Spam From Japan

This Gantz 2 Perfect Answer review starts off with a brief synopsis and overview of my expectations for the second half of this two-parter. After that, the spoilers come pretty fast, so watch out. I’ve even included the ending for you.

In the first part (simply titled ‘Gantz’), Kurono Kei (Ninomiya Kazunari), Katou Masaru (Matsuyama Ken’ichi) and Kishimoto Kei (Natsuna) are recruited by a big black ball named Gantz to kill aliens. If they get one hundred points, received after killing sufficient numbers of aliens, they get to choose from a special prize menu. Said menu offers one of two choices — having your memory wiped and being returned safely to the real world, or bringing another person back from the dead. Katou and Kishimoto die after getting into a fight with giant alien Buddhist statues and Kurono vows to resurrect them.

Before I watched the second half, there was just one thing I wanted to know — who the man was inside Gantz. I guessed he was probably human, captured to power it. But I did have a certain amount of faith that the revelation behind the process would be worth seeing.

Overall, I thought there were some spectacular fight scenes in Gantz: Perfect Answer. The scene on the train was superb, although the climax was not as good as the one from the previous film and the plot arc wasn’t as tight. I thought it was a stronger movie than the previous one though and, having read up a little on the anime and manga, appeals to me more than the original works.

Here come the spoilers.

The writers have taken the break between films to introduce another plotline and a few original characters. Just to start with, a model named Ayukawa Eriko (Itou Ayumi) gets a tiny black Gantz ball in the mail that tells her to kill. There’s also an investigator (Yamada Takayuki as Shigeta Masamitsu) on the trail of Gantz, briefly glimpsed in the previous film. He’s so unimportant, I don’t know why they bothered.

As for the Gantz team, they are tasked with fighting aliens from Planet Black Suit. In Japanese, ‘black suit’ tends to imply a man employed by shady businesses (cabaret clubs, etc) and is possibly associated with the yakuza. Or not, as the case may be. In comparison to onion aliens from the first movie, this change seems positively sensible.

The fight scene on the train between the Gantz team and the aliens from Planet Black Suit features wuxia (“CGxia”) and gun kata. Also everyone has Gantz-themed katana because the guns take so long to charge, making for quicker and more visually appealing attacks. This was definitely my favourite scene.

By this time, my favourite character was Suzuki Yoshikazu (Taguchi Tomorowo). As he wasn’t played by a famous actor, I had written him off somewhat as an NPC, as background to the two main actors whose images are on the posters. However, when he chose to bring back Katou instead of going home, that’s when I really started cheering for him.

After the second major fight, between Kurono, Katou and a shape-shifting alien that has taken on Katou’s form, Kojima Tae (Yoshitaka Yuriko) turns up looking for Kurono. She is awful, but I don’t think any actress could have made this scene work. She runs towards Kurono as the alien slices her several times with his katana. Dying, she makes it to Kurono after shuffling along for a good minute or so. It would work as a manga sequence (and probably did!), possibly even in anime, but as a live action piece it looks ridiculous.

The final climactic battle is not much compared to the previous fight scenes. The two opposing sides stand in front of each other and open fire. As already shown in the first film, everyone is capable of returning from the dead. This is a huge barrier to good storytelling, particularly when you only have a short amount of time (unlike with manga) to show how difficult it is to get those one hundred points that make it possible.

However, the final battle causes Kurono Kei to achieve ‘maximum points’ and he can now have pretty much anything he wants (is this just me or does this sound like the climax to Madoka Magica?). So everyone comes back. Everyone, even Katou’s younger brother. The only one who doesn’t return to the real world is Kurono Kei.

…because he’s now inside the ball, powering it.

You might want to read my other reviews of movies that were adapted from manga, such as Kamui Gaiden (also starring Matsuyama Ken’ichi) and Kaiji: Jinsei Gyakuten Game.

Rumour has it that Space Battleship Yamato star, Kimura Takuya offered to reduce his own salary so more could be spent on the film itself and better position it as a rival to the likes of Avatar. True or not, the movie cost around two billion yen to make – a huge amount in Japan, even though it doesn’t come close to the most expensive Hollywood films. Was it worth it?

