the staff ,who are based in Japan and work in the Japanese film industry, the magazine can give accurate and detailed information on some of the education and business institutions in Japan who create films and filmmakers, the personalities making films, emerging trends and so on.

Kanagawa University of Fine Arts, Office of Film Research, ©Tokyo University of the Arts

The magazine is available in a digital format (PDF) through payhip for the sum of $1.00. The magazine is also available in a physical format in London and Tokyo (at the Monocle Magazine’s cafe). The first issue is already on sale online. The first issue premièred at the Raindance Film Festival and that seemed to go down well with the readers I talked to (apart from reviews of Shady and The Kirishima Thing which were wrong! – I’ll be honest about this because those two films are two of the best I have seen this year). So far our online presence extends to Tumblr, Twitter which our editor is constantly updating. We also have a webpage still under construction but with the second issue due out soon I’m sure these things will improve not least because our hard working editor has managed to get quite a few scoops and connections.

The Kirishima Thing by Daihachi Yoshida © 2012 “Kirishima” Film Club © Ryo Asai / SHUEISHA

Anyway the next issue will focus on the films of Hirokazu Koreeda.

My Winter 2014 season preview is up and running on Anime UK News and while writing it I noticed that the number of shows was up on previous years and that among them are a nice selection of titles that range from the familiar trend of light novel/manga adaptations and sequels to some interesting looking original series. I used the chart on the right (which I got from here) as a basis and went researching for a day. Anyway I culled the best shows from that list to put in here.

The winter may be coming and yet I still haven’t finished the autumn anime selection (there are about three weeks left) but I can say that I love this autumn’s shows and will continue to watch Samurai Flamenco. Indeed I wrote this while listening to the OP for Galilei Donna over and over.

Anyway, back to the winter selection. I’m pretty excited about Space Dandy which sees the return of Shinichiro (Cowboy Bebop) Watanabe to the television with a funky looking space adventure. Just watching the trailer gets me grooving. I’m also pretty hyped over finally getting to see Pupa after it was delayed due to battles with censors over its violent content. There are two anime playing with the historical figure Nobunaga and both shows look like fun especially the one from Shoji Kawamori. Enough rambling, here are my picks!

DEFINITE PICKS:

Space Dandy       

Chief Director: Shinichiro Watanabe, Shingo Natsume (Director:), Dai Sato, Keiko Nobumoto, Kimiko Ueno (Scripts:), Yoshiyuki Ito (Character Designer

Voice Actors: Junichi Suwabe (Dandy:), Uki Satake (QT:), Hiroyuki Yoshino (Meow:), Maasaki Yajima (Narrator:),

Studio: Bones

Synopsis

Dandy is an alien-hunter tasked with finding new species of aliens that have never been seen before. With the aid of a defective robot named QT and a talking alien cat named Meow, he journeys to different planets when not going to “Boobies,” a restaurant full of voluptuous waitresses.

Quite frankly this is the big release for the season for me. This 26-episode anime is an original idea from Shinichiro Watanabe and he reunites with studio BONES and some of the Cowboy Bebop writing staff in the form of Dai Sato and Keiko Nobumoto. The trailer and character designs and sexy women take me back to the old-school anime like Space Adventure Cobra which also had dandy guys in space travelling with oddball companions, getting into wild battles, meeting sexy women and fan service. This is Space Adventure Cobra from Shinichiro Watanabe though so I’m hoping it will be special.

Website

World Conquest: Stratagem Star (Sekai Seifuku – Bouryaku no Zvezda)

Director/Series Composition: Tensai Okamura, Oiginal Character Designer: Kouhaku Kuroboshi, Music: Tatsuya Kato

Voice Actors: N/A (Venera-sama), N/A (White Robin), N/A (White Eaglet), N/A (Robo-ko), N/A (Plamya-sama), N/A (Uumu Kyouju)

Studio: A-1 Pictures

Synopsis

Zevzda is a secret society bent on world domination! And led by a little girl!

This anime is based on an original idea from Tensai Okamura and he’s a name familiar to shounen anime fans due to titles like the fun Blue Exorcist and the cool Darker than Black. Looking at the synopsis it reads like Excel Saga – evil organisation with goofy staff looking to take over the world – while the art and trailer released thus far reminds me of Kyousogiga – colourful and fun. Character designs comes from Kouhaku Kuroboshi and he worked on Kino’s Journey so that’s me sold on this without all the other info! Music is composed by Tatsuya Kato (Free!) so I’m hoping for overdramatic dubstep permeating scenes of violence and hilarity sort of like in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. This could be the dark horse of the season.

