Welcome to the second of two trailer posts for this weeks films.
The first trailer post is here.
I have spent chunks of the last two weeks watching screeners for festivals. I hope to get reviews going for a selection of titles from the Chicago Japanese Film Collective that I tweeted (and whatever the Blue Sky equivalent is) about while a selection of the others will be revealed next year.
In terms of non-festival related things that I have watched, there are some Twitch channels showing Patlabor, Cowboy Bebop, and Vagrant Story/Final Fantasy play-throughs so I’ve had those on in the background when I write. I’ve also watched The Changeling (1980), Ruin Explorers Fam – I remember getting a catalogue of importt anime DVD/VHSs back in the 90s and looking at whether to purchase it.
What are the rest of the Japanese films released this weekend?
愛の茶番 「Ai no Chaban」
Release Date: December 07th, 2024
Duration: 120 mins.
Director: Junko Emoto
Writer: Junko Emoto (Screenplay),
Starring: Runa Endo, Ami Tomite, Yuki Sugawara, Ryo Iwase, Kosuke Fujita, Sumihiro Yoshikawa, Kiyobumi Kaneko, Akihito Kajiya, Tomonori Mikan,
Website Twitter: @ainochaban
This is the second feature film by Junko Emoto, the leader of the theatrical troupe who made her debut with The Extremist’s Opera. Her latest work played at Osaka Asian FIlm Festival 2024, which is where I reviewed it and interviewed director Emoto.
This is two hours of comedy based on watching characters blinded by love acting out in the most excruciatingly embarrassing way. The cast all commit to the bit with such gusto that it’s hard not to be sucked into the maelstrom of madness and bitterness and the “staging” makes it all the more fun.
Love makes fools of us all.
Such is the case with Rumi, her sister Aki, and a woman named Rie. The three are tied to Ryosuke, a laid-back lothario who likes to love and leave ladies. Rumi and Aki were never on the same wavelength as arrogant Aki has dreams of stardom and despises the riotous Rumi but sharing a lover makes their relationship worse and sharpens their cruelty to each other. Meanwhile the mousy Rie is cast adrift and left seeking love from increasingly disappointing quarters. Over the course of seven years, other would-be lovers get ensnared in their tangle of relationships that, to viewers, looks absent of romance and full of embarrassment.
Theatre troupe leader EMOTO Junko combines stage and cinema with It Must Be Love, a work in which she and her ensemble cast opened the movie site/stage to an “audience” and utilised them and their ideas to make a multiple-perspective/timeline cringe-comedy of love sending people loopy.
What Should We Have Done? 
どうすればよかったか？ 「Dou sureba yokatta ka?」
Release Date: December 07th, 2024
Duration: 101 mins.
Director: Tomoaki Fujino
Writer: N/A
Starring: N/A
Website Twitter: @dosureba_film IMDB
Synopsis: This documentary follows director Tomoaki Fujino’s family, specifically the mental decline of his older sister who developed schizophrenia when she began attending a medical school to become a doctor like her parents. Tragically, it was the parents who effectively locked her in the family home and resisted getting the help of a psychiatrist. Director Fujino questioned their judgment and recorded the results of their actions, starting in 2001, and how the issue was never resolved and his sister left her parents’ home with her feelings of resentment.
If These Letters Reach Your Eyes 
あなたの瞳に話せたら 「Anata no hitomi ni hanasetara」
Release Date: December 07th, 2024
Duration: 29 mins.
Director: Sonomi Sato
Writer: N/A
Starring: N/A
Website Twitter: @aruharufilm
Synopsis: Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, lost 74 students and 10 teachers and staff members in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011. Eight and a half years later, this documentary records the people left behind in the area and has letters written to the deceased by the children, who were family members and friends of the victims.
This documentary was made by Sonomi Sato, a filmmaker from Ishinomaki, as her graduation project from the Department of Film and New Media, Nihon University College of Art. It won the Runner-up Grand Prix and the Audience Award in the Short Film Competition of the Tokyo Documentary Film Festival 2020.
Spring After Spring Passes Us By 
春をかさねて 「Haru o kasanete」
Release Date: December 07th, 2024
Duration: 45 mins.
Director: Sonomi Sato
Writer: Sonomi Sato (Screenplay),
Starring: Sae Saito, Keika Saito, Yukari Saito, Daichi Akiyama, Noriyuki Suzuki, Mihiro Yasuda,
Website Twitter: @aruharufilm
Synopsis: This medium-length drama, set in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, depicts the delicate emotional turmoil of fourteen-year-olds Yumi and Rei, two girls who lost younger sisters in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. While Yumi handles many media interviews about the disaster, her childhood friend Rei falls in love with a volunteer university student from Tokyo. One day after school, Yumi expresses her dislike for Rei.
This film was shot in the Okawa area in 2019, eight years after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Filming took place at the Okawa Elementary School, which is now off-limits as a post-disaster site.
Kyonetsu no futari goka hon “marumero soushi” wa koushite umareta 
狂熱のふたり 豪華本「マルメロ草紙」はこうして生まれた 「Kyonetsu no futari goka hon “marumero soushi” wa koushite umareta」
Release Date: December 07th, 2024
Duration: 84 mins.
Director: Toshiro Uratani
Writer: N/A
Starring: Osamu Hashimoto, Yoshio Okada, Kahoru Nakashima,
Website Twitter: @kyounetsu
Synopsis: Toshiro Uratani has produced documentaries on the works of Juzo Itami, Hayao Miyazaki, Kinji Fukasaku, and others. He now turns his attention to the production process of “Marmelo Zoshi,” a luxury book published with text by novelist, writer, critic, designer, director, knitter, Osamu Hashimoto and illustrations by Yoshio Okada, a painter who has been called a “modern ukiyoe artist” for his dynamic compositions and glittering colour palettes.