I didn’t know much about Space Battleship Yamato going into the movie, except it was based on an anime series by Leiji Matsumoto. If pressed, I would have said it was about a battleship named Yamato in space. While the ending may be as familiar to Japanese audiences as the connection between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker is to me, I wasn’t aware of it. It was a shock.

The opening was stunning. For most of the action of the first half, they seem to have eschewed the standard CGI in favour of model shots with enhanced backgrounds featuring the kind of star formations you can find on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. At least, I believe these to be model shots, despite the advertised “80% CGI” claim. If it’s really CGI, it’s brilliant.

There is also one incredible shot of the underground city where Kodai lives. It appears on screen for maybe ten seconds, but the detail is all there.

The basic plot is simple, but the specifics are tough to follow, possibly because the Japanese is a level above what is normally required. There’s a mixture of nautical and sci-fi terms which are fairly challenging and you just know that they would consist of a string of ten kanji if written down. I had the same problem with Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.

The earth has been scorched beyond repair by aliens, and humanity only has about a year before the radiation reaches their underground city. However, despite the destruction of all greenery, there are still cats. One day, a capsule said to be from a planet called Iscandar is dropped on Earth and is found to contain a message which states there is a way to reduce the radiation levels. The same message instructs humanity on how to equip Yamato with a hadou engine which allows them to warp through space from Earth to Iscandar.

Kodai is a former pilot and the younger brother of a space captain who was killed in combat. He re-enlists and bravely notes the ship doctor has a cat. Once aboard, Captain Okita eventually recognises Kodai’s earnestness and sense of duty and hands the ship over to him on his deathbed. Kodai faces difficult decisions as captain, but the final one is the most difficult of all and the film stays with him throughout his decision-making process.

As for the final scene… I didn’t know it and I’ll assume you don’t want to know it either. All I will say is that we’re in flu season in Japan and there was coughing throughout the film until that final moment. The music dropped away and so did the sounds of the audience members. Complete silence throughout the theatre.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this combination before in a live action movie — a hard sci-fi aesthetic, space opera action and the morality of a Japanese war film. The mix is unique and visually amazing, with a real ‘lived-in’ feel to the technology.

The cat survives, by the way.

Official Space Battleship Yamato website (Japanese)

“Star Blazers” Anime Site with Movie Updates (English)

Or, if you want to see more movie reviews by me, check out Ghibli’s Karigurashi no Arrietty, Kamui Gaiden or the entire ‘movies’ tag.

Last year, the theme song for Gake no Ue no Ponyo filled the streets of Tokyo. You could hear it blasting from cinema lobbies, in the convenience stores and in department stores. It was everywhere. I never saw it.

Karigurashi no Arrietty (The Borrower Arrietty) had a more toned-down approach to marketing that was much appreciated. I’ve heard the theme song blasting from giant TV screens in Shinjuku, central Tokyo and I still love it. Besides, I found out a very important detail about it.

One of the draws of Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli is their ability to find tiny slivers of rural life squeezed between the reality of the big city. If you’ve ever visited Japan via Narita Airport, you’ll know what I mean. As you head into Tokyo, a city so futuristic it was inspiring the setting for the Blade Runner movie around eighteen years ago, you can see Ghibliesque snapshots of the countryside. Rice fields, country cottages and shrines pass you by.

Arrietty opens with an establishing shot of Tokyo to ground the viewer, zooms to a car moving up the driveway of an old-fashioned house, then focuses on the garden. It’s not the full truth about Japan, but it’s part of it. The clear message is that there are thousands of totoros, susuwatari and borrowers living near you right now. That’s what makes their films so lovely.

And here’s what I found out about the setting for Arrietty — it’s in the general area I’m living right now. Today, I crossed over the Nogawa River on the way back home, almost certainly the river featured at the end of the film. I can see bats skimming the water and the fleeting shadow of a koi carp. A bullfrog croaks somewhere nearby, unseen. Once I heard that it was going to be set in my backyard, I had to see it, regardless of my feelings about Ponyo. While this could be set in any suburbs around a big city, I won’t pretend that watching it and seeing locations I kind of recognised wasn’t magical. It totally was.

The film moves fairly slowly. You could take a younger child to see it in a way you probably couldn’t with Mononoke-Hime (Princess Mononoke), although there are some scenes where Arrietty’s mother is in danger. The film is so gentle though, there’s never really any doubt she’ll be fine. Said younger child might even be a bit bored. I would say this is best suited to anime lovers with longer attention spans.