Website

Nobunaga the Fool    

Director: Eiichi Sato, Series Composition/Original Creator/Main Mecha Design: Shoji Kawamori, Character Designer: Yone Kazuki

Voice Actors: Yoko Hikasa (Jeanne Kaguya d’Arc), Tomokazu Sugita (Leonardo da Vinci), Mamoru Miyano (Oda Nobunaga), Takahiro Sakurai (Akechi Mitsuhide), Minori Chihara (Ichihime), Yuuki Kaji (Toyotomi Hideyoshi),

Studio: Satelight

Synopsis

The story takes place on both the Western Planet and the Eastern Planet, both of which were once bound by the “Dragon Pulse” which spanned the heavens. A civilisation that once prospered has turned into a tale of dreams as war tears the realm asunder. The return of super technology known as “sacred treasures” could alter the status quo but only one person knows of it – a heretical girl from the Western Planet known as Jeanne Kaguya d’Arc. She had heavenly visions of the birth of a “Star Messiah” who will save the world and so she, together with Leonard da Vinci, head to the Eastern Planet where they encounter another heretic, “the greatest fool of the day,” Oda Nobunaga.

Shoji Kawamori is one of the big guns in anime with titles like Aquarion EVOL and AKB0048 under his belt. His name regularly crops up every season and he effectively takes familiar titles/concepts and makes something new and fun – AKB0048 – idols in space in sci-fi battles. Who could have seen that coming? He’s a major presence in this show with writing and design duties. I love its ambition and designs and it looks like it could fill in the action quota.

Website

Pupa

Staff: Director: Tomomi Mochizuki, Original Creator: Sayaka Mogi,

Voice Actors: Ibuki Kido (Yume Hasegawa), Nobunaga Shimazaki (Utsutsu Hasegawa), Kyoko Narumi (Maria), Koji Yusa (Shiro  Onijima),

Studio: Studio DEEN

Synopsis

Utsutsu and his little sister Yume Hasegawa are close so when Yume sees a mysterious red butterfly and her body undergoes a strange metamorphosis into a creature that eats humans, Utsutsu struggles to find a way to restore his sister.

This was meant to come out during the autumn 2013 season but was delayed apparently (according to the internet) due to censors having problems with the content of the show and Studio Deen weren’t going to tone anything down. It is billed as a “life-and-death sibling” story and is based on Sayaka Mogi’s rather gory manga which is full-on incest, cannibalism and a moe girl.

The human character designs for the animation are par for the course but the creature design is where the anime is unnerving. Tomomi Michizuki is the director and he has helmed such anime as House of Five Leaves and Kimagure Orange Road.

Website

Hoozuki no Reitetsu  

Director: Hiro Kaburaki, Series Composition: Midori Gotou, Character Designer: Hirotaka Kato, Original Creator: Natsumi Eguchi

Voice Actors: Hiroki Yasumoto (Hoozuki), Daisuke Hirakawa (Momotaro), Takashi Nagasako (Enma Daio), Eri Kitamura (Oko), Sumire Uesaka (Peach Maki), Yumiko Kobayashi (Shiro)

Studio: Studio Wit

Synopsis

Houzuki is an aide to the Great King of Hell, Enma. As an advisor and aide he tries to resolve problems that occur in hell including a rampaging Momotarou. In his spare time he fawns over cute animals and raising “Goldfish Flowers.”

Studio WIT are the guys formed by Production I.G. to create the excellent Attack on Titan and they also worked on the futuristic romance HAL. Their latest title is an adaptation of Natsumi Eguchi slice-of-demon-life manga about a functionary in a supernatural world populated by popular characters from Japanese folklore. It’s seinen so it’s going to have all sorts of vibes that appeal to me. The anime is directed by Hiro Kaburaki (My Little Monster) and Midori Gotou (Guilty Crown) is overseeing the scripts.

Website

MILD INTEREST:

Nobunagun

Director: Nobuhiro Kondo, Original Creator: Masato Hisa, Series Composition: Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Character Design: Hiromi Matsushita, KAZZ T, Mechanical Design: Hirofumi Nakata, Kenichi Takase,

Voice Actors: Shiori Muto (Shio Ogura), Tatsuhisa Suzuki (Jack), Chiwa Saito (Geronimo), Yuu Asakawa (Newton), Sumire Uesaka (Galileo), Akira Ishida (Vidocq), Nobunaga Shimazaki (Ghandi),

Studio: Bridge

Synopsis

High school girl Shio Ogura is visiting Taiwan on a school trip when monsters attack. These creatures are called “Evolved Invaders” and the military is useless against them but then… the mysterious E-Gene Holder agents from the government organisation DOGOO appear! What is special about these guys is that they wield weapons infused with the spirits of great historical figures – Gandhi s a barrier and Newton is a gravitational manoeuvre. It just so happens that Shio Ogura has the e-gene and can wield a weapon! Hers is infused with the spirit of Oda Nobunaga. He is now a giant machinegun. He is… Nobunagun. Genius. Let the battle commence!

