Ah, I hope everybody reading this is in good health! The week for me has seen me say goodbye to a Japanese friend as he returns home but we will keep in touch. On a more positive note my Japanese lessons have started again and I am learning a lot and I am on top of my anime and drama pile. I also had a great time at a relative’s house eating pizza and cake and watching the films Primer and the French film Untouchable. In terms of writing for this blog I finished off my list of Best Anime of 2013 and started a series of First Impressions for the 2014 Winter Season with Nobunaga the Fool and the super fun Nobunagun. I then posted about the Japanese Films at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2014. Yesterday saw me post the first batch of trailers and this is the second post.
Before we get into the trailers, congratulations go out to Shuhei Morita for being nominated for the best Animated Short Film Oscar for his short Possessions
Congratulations are also in order to Studio Ghibli since The Wind Rises has bee nominated for the Animated Feature Film Oscar!
Today’s trailer post has some great films here. The best looking titles are Futaridetsukuru, Bilocation and Plastic Love Story! Here are the trailers!
Bilocation 
Japanese: バイロケーション
Romaji: Bairoke-shon
Running Time: 119 mins.
Release Date: January 18th, 2014
Director: Mari Asato
Writer: Mari Asato (Screenplay), Haruka Hojo (Original Novel)
Starring: Asami Mizukawa, Kento Senga, Sho Takada, Wakana Sakai, Yosue Asari, Kosuke Toyohara,
Mari Asato, director of The Grudge: Girl in Black, is here with this thriller where an aspiring painter named Shinobu Takamura (Mizukawa) is accused of using counterfeit money even though she was no memory of it. Things get stranger when she encounters a police officer named Kano (Takito) who reveals that Shinobu have something akin to a doppelganger effect in their life that looks and acts like them. This effect is called “bilocation”.
Futaridetsukuru 
Japanese: フタリデツクル
Romaji: Futaridetsukuru
Running Time: 90 mins.
Release Date: January 18th, 2014
Director: Tomonori Sasaki
Writer: Yusuke Kinai, Ryoko Nitta (Screenplay),
Starring: Kazuha Komiya, Ryo Katayama, Marie Ono, Yasuka Saito
A film about making film and one of the more interesting trailers from this week and I probably haven’t done much justice to the synopsis because it’s probably more dramatic and complicated than I make out.
Yusuke (Katayama) and Ryoko (Komiya) are both screenwriters in search of some good ideas to make a great comedic script. Yukiko (Ono) Ryoko’s younger sister and Yusuke’s friend might hold the key to giving them inspiration as their relationship gets a little messy.
The Love and Death of Kaoru Mitarai 
Japanese: 御手洗 薫 の 愛 と 死
Romaji: Mitarai Kaoru no Ai to Shi
Running Time: 114 mins.
Release Date: January 18th, 2014
Director: Kazuyuki Morosawa
Writer: Kazuyuki Morosawa (Screenplay),
Starring: Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Mitsuru Matsuoka, Hijiri Kojima, Yutaka Matsushige, Toru Masuoka
Kaoru Mitarai (Yoshiyuki) is a distinguished novelist of any years but when she causes a car accident she finds herself harassed by the victim’s son Ryuhei Kanzaki (Matsuoka), a failed novelist, who demands that Kaoru ghost write a novel for him. That novel proves to be a success and Ryuhei hits the big time but his relationship with Kaoru becomes confusing as they turn from enemies into lovers. Things get even more complicated when Ryuhei starts a relationship with a much younger editor and Kaoru gets jealous…
Plastic Love Story 
Japanese: Plastic Love Story
Romaji: Plastic Love Story
Running Time: 124 mins.
Release Date: January 18th, 2014
Director: Ryutaro Nakagawa
Writer: Ryutaro Nakagawa (Screenplay),
Starring: Mai Sakata, Manami Takahashi, Yasuhiro Konno, Yumi Yamawaki
This is an intriguing example of an indie film collective (Tokyo New Cinema) and what they can do. The trailer looks really good, lots of energy and beautiful scenes, and suggests that this film about lives of three women could be interesting. Stalkers, suicide and love all feature.
Toshiue no Kanojo (Hito) The Movie 
Japanese: 年上ノ彼女劇場版
Romaji: Toshiue no Kanojo (Hito) Gekijouban
Running Time: 121 mins.
Release Date: January 18th, 2014
Director: Ataru Ueda, Daigo Udagawa, Norihisa Yoshimura
Writer: Ryuta Amazume (Original Manga), Kyoko Kawai (Screenplay)
Starring: Shinpei Takagi, Shiho, Tateto Serizawa, Eita Okuno, Miki Takahashi, Hiroko Sato, Yurie Midori, Mikuru Uchino
This is an adaptation of a rather raunchy looking manga named Toshiue no Hito that I have not read. This image below is the cleanest I could find in a quick search.
The story follows a second year university student named Tsutomu Ito (Takagi) who is impotent due to an accident he was involved in while he was a child. He meets a first year student named Ageha Osanai (Shiho) who looks like a girl that appeared in a dream of his. She may look like a young woman but she’s actually twenty-five-years-older than Tsutomu Ito. Proving that age ain’t nothing but a number the two begin to live together.
I hope she doesn’t turn out to be a succubus who sustains her beauty by ensnaring men and devouring their essence. Or maybe Tsutomu will wake up next to a desiccated corpse… or a ghost!
Be careful when looking up this trailer and the manga it’s adapted from because there are moments and images that will be very awkward to explain.
Hana-dama 
Japanese: 華魂
Romaji: Hana-dama
Running Time: 106 mins.
Release Date: January 18th, 2014
Director: Toshiyasu Sato
Writer: Shinji Imaoka (Screenplay),
Starring: Rina Sakuragi,
A film set in a school full of bullying, screaming, murder, suicide and sexual abuse which lacks the visual poetry of All About Lily Chou-Chou and aims for low-budget Lynchian psychological horror mixed with Cronenbergian body horror. I’ve probably made is sound better than it actually is but from the look of this trailer sex education has never been so scary.
Half Grey vs Yakuza 
Japanese: 半グレvsやくざ
Romaji: Han Gure vs Yakuza
Running Time: 78 mins.
Release Date: January 18th, 2014
Director: Dai Sato
Writer: Yoshihide Ide, Yayoi (Screenplay),
Starring: Hideo Nakano, Kazuma Yamane, Emi Kobayashi, Ken Maeda,
Well the trailer didn’t inspire much of a reaction but while looking up the background for the term han-gure I came across this Japan Times article from 2012 which details the emergence of a new culture of criminal called Han-gure. These guys aren’t like your typical Yakuza, they are ex-cons, delinquents, university grads drawn to crime, all sorts who eschew the ties and formalities of traditional organised crime and sound like an army of thugs and evildoers. So in this film we get old-fashioned ‘heroic’ yakuza and this new criminal underclass battling each other.
