Publisher: ADV Films (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Dub and English Subtitles
Length: 86 minutes
Production Date: 1991
Currently in Print (as of writing): No
I really needed a change from reviewing my ever increasing backlog and do something else for a while. I saw on another blog that someone was doing up a series of articles on the worst anime ever made and asked readers for suggestions. Naturally the suggestions in the comments were pretty piss poor. People always conflate truly terrible anime with shows they just simply don’t like ("Wings of Honneamise" ain't the worst anime made kids). Plus the blog author bizarrely limited the choices to TV series, not OVAs or movies. There aren’t that many truly terrible TV series to begin with. I thought I could do better (heck, a lot of people could) so I’m going to have a crack at writing up a series on truly terrible anime myself. I hope to do one review per month, but of course that’s probably not going to happen.
First up is the movie version of “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas”; set three years after the conclusion of the TV series, we find Nadia living in London and working as a cadet newspaper reporter for the Planet Times. Nadia plans to make herself fully independent before returning to France to live with Jean. However the editor really has no intention of letting her report on any stories and only has her making tea for him. The biggest news sweeping the world is that several world leaders and top ranking military personnel have mysteriously vaporised into clouds of steam. Because of these strange occurrences and other tensions throughout the world, the globe is on the brink of a world war. Meanwhile Jean has returned to his home in Le Havre, France where he continues being an inventor with a bicycle repair business on the side to make ends meet.
One morning on the beach, Jean sees a young woman washed up on the rocks. He immediately takes her back to his home and nurses her back to health. She eventually awakens but for some reason can only remember her name, Fuzzy. Meanwhile back in London, the prime minster disappears in a puff of steam while watching a play at the theatre. The reporters and editor rush out to get the story leaving Nadia to mind the office. The phone rings and Nadia answers. On the other end is a man clamming to know about the recent mysterious evaporations. The man on the other end is doubtful that she is a journalist; however he arranges a covert meeting with her that night in a local pub as he is being followed. While deciding to whether or not to enter the rather dingy looking pub, the man suddenly appears and drags Nadia down an alleyway to talk with her privately.
He introduces himself as Frei and immediately recognises her as Princess Nadia. Nadia asks who he is. He admits he worked for Neo Atlantis and later worked for a new organisation which he has now betrayed. He gives Nadia and envelope of documents, but before he explains what they are three men in trench coats appear and try to capture the pair. Frei shoots one of them who vaporises just like the recent cases with world leaders and military men. A scuffle ensues with Frei being shot and killed and Nadia being captured. However Nadia manages to escape. She takes one of the documents from the envelope and hurriedly posts the remainder to Jean in Le Harve in a nearby post box. The next day Nadia researches the man who wrote the document she kept, Dr Albert Whola. Apparently he was working on some form of new energy that he discovered inside all living creatures which is used by all beings throughout the cosmos. Whola had to abandon his research after he was ostracised by the scientific community who were pressured by religious leaders. He disappeared soon after along with his daughter Fuzzy.
Nadia then discovers that Whola’s research was used to create robots which have replaced most world leaders and top military brass. She takes her findings to her editor who immediately dismisses it. However the owner of the paper intervenes and asks Nadia to come to his office to discuss her story. Nadia thinks she’s cracked a big story and will finally be a published journalist with a lead story, but instead the owner shoots her with a tranquiliser dart. Nadia awakens to find herself inside a Neo Atlantean submarine. A white haired man enters and introduces himself as Geiger, an ex-member of the defeated Neo Atlantean group. He tells Nadia that he plans to send the world towards annihilation via a world war. He has asked Whola to create robots of world leaders and top military personnel in order to make this happen. Geiger asks Nadia where the documents she took from Feit are. She refuses to tell them, however Geiger suspects she sent them to Jean. Back in Le Harve, Jean returns home to find a group of people attempting to abduct Fuzzy. It’s the Grandis Gang who are now freelancing for Geiger. Jean is knocked out and the gang attempt to find the documents that Nadia sent him. But they soon give up after searching and decide to take Fuzzy anyway to claim their money from Geiger. Jean later awakens and finds the documents Nadia sent him in his mail box. Realising that Nadia is in danger and wanting to recuse Fuzzy, he sets off for London.