This is based on a manga by Masato Hisa and it looks like it will be fun. The idea of historical characters brought back to a modern school setting is familiar (Read or Die, Afterschool Charisma) but this seems to lean more towards the wild action of the awesome anime Read or Die. The only name that stood out for me on the production side was the chap in charge of series composition, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, who worked on New Dominion Tank Police and Aquarion Evol.

Website

Wooser no Sono Higurashi Second Season  

Director: Toyonori Yamada, Original Creator/Character Designer: Yoshiki Usa, Series Composition: Kazuyuki Fudeyasu, Character Design: Tomoko Fujinoki,

Voice Actors: Mamoru Miyano (Wooser), Haruka Nagamune (Ren), TiA (Yuu), Minori Ozawa (Rin), Yuri Sato (Miho),

Studio: Sanzigen

That was the OP for the first season and now we get a second season of Wooser’s Hand-to-Mouth Life and the reason I’m watching it is because these anime are shorts and easy to digest. Wooser is a mysterious mascot character who lives on the internet. He may look cute but he has a corrupt heart that craves money, eat and gals! Fittingly enough Wooser is voiced by Mamoru Miyano who played Light Yagami in Death Note and Okabe in Steins;Gate!

Website

Pupipou!    

Director: Kaoru Suzuki, Series Composition: Motoshi Chujo, Character Designer: Takumi Yokota

Voice Actors: Shiho Sasaki (Wakaba Himeji), Chisato Mori (Pou-chan), Mai Goto (Reiko Azuma), Kottomi Otsuka (Naoya Yuuki), Setsuo Itou (Ryouhei Ameyama), Keiji Fujiwara (Misao)

Studio: AIC Plus+

Synopsis

Wakaba Himeji is a fifth-grade girl who can see things other people cannot. This scares her and she keeps her distance from others which renders her lonely. Then, one day, she meets a mysterious soft, pink creature that cries “Pupipou!” and finds her life changing.

I’m going to check out Pupipou! Because it is horror and looks to have some quirky art/humour. It is based on a horror comedy web manga by Rensuke Oshikiri and is directed by Kaoru Suzuki who has directed episodes of Hellsing and Date A Live.

Website

Wake Up, Girls!          

Director/Original Concept: Yutaka Yamamoto, Series Composition: Touko Machida, Character Designer: Sunao Chikaoka,

Voice Actors: Airi Nagano (Airi Hayashida), Kaya Okuno (Kaya Kikuma), Minami Tanaka (Minami Katayama), Mayu Yoshioka (Mayu Shimada), Miyu Okamoto (Miyu Takagi), Noriko Hidaka (Junko Tange)

Studio: Ordet/Tatsunoko Productions

Synopsis

A small production agency in Sendai called The Green Leaves Entertainment is on the verge of bankruptcy following the flight of its roster of stars but the president has an idea – produce a new idol group! We follow seven girls who want to star in the “ideol sengoku jidai” Idol Warring States Period! of the modern day.

The synopsis about idols might make me dismiss this but it takes place in Sendai in Japan’s Tohoku region which was one of the locations heavily affected by the Earthquake and Tsunami. I’m tuning in to episode one to see if the disaster is mentioned and how it is used. This could be the anime full of big emotions. A film of this will also be on release the same day the TV anime is aired.

Website

Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha

Director: Toru Takahashi, Series Composition: Touko Machida, Character Designer: Yuka Takashina, Original Creator: Morohe Yoshida,

Voice Actors: Naomi Ozora (Inari Fushimi), Houko Kuwashima (Uka-no-Mitama-no-Kami), Hiroshi Okamoto (Koji Tanbabashi),

Studio: Production IMS

Synopsis

Inari Fushimi is a shy school girl who lives in Kyoto’s Fushimi ward. She has a crush on classmate Koji Tanbabashi, but cannot express her feelings. One day, as thanks for helping a fox pup, the deity known as Uka-no-Mitama-no-Kami grants her the ability to change her form.

Production IMS are a new animation studio and their first work is based on this shoujo romance manga by Morohe Yoshida and directed by Toru Takahashi, a vet of the anime industry who has worked on things like AD Police, Azumanga Daioh, Death Note, and Monster. I’m figuring that it will run along the same lines as Red Data Girl.

Website