Format: Region B Blu-ray, PAL, Japanese Dialogue with optional French Dub and English and French Subtitles. Region 2 DVD, PAL, Japanese Dialogue with optional French Dub and English and French Subtitles
Length: 98 minutes
Production Date: 2015
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
Tetsuko Arisugawa, known as Alice to her friends, and her novelist mother, Kayo, move to the small town of Ishinomori after her divorce. Alice, who is in her second year of high school (or middle school as our US friends call it) is not too keen on restarting in new town, but decides to make a go of it anyway. However things don’t go well from day one. The other students shun her seemingly because she was assigned a certain seat in the classroom by the teacher. Alice later discovers that the desk she sits in used to belong to someone named "Judas", who was murdered by four women also called Judas who were his wives who poisoned him. Utterly baffled as to what this all means, Alice attempts to pry more information out of a boy who teases her after school (well, she punches the info out of him). He tells her that the class had been cursed by the murder of Judas, a boy named Yuta, who had apparently married four girls in the class. He explains that the leader of the classroom, “Moo” (real name Mutsumi Mutsu) apparently possessed, had performed some sort of exorcism in the middle of class one day which purified her and the entire class.
At the end of classes as Alice is going home, one of her old friends from old hometown, Fuko, goes up to her to say hello. Both of them were previously in a ballet school there. Fuko convinces Alice to join the local ballet troop but is a little concerned that her mother can’t afford the classes. But when Alice asks her mother, she agrees to pay without hesitation. Walking past Alice’s house after school, Fuko becomes scared of the house next door which the local students refer to as the Flower Folly (or Flower House). A young girl can be seen regularly peeking out an upstairs window which naturally spooks the hell out of kids walking by. The next day after class has finished, Alice's classmates surround her and stop her from leaving the classroom. She fights most of the kids off but Moo explains they aren’t going to hurt her. What follows is a strange ritual where Moo removes the curse that has been placed on Alice. After this the shunning and bulling of Alice by the other students ceases. Later Alice thinks it’s a bit weird but is amazed that magic and spiritualism exists in such a small town. Alice’s mother explains to her that it’s just a bunch of superstitious nonsense.
Days later while out running in a park, Alice comes across her teacher speaking to her next door neighbour. After they finish talking she runs up to her teacher to find out what was going on. Alice’s neighbour is the mother of Hana Arai, a girl who is in her class but hasn’t come to school since the Judas incident. Hana is one who is peeping out the window in the Flower House. During the athletics carnival school, Alice has a run in with Moo. However the two of them soon begin to chat about the Judas incident after Moo discovers that Alice lives next door to Hana and tells her that she was bullied by the other kids and pretended to be possessed into order to stop them bulling her. Moo doesn’t actually know who Judas is as the incident happened before she came to the school, but she thinks Hana Arai does know.
Later Alice comes home and discovers mail for the old family who lived in her house, the Yutas. Having found some old test papers for Koutarou Yuta in her cupboard, Alice realises that the boy known as Judas used to live in her room. She is horrified that she lives in a room of a murdered person. Determined to get to the bottom of what is going on, she sneaks into her next door neighbour’s house in an attempt to talk to Hana. After being shocked at a stranger invading her house, Hana calms down and explains what the actual Judas incident was all about. Hana believes that Yuta just moved to another school and never died, but can’t be sure. She knows where his father works but isn’t sure where the family lives so can’t confirm if he is alive. Knowing that the Yuta family doesn’t know who Alice is, Hana concocts a plan with Alice at it's centre to find out the truth.
This film originally was scheduled as part of the 2015 Japanese Film Festival line up but bafflingly bypassed Canberra (but played in other cities) so I never got to see it in the cinema. The film has a strange history. It’s actually a prequel of Shunji Iwai’s 2004 live action feature “Hana and Alice”. Iwai is a bit of a darling of the Japanese cinema scene with critically acclaimed films such as “Swallowtail Butterfly”, a starring role in Hideaki Anno’s live action “Shiki-Jitsu”, a segment in the omnibus film “New York, I Love You” and probably his most famous work “All About Lily Chou-Chou”. An actual early version of the script for “The Case of Hana & Alice” was written as early as 2004, just after “Hana and Alice” was completed, however for some reason it was never actually green-lit. The reason why this film is animated and not in live action is because the two main actresses in the original film, Anne Suzuki (Hana) and Yuu Aoi (Alice), are 10 years older and of course no longer look like teenagers. An animated film is an easier way to continue the story than hiring new younger lookalike actresses.
Like the much maligned “The Flowers of Evil” anime series, the film is mostly rotoscoped (where live action actors are filmed, then traced over and coloured). For the most part this works, especially for the ballet sequences which are beautiful to watch. Some additional elements such as mouth movements have been exaggerated for effect. For some of the more dangerous sequences such as Alice dangling from a first storey window, CG models have been used, which quite frankly look awful. And the most bizarre thing is these CG models are used in sequences where you wouldn’t expect them to be such as two people walking down a school hallway. Why wasn’t such a mundane shot done as rotoscoping? Regardless, most of the shots in the film look brilliant. There are some strange camera angles which you wouldn’t normally see in an anime which I put down to Iwai’s experience as a live action director.
Being a prequel to an existing film, the question is do you need to have seen “Hana and Alice” to fully appreciate this film? I would say no, but watching the live action film certainly does expand your understanding of the two main characters. I decided to watch the film just before viewing “The Case of Hana & Alice”. The original film follows the rather humorous story of Hana who has the hots for a boy and takes advantage of his clumsiness when he walks into door and knocks himself out. She tells him he has amnesia and says that they were going out. The lie spirals out of control when she has to cover herself for a bunch of photos she covertly took of him which he discovers. Hana tells him that his ex-girlfriend Alice took them and she has to rope her into pretending that she is. Only problem is that Alice falls in love with the boy. I thought it was a touch too long at 135 minutes and has a tacked on sub plot of Alice being scouted by talent agency, which I thought added nothing to the film except for beautiful dance sequence at the end.
“The Case of Hana & Alice” references a number of scenes from the original film, most notably a sequence where Alice goes out to visit her father at a restaurant. The love interest from the first film, played by Tomohiro Kaku, also returns in a cameo as a teacher. There’s also a reference to the origins of the original film; a series of short films sponsored by Kit Kat as part of their 30th anniversary in Japan. Whereas the original film was quite humuorous with touches of melancholy, this film mostly does away with a lot of the melancholic moments. The last third of the film has the pair trailing what they believe is Yuta’s father but is in fact another employee of the company he works for. A hilarious comedy of errors ensures. The film explores and builds on the relationship between the two girls seen in the original and the “murder case” is really inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
The only English language version available is All the Anime’s dual DVD/BD set which is a dupe of their @Anime French label version released back in November. The two discs come in a digipak with a 20 page booklet which features a short message from Makoto Shinkai (for what reason, I’m not sure), a Shunji Iwai interview and an article on how they made the film. The only on disc extra is a 23 minute interview with (a pre “your name.”) Makoto Shinkai who gushes about Iwai’s work. The contents are housed in a chipboard box with three postcards and a slip case. Overall it’s quite an intriguing film, beautifully shot with an interesting story which at it's core is about a burgeoning friendship between two girls. The rotoscoped animation is to a large degree a distraction which doesn’t help in the story being told, especially with the CG models which are awful. But when it does all manage to work, it’s magnificent. 7.5 out of 10.
Remaining Backlog: Eight TV series, one OVA and two movies. In addition I am also waiting for the second part and movie of one TV series to be released before viewing it.
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