This film is nothing more than a terrible and cynical attempt on co-producers NHK and Toho’s part to quickly cash in on the success of the original “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas” TV series. Released only two months after the TV series finished broadcast, it’s obvious that the production was rushed and not well thought out. According to the article on Japanese Wikipedia, apparently Gainax (who produced the original TV series) was set to produce the movie as well. However by the 22nd episode of the series, director Hideaki Anno had already left the project (Shinji Higuchi directed the remaining 17 episodes) as he was completely burnt out. NHK and Toho Pictures realised that Gainax could not be counted on to make the film, so made their own independently from the studio, handing production to Group TAC and Korean animation studio Seiei Animation. The resulting movie did not have any input from any of the key creative staff of the original series. The film’s staff only had tenuous links to Gainax; the director of this film, Sho Aono, was an episode director for one of the latter episodes of the TV series. Screenwriter Kaoru Umeno also did several scripts for the TV series, but not much else of note in her short career. This film also seems to be Kouichi Takada’s only character designing credit. He mostly does storyboards for a living.
As a result, this film only barely has any real connection between it and the end of the TV series. Worse still is the 25 minute recap of old animation from the TV series which appears only five minutes into the runtime of the movie. According to Japanese Wikipedia, Gainax edited the 25 minute digest for the film. I’m not sure if this is really true. The digest is pretty much near incomprehensible if you hadn’t seen the TV series in its entirety. The digest not only highlights the fact the story in the TV series was much better, but the animation was also far superior, and even the animation from the much maligned “Island Episodes” is shown to be several notches above this film. There’s a lot of off model animation and quite a lot of shoddy camera work with slightly out of focus shots and shadows between the cels and backgrounds. It’s most certainly not theatrical quality animation.
The story is pretty silly as well. How the remnants of Neo Atlantis survive is of course never explained. The science behind Dr Albert Whola’s robots is also never explained either. Why would his robots just up and evaporate into steam? And of course that stupid light sabre thing the robots stick in their ear when they communicate with Geiger is just dumb. The science behind the mysterious cosmic energy in all living creatures is utterly silly gobbledygook that doesn’t make one iota of sense. The girl named Fuzzy (an utterly daft name), besides serving as a link between Nadia and Jean, her role in the film is pointless in the end. Why would the Neo Atlanteans need to recover her if her father sent her way, helped by one of the Neo Atlanteans cohorts? To top it off the new characters, especially the sub-characters look awful. It just seems not a great deal of effort when into designing them. And the animators really massacred them as well. It’s patently obvious that Toho and NHK didn’t care about the end product. It just feels cobbled together with little thought or care.
Believe it or not, this film was screened in theatres with a live action version of “Video Girl Ai”. Admittedly that live action adaption doesn’t seem too bad when compared with this film (at least from the first 20 minutes I’ve seen of it). Like “Video Girl Ai”, the movie version of “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas” has been long forgotten by Japanese anime fans. While a couple of artbooks were released to cash in, the film itself only got VHS and laserdisc releases and was never reissued on DVD or Blu-ray. However outside of Japan, the film has been released on DVD in Germany and France. In 2002 ADV Films released and dubbed the film for a DVD release, however didn’t reissue it on Blu-ray when Sentai Filmworks released the TV series on Blu-ray, possibly because it was never remastered in high definition. The long out of print ADV Films DVD does contain a creditless ending and the original opening credits (the DVD has overlaid English credits on the feature), but nothing else in terms of extras. I must note at this point that the film is only subtitled "The Secret of Fuzzy" in Europe (despite what some English sources say). The Japanese title is the unimaginative "Nadia of the Mysterious Seas".
There are a couple of bright spots in the film; the climax is reasonably well done and the end theme song, “My Precious Trick Star ~Yasashisa o Kureta Anata e~” performed by Silk (Kinuko Oomori’s band), is great. Other than that, it’s a completely mediocre film. It’s a poorly scripted, designed and animated waste of space. It’s what happens when producers do not care about the product and only want to make a quick buck off a profitable franchise. You couldn’t even recommend this one for diehard fans of the original TV series. Admittedly this probably wasn't the best film to kick this series of blog posts off with (as it’s more highly mediocre than really awful), however don’t fear. I have a large list of truly bad anime that I will be subjecting you to over the remainder of the year.
