Alright, I realize that by doing something like this I am going to be revealing just how much of a nerd I am to everyone who reads this blog. However, considering my last blog post mentioned that I have history-induced orgasms, I guess I’m not fooling anyone into thinking that I am coolness personified.
Over the next few weeks, I will be posting a series of critical essays and reviews on the works of Kon Satoshi, who has recently passed away. (To read a translation of his final words, please visit Makiko Itoh’s blog.)
These will be the first Japanese anime reviews that I have ever posted on this page. You will see that this is not because I don’t watch anime. In fact, I have seen more anime than I care to admit. I was obsessed with anime and manga for the majority of high school. The reason why I tend to keep this under wraps is because I don’t want people’s perception of me and my essays to be clouded by this fact. Let’s face it, anime fans have a horrible reputation (and not undeservedly so) and I already have to contend with enough comments calling me ‘Wapanese.’
Anime is a fairly big deal in the United States. Anime and other forms of Japanese pop culture play an enormous role in influencing the way the younger generation of Americans perceive Japan, and for that reason it is probably one of Japan’s most powerful exports (in terms of soft power). However, the distribution of anime does not necessarily lead to a more informed or accurate view of Japan or the Japanese people. No one is going to develop a deep understanding of Japan through watching big-breasted school girls or giant robots. In terms of cultural understanding AND film studies, anime is mostly consumerist crap that facilitates escapism (trust me on this, I’ve seen a lot).
One of the exceptions is Kon Satoshi. Like Miyazaki Hayao and Oshii Mamoru, the works of Kon Satoshi not only hold their own against the classics of live-action cinema but also show us the potential of anime as a serious filmmaking genre.
Kon Satoshi (1963-2010)
In light of the impact and importance his work has had on the genre, Kon Satoshi’s filmography may seem surprisingly small. It includes:
- ‘Magnetic Rose’ from Memories (1995) – writer
- Perfect Blue (1998) – director and animator
- Millennium Actress (2001) – writer, director and animator
- Tokyo Godfathers (2003) – writer, director and animator
- Paranoia Agent (2004, a 13-episode series) – director
- Paprika (2006) – writer and director
Kon’s last work The Dream Machine will be released posthumously in 2011.
Perfect Blue (1998)
Kon explored a number of themes in his work – the tenuous relationship between reality and illusion, the subjective nature of perception, the power of memories and nostalgia, Japanese history and society, the female image, and an unrelenting examination of psychology.
My first experience with Kon Satoshi was back in 2000 (I was 13). I had recently been exposed to Japanese anime and this was around the time that mainstream retailers like Blockbuster began to carry anime titles. I was happily devouring as much anime as I could get my hands on and rented Perfect Blue.
It blew me away.
Millennium Actress (2001)
Not only did Perfect Blue fuel my interest in the anime genre, I list it as one of the films that has had the most impact on me personally. Along with films like Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972), Audition (Miike Takashi, 1999), A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971), and The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973), Perfect Blue has had a profound impact on how I appreciate and analyze cinema. Shortly after watching Perfect Blue, Kon’s Millennium Actress was released on DVD in America (I actually preordered it, lame). Kon’s deeply touching and nostalgic exploration of Japanese history and cinema motivated me to explore other genres of Japanese filmmaking. I can honestly say that the works of Kon Satoshi had a major influence in how I became the person I am today.
The force and impact of Kon Satoshi’s work not only transcend the boundary between animation and live-action filmmaking but have expanded the limits of the anime genre. As a fan, I know that his death will be deeply felt – within the anime industry as well as the film genre, internationally as well as domestically.
I will be reviewing Kon Satoshi’s work chronologically. Because all of his work has a strong thematic unity, I believe that watching and studying his work in chronological order reveals his stylistic development as a director and how key themes have been developed and expanded upon over the course of his career.
That said, the first review is the ‘Magnetic Rose’ episode from Otomo Katsuhiro’s Memories (1995).
Wild Zero follows the three band members of Guitar Wolf; Guitar Wolf (vocals and guitar), Bass Wolf (bass), and Drum Wolf (you guessed it, drums). This trio are the hottest musicians in rural Asahi-cho and only believe in three things; love, justice, and Rock’n’Roll. Tired of the dirty ways of their evil yakuza business manager, the Captain (played by Inamiya Makoto in a variety of wigs), Guitar Wolf decides to quit and continue their career as independent musicians. Thanks to some accidental help from Ace (Endo Masashi), a young rockabilly and avid Guitar Wolf fan, the band members manage to escape the Captain, but not before robbing him and shooting off two of his fingers. Recognizing that Ace lives by the same Rock’n’Roll code of honor, Guitar Wolf makes him his blood brother and gives him a whistle with instructions to ‘blow it if you ever need help.’ Sure enough, Ace and his love interest Tobio (Shitichai Kwancharu) soon need help from the leather-clad rock stars to battle off a horde of zombies and save Earth from some nasty extraterrestrial invaders.
Tomomatsu Naoyuki’s Zombie Self-Defense Force (Zombi jietai) is one of the most ridiculous genre spoofs out there…and I mean ridiculous in a good way. A UFO crashes in a forest and releases radiation that can reanimate the dead. In close vicinity to the crash are a gang of yakuza and their chinpira lackeys, a photography crew on location to shoot a Japanese idol, and a few members of the Jietai (Japan Self-Defense Force) on a training mission. Pop idol Hitomi, Yuri (Watase Miyu) a female solider who is more than meets the eye, and a few others manage to survive the initial carnage. They band together and take cover in an isolated hotel. Zombie/alien/fetus/ghost/android madness ensues.
But, honestly, the actual plot is inconsequential. What the film lacks in budget and screenwriting it makes up for in some genuinely funny parodies.
Everyone who watches Japanese film knows about Versus. And for good reason, this is an awesome movie. I tend to shy away from movies that are excessively popular. This is because having never been popular myself, I harbor a deep subconscious resentment for all things that become popular. But, in this case, I will grudgingly accept that Versus has earned it’s popularity for good reason.
Written and directed by Kitamura Ryuhei, Versus stars Sakaguchi Tak and Sakaki Hideo in roles that garnered them huge cult status. Versus was so popular that it inspired the 2002 film Alive, starring the two actors in virtually identical roles and also directed by Kitamura.
After spending hours watching atrociously low-budget Japanese zombie films, Versus and the film’s amazingly choreographed action sequences look like works of art. This movie is a full throttle action movie. And, like any good action movie, the main characters are simply too cool for names.
The two main characters – Prisoner KSC2-303 (Sakaguchi Tak) and The Man (Sakaki Hideo) – are trapped in a karmic cycle where every century or two they must fight to the death over the entrance to the 444th Portal (the Japanese equivalent of 666), the power contained within it, and the life of a girl.
Crossbows - Locked and Loaded
The premise of Daybreakers is simple – vampires are real and have become the dominant species on the planet. But it’s not all sappy teen romance and glitter in the sunlight (thank god). As a result of the over-expansion of their population, vampires now suffer from a Malthusian curse. In other words, they’re about to drain the dwindling human population dry. Unlike humans, however, vampires don’t just quietly starve to death. Prolonged blood deprivation turns them into Nosferatu-like homicidal maniacs. Ethan Hawke plays Dr. Edward Dalton, a hematologist who is trying to develop an acceptable blood substitute, ideally one that doesn’t induce projectile vomiting and bloody, spontaneous combustion. Meanwhile, vampire society is undergoing an all-too-human transformation towards fascism (and clearly fascist society demands its citizens to dress in a melodramatic film noir style reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon circa Blade Runner). The new corporate-fascist society is run by none other than Sam Neill.
My YouTube video on this review shall be posted in the upcoming days. For now, here is the essay.
危ない義理のできる男色
What a sexy forelock
Oshima Nagisa’s 1999 film Gohatto is about desire and suspicion within the ranks of the Shinsengumi during the bakumatsu period. The film can be interpreted as both an examination of the destructive effects of desire within the brotherhood of the militia and as an allegorical criticism of the way modern Japanese society forces individuals to repress their desires for the sake of the group. While the second interpretation is entirely subjective, it is not unlikely given the fact that the director, Oshima Nagisa, commonly uses historical settings to criticize and examine modern society within his films. Furthermore, his failure to accurately reconstruct the sentiments of Tokugawa samurai during the mid-19th century within the film implies that Oshima Nagisa was more interested in using the subject matter to criticize modern society than in accurately reproducing the mentality of the time. It is clear that historical accuracy was not the primary concern of the director. Though Gohatto accurately portrays the environment and the official attitude of Tokugawa lawmakers towards shūdō (male-male relationships), its characters view the subject with an attitude that is far too modern.
Bushido: The Soul of Fanaticism
Hara-kiri’s Juxtaposition of Sensationalism and Reality
Anyone vaguely familiar with Japan has no doubt heard of samurai, the fiercely disciplined and loyal warriors who ruled over Japan for centuries. In the West, we like to believe that every samurai lived according to the philosophy of bushido, the Way of the Samurai. According to Japanese works, such as Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure and Yukio Mishima’s Patriotism, this belief is quite accurate. However, what many fail to realize is that these works are a misrepresentation of the samurai beliefs common during the Edo period (roughly 1600-1868) and exaggerate the historical and social significance of bushido. In reality, bushido is an artificial philosophy, written and followed by a fanatic minority who wished to cling to a bloody, militant past and was never accepted or followed by the majority of the samurai class. In Death, Honor, and Loyalty: The Bushido Ideal, G. Cameron Hurst states, “The few Tokugawa works which explicitly use the term bushido turn out, in fact, to be a very narrow stream of thought essentially out of touch with the broader spectrum of Neo-Confucian ideas to which most of the samurai class adhered” (515). However, the principles of bushido – and samurai philosophy in general – are unclear and poorly defined because they were never codified into a written ethical code. For the sake of clarity, this essay will concentrate on the interpretation of bushido found in Masaki Kobayashi’s 1963 film Hara-kiri, which artfully juxtaposes the fanatic bushido followed by the Iyi clan and the more moderate and rational actions of the ronin Tsugumo Hanshiro. While Tsugumo’s actions seem to conflict with the principles of samurai ethics according to bushido, they are actually a more realistic representation of the principles upheld by the samurai of that time. The ‘philosophy’ of bushido misinterprets these values in several ways; it completely disregards compassion as the key element in the virtues of honor, loyalty, and duty, has a rabid philosophy of ‘pure action,’ and has perverted an ‘acceptance of death’ into an obsessive cult of ritual mutilation and suicide.
This installment discusses Shimizu Takashi’s 2000 hit JU-ON.
J-Horror Classics – Shimizu Takashi’s JU-ON: THE GRUDGE
Despite the popularity of the 1998 RING, by 2000 it seemed like the Japanese horror boom had ended. At least, no films had been released that really could rival Nakata’s smash hit. In February, Shimizu Takashi released a straight-to-video film called JU-ON: THE CURSE. The production company expected it to a quick cash-in on the horror genre, nothing more. But Ju-On quickly became an underground hit much like The Ring had before it. The straight-to-video production of Ju-On had been made for the diehard purists, the kind of horror fans who line up to see movies on opening nights and whatnot. Realizing they could make a lot more on Ju-On, the studio funded a theatrical remake of the Ju-On which was released in theaters in January 2003 (This has been released in America as JU-ON: THE GRUDGE to distinguish itself from its predessor). The theatrical remake doesn’t offer too many changes to the original Ju-On story and has preserved the non-linear storyline that is a staple within the series. The only real change was the creation of the main character Nishina Rika, played by Okina Megumi. In fact, the roots of Ju-On can be traced all the way back to 1998.
I have included a critical review of The Ring to accompany my YouTube review…
The 1998 the release of Nakata Hideo’s RING (or RINGU) revolutionized not only the Japanese horror genre but in many way revitalized the Japanese film industry, which had toiled away in obscurity since the 1980s. The film was based off a novel of the same title written by author Suzuki Koji. The plotline of RING is probably known by pretty much anyone who watches film – there exists a haunted videotape that will kill you seven days after you watch it. Asakawa – a young reporter and single mother – finds herself cursed by the tape and must try and solve the mystery of its origins before her time runs out. Along the way she teams up with her ex-husband, who seems to possess some psychic ability himself, and accidentally exposes her young son to the curse as well. That is the plot line of the movie. The novel’s plot is actually quite different. Asakawa is actually a man who is fighting to protect his wife and daughter from the curse. Suzuki Koji, the author, states that this was a conscious choice made to highlight what he calls the ‘gendering’ of Japanese society. He feels that within modern Japanese society, the responsibility of raising the children is placed solely on the shoulders of women and that fathers play a very distant and uninvolved role.
The fourth episode of my Japanese film series can be found on my YouTube channel. I have also included a critical review of the film.
Shin Heike Monogatari Review
The 1955 film Shin Heike Monogatari follows the Taira clan’s early rise to power. It focuses on the political elements of the consolation of power around the Taira clan as well as the personal relationships between the main characters. Like the original manuscript of the Heike monogatari, the film idealizes the virtues of the samurai and cannot be considered completely accurate. However, despite some romantization, the film ultimately presents a fair depiction of samurai during this period, particularly their comparatively low social standing and the absence of a fully developed sense of a collective group identity.
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