Overall, this is a lovely film with a gentle sense of humour that moves at a slower pace than most blockbusters. Despite it being Yonebayashi Hiromasa’s directorial debut, he brings out the usual Ghibli sense of wonder with it.

I recently had my review of Resident Evil: Afterlife published on Blogcritics. It opened last week here in Japan, but should open tonight in theaters for many of the people reading this. For what it’s worth, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the 3D was excellent. Click on the link above to read more.

Now, here’s a rundown of upcoming Japanese movies that caught my eye recently and their release dates. Which do you want to see? Any I’ve missed that I should know about?

13 Assassins: Juusan-nin no Shikaku (25th September 2010)
十三人の刺客

13 Assassins Official Site

A remake of a 1963 film by Miike Takashi, famous for his brutal depiction of violence and the Zebraman movies. Set in the late Edo Era and based on a true story featuring samurai, it’s rated PG12 this time around.

Oniichan no Hanabi (25th September 2010)
おにいちゃんのハナビ

Oniichan no Hanabi Official Site

I’ll never watch this, but I’m sure it’ll appeal to someone reading this. I was a wreck after just fifteen minutes of 1-litre no Namida, so no thanks. Set in Niigata, a young man who has become a recluse in his own home decides to attend world-famous fireworks display with his terminally-ill little sister. Based on a true story.

REDLINE (9th October 2010)
ＲＥＤＬＩＮＥ

REDLINE Official Site

Animation featuring high-speed races across space, set in the distant future. Features voice-acting from Asano Tadanobu, Aoi Yu and SMAP’s Kimura Takuya, with direction from Koike Takeshi (Animatrix: World Record). If nothing else, go to the website and look at that hair.

Incite Mill: Nanokakan no Death Game (16th October 2010)
インシテミル7日間のデス・ゲーム

Incite Mill Official Site

Ten people accept a high-paying job… a job to murder each other!! Er, anyway, this is directed by the same guy who did Ring (Nakata Hideo), so it should be worth your time. I have no idea what the first half of the title means, by the way.

Garo: Red Requiem (30th October 2010)
牙狼　ＧＡＲＯ　ＲＥＤ　ＲＥＱＵＩＥＭ

Garo: Red Requiem Official Site

I saw a five minute preview of this 3D movie adaptation of the Garo tokusatsu TV series at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2010 and fell in love. It looks like it’ll use 3D to great effect.

Maria-sama ga Miteru (6th November 2010)
マリア様がみてる

Maria-sama ga Miteru Official Site

It’s described as a drama depicting school life in an all-girl high school. Which is funny, because most of the people I know who watched the anime liked it for the chaste girl-on-girl non-action. Yuri fans take note.

GHOST: Mou Ichido Dakishimetai (13th November 2010)
ゴースト　もういちど抱きしめたい

Ghost Official Site

I don’t know about you, but I can’t hear The Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody without thinking of pottery. I probably won’t see this, but I’m still curious about how this remake of the US movie “Ghost” will turn out. One thing that struck me when watching the trailer is that it has all the trappings of a typical Japanese love story, complete with generic J-pop ballad over the top.

Battle Royale 3D (20th November 2010)
バトル・ロワイアル

Battle Royale 3D Official Site

No new footage, just the old film revitalised with 3D. Films that have the 3D added after filming often look too dark or just not very good, like Clash of the Titans, but they seem to be taking their time with this. I plan to see it again regardless, but I don’t remember it being as violent as the trailer – the only thing on the official site – suggests. It’s quite possible I saw an edited version in Britain.

Space Battleship Yamato (1st December 2010)
SPACE BATTLESHIP ヤマト

Space Battleship Yamato Official Site

The trailers are already airing in cinemas in Japan and I can’t wait. Looks amazing.

GANTZ (2011)
ＧＡＮＴＺ

GANTZ Official Site

Another amazing trailer for a live-action movie based on anime/manga. This one is released a lot further in the future though. I just hope I don’t get bored of it before it’s out in cinemas.

Onigamiden (May 2011)
鬼神伝

Onigamiden Official Site

An anime set in the Heian Era and the ties between oni (demons, ogres, your translation of choice) and humans. The thing that interested me was the amazing perspective of the drawing on the splash page of the website. Note: The release date is taken from the official website, but other sources say it’ll be released next month.

Cast:
Kasumi Ishiki: Hanazawa Kana
Marco Owen: Morikawa Toshiyuki
Shizuku Ishiki: Sendai Eri
Katherine Turner: Oohara Sayaka
Timothy “Tim” Laisenbach: Yajima Akiko
Ron Portman: Nomura Kenji
Peter Stevens: Miki Shin’ichirou
Ivan Coral Vega: Isobe Tsutomu
Alessandro Peccino: Hirota Kousei
Laura Owen: Kawasumi Ayako
Alice: Kuno Misaki
Walter: Fujita Yoshinori

The following review has mild spoilers for Ibara no Ou: King of Thorn. I enjoyed the movie, but major spoilers will kill it for you. Go see it first.

I came away from Ibara no Ou: King of Thorn feeling elated, like I’d seen something amazing. This was primarily due to the movie’s climactic ‘genre twist’ that previously had many fans giving up on the manga. Essentially, the thing that sold it for me was the reason why other people didn’t like the original work.

The anime begins as creepy science-fiction survival horror. In the first scene (as shown in the trailer), a woman plunges to her death from a New York skyscraper and smashes into the pavement, having been turned to stone. There then follows a massive infodump in the form of TV news footage describing the so-called Medusa Virus’ spread across the world.

The action then moves to Scotland, where busloads of people infected with the Medusa Virus are travelling to a cryonics lab run by a cult called Venus Gate in the hope of finding a cure. What could possibly go wrong?

When these people wake up from their induced sleep, they find monstrous bats nesting in the cryonic pod chamber and thorny vines grown up around the pods. The monsters quickly dispose of the generic characters, leaving behind those with distinctive character designs. The survivors decide to fight their way out.

Up until halfway through it was generic survival horror with the main characters alternately fighting and running away from monsters. In fact, it’s so generic that you can predict who will die and in what order with this handy chart. Consider the African-American man (Ron) and the little boy (Tim). Do you know which will die and how soon? No? Then clearly you don’t watch many horror movies.

What stops this section from being a step-down from standard Hollywood horror (which at least knows its genre well enough to try to subvert it) are the hints that Something Deeper Is Going On. One of the first clues is that the female lead’s name is Ishiki, meaning awareness or consciousness. Furthermore, the male lead has visions of her surrounded by thorns which seem to be connected to her. Oh, and she’s a twin. That’s suspicious in its own right. We also know the lab is run by a cult. Those genre-savvy enough to be bored by the paint-by-numbers handling of the first half will probably realise there’s more to the plot.

I’ll leave the review here. The revelations soon start piling up, throwing everything that went before it in a new light. Just about everything in the first act, even the annoying reporter trying to interview people as they entered cold sleep, was a Chekhovian gun waiting to go off later. That’s why I left the cinema feeling the way I did. I love massive, complicated mindscrews and this did it well. But the ending is key and to describe it would be to ruin it. You’ll have to sit through the generic horror to get the payoff and that’s just the way it is. If you really must know, the Wikipedia page for the manga will point you in the right direction.

The movie is almost certainly heading overseas (America, at least). There’s an English version of the official site and a great deal of the onscreen writing is in English. But if the wait makes you feel bad, just remember we don’t get Iron Man 2 until June 11th.

This review contains spoilers for Trigun: Badlands Rumble.

Back in the day, if you wanted fansubs, you had to look up providers in a big database which would show you which fans had what series and whether they’d ship internationally. You’d then send off your money to somewhere in America and about a month later, no more than eight VHS tapes would arrive in your mailbox.

That’s how it was and we liked it that way, dammit. It’s also how I discovered Trigun.

I’d heard the hype first (that’s how we knew what to order), but I was still surprised how much I liked it. I’m not usually a fan of the main character(s) in a series, particularly if they’re the good guys. But Vash was fun and whimsical with a dark side. He’s probably one of the more complex characters in anime and it’s difficult to get a grip on his personality.

Fast-forward ten years; I’ve moved to Japan and am now sitting in a charmingly shabby third-floor cinema in Shinjuku, waiting for the new Trigun: Badlands Rumble movie to start. Funny how life works.