My new and old writings on anime,tokusatsu, music, local theatrical releases, the occasional look back at my visits to Japan and life in general
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Anime On the Big Screen: “A Silent Voice”
Venue: Dendy Cinemas, Level 2, North Quarter, Canberra Centre, 148 Bunda Street, Canberra City, ACT
Date: Friday 7 April 2017
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Format: Digital Projection, Japanese dialogue with English subtitles
Length: 129 minutes
Production Date: 2016
Currently on Home Video in English (as of writing): No
After watching “Ghost in the Shell” the previous day, I ventured into town to watch Naoko Yamada’s (“K-On!”, “Tamako Market”) new film. Madman is really spoiling anime fans in this country with so many recent theatrical releases. I suppose with digital projection, the cost for screening these types of films has gone down dramatically. In the old days you’d have to get 35mm prints and burn the translation into a pre-existing print. A rather costly affair. At any rate there seems to be a substantial market for theatrical releases of anime films here. Like the rather niche “Sword Art Online the movie: Ordinal Scale” (which I didn’t see), this film is also a limited release. Even for a late morning screening on a work day I was surprised to see that around 15 people had shown up. I’ve noticed in the last couple of years the demographic for these screenings has changed; there’s a lot more people of Asian descent, more variations in age and less otaku types. Although for this screening there were more than a few otaku types in attendance. One guy had a “Attack on Titan” jacket on. Anyway, on to the film itself…
This film is based on a manga by Yoshitoki Oima was originally published in Weekly Shonen Magazine during 2013 and 2014. Shouya Ishida is a rough, spiky haired young boy in late primary school. One day a new girl transfers into his class, Shouko Nishimiya. Much to the class' astonishment when Shouko introduces herself she reveals she is deaf. She tells everyone that she would like to communicate via a spiral ring notepad that she writes on. Initially everyone is curious and welcoming to Shouko. One girl who is close to Shouya, Naoka Ueno, takes it upon herself to help the newcomer. However Shouya along with his best friends, Kazuki Shimada and Keisuke Hirose begin to bully Shouko. But despite the harassment, Shouko continues to try and be best friends with everyone and to keep a smile on her face. Eventually Naoka tires of helping Shouko and joins in the bullying, as well as other class members.
The bullying becomes worse with Shouya constantly taking Shouko’s hearing aids and throwing them out the window or tossing them in water fountains. Eventually Shouko’s mother intervenes and the school principal lectures the class and asks who is bullying her. The class put all the blame on Shouya who tries to argue that other members of the class were in on the bullying too. However no one listens to him. Soon the bully becomes the bullied with the entire class shunning him and his former friends Kazuki and Keisuke beating him up after school. The school advises his mother of what he has done and later when he sees his mother compensating Shouko’s mother for the destroyed hearing aids, the he realises the full extent of his actions. The class are later advised that Shouko has transferred to another school.
As Shouya enters high school, he loses contact with his former schoolmates, however he does not make new friends and becomes rather isolated. In late high school he decides to end it all. He saves up money to compensate his mother, quits his job and sells his possessions. He attempts suicide but can’t bring himself to do it. His mother finds out and is furious at him and makes him promise to not to do it again. Soon after he unexpectedly runs into Shouko and decides to redeem himself. He learns sign language in an attempt to apologise to her. However a young boy at the sign language centre she visits claims that he is her boyfriend and blocks him from seeing her. He eventually manages to avoid the “boyfriend” and little by little begins to reconcile with her, though naturally she initially is reluctant to want to talk to him. Meanwhile a friendship begins between a stocky curly haired boy called Tomohiro Nagatsuka and Shouya after he manages to stop a bully stealing Tomohiro’s bike.
These two budding friendships raise Shouya’s self-esteem enough for him to believe that he can have friendships and relationships with others again. He attempts to contact his former classmates in order to reconcile with everyone. Some are far more willing to do so than others. In the midst of all of this tragedies and triumphs do occur. Shouya often find himself advancing then taking three steps back and starting again. However Shouya is completely unaware of the deep seated unhappiness that has taken root within Shouko.
This is the third film that Naoko Yamada has directed and her first that isn’t a sequel to a TV series (“Tamako Love Story” should be coming out in English this year or next, which makes me very happy). It’s great that there are so many established and emerging female directors in anime now. I really liked Yamada’s direction in “K-On!”, “Tamako Market” and her work on “Sound! Euphonium”. She’s a very interesting director who is quite details orientated. For example in an early scene Yamada concentrates on a young Shouya playing with the lead in his clutch pencil from his perspective. Shouko’s habit of feeding koi fish in the local stream also allows Yamada to craft some very interesting underwater sequences. The best being an underwater shot of one of the fish as it seems to swim past the moon. While the film doesn’t play with light as beautifully as other Kyoto Animation productions such as “Sound! Euphonium”, there are still a number of really beautifully rendered sequences such as fireworks at a summer festival and a rollercoaster ride at