The movie starts with Vash getting between a legendary bank robber named Gasback and his cronies, because he can’t stand any kind of violence.

Twenty years later, rumours suggest Gasback plans to target Makka City and so the mayor assembles the most unsavoury characters he can find to protect it. Milly Thompson and Meryl Strife are in town in their professional capacity as insurance auditors, and try to drive Vash out of the city, but he only wants to flirt with at Amelia.

When Gasback finally arrives, however, Wolfwood is amongst his entourage and it’s revealed Amelia’s plans to kill Gasback are based on more than just a desire to collect the bounty on his head.

[Note: Gasback, Amelia and Makka are my own romanisations. They may well prove to be wrong when official translations are released.]

They’ve kept the original seiyuu from the anime and, so it seems in some scenes, some of the ineptness of the animation between the key cels. That’s not really a criticism. Computer modelling is used extensively, but not in a way that made me think it didn’t fit with the rest of the anime, as I’ve seen in the past. The backgrounds are well-drawn and they often used interesting angles to tell the story. The character designs for even incidental characters are bright and varied.

Despite all this, I didn’t like it in the same way I did the anime series, despite the movie staying within the anime timeline. The key problem is the relationship between Amelia and Vash. They meet when he rescues her; he falls in love immediately and proceeds to follow her everywhere. He follows her from her hotel room into the streets and when she kicks him away, he nuzzles her legs. It’s too much.

The best scene is without Vash, when Wolfwood (wearing Vash’s glasses) and Amelia take the fight to Gasback. It just seems that Vash is always there to undermine what would otherwise be a strong character.

Is this movie at fault, or is it my memory…?

Cast:
Vash The Stampede: Onosaka Masaya
Nicholas D Wolfwood: Hayami Sho
Meryl Stryfe: Tsuru Hitomi
Milly Thompson: Yukino Satsuki
Amelia: Sakamoto Maaya
Gasback: Isobe Tsutomu

Official site

Cinemas:
Tokyo: Cinema Sunshine (Ikebukuro) and Shinjuku Musashino-Kan (Shinjuku).
For cinemas showing Trigun outside Tokyo, please click here

This review contains spoilers for the movie Kamui Gaiden (カムイ外伝).

Kamui Gaiden is based on a manga started in 1965 by Shirato Sanpei, about a ninja who is on the run having left his clan. Kamui is played by Matsuyama Ken’ichi, who is probably most famous for his role as L in the live-action Death Note movies. Matsuyama also appears in Kaiji ~Jinsei Gyakuten Game~, out this weekend in Japan.

This movie starts out with child Kamui watching his master fight against a strong female ninja (Sugaru), which quickly introduces the way fights are choreographed. Ninja can jump-fly as a matter of course, similar to the wire work used in the wuxia genre. This time it looks like CGI, but my partner gave me a suspicious look when I referred to it as CGxia.

Both Kamui’s master and Sugaru fall from a cliff, but the former hangs on, while the latter is presumed to have drowned. Kamui’s master climbs up and pulls a throwing knife from his eyeball, eyeball still attached. He throws it at Kamui’s feet to teach him a lesson. What lesson? Only ninja know.

That sets the pace for the first half hour or so as adult Kamui encounters and fights other ninja and bandits in a bloody but non-gory way. I got to admit, this was often pretty cool and I love this style of cinema, even when it’s not done particularly well.

But then the plot starts. I feel terrible for typing that. For the next hour or so, there’s no more fighting and Kamui learns to fish and falls in love. Not with the tough female ninja we saw earlier, but a teenage girl called Sayaka. This is possibly more realistic, but not very interesting. However, Matsuyama does spend a scene walking around in a fundoshi and I suspect there’s someone out there for whom this will make the entire movie. Me, I liked the wuxia sharks.

Okay, they’re not technically wuxia sharks. After all, they don’t practice martial arts or exhibit chivalrous or ‘xia’ tendencies. But they linger and pose in the air as they jump. They might just know kung fu.

Then there are the ninja-pirates, confusing all internet debates forever. The pirate ninja leader is played by Itou Hideaki and the fighting resumes in the impressive final showdown between him and Kamui.

Overall, I just wanted to cut out much out the middle part and leave in all the amazing silliness and ridiculous ways of offing people. More beer would’ve been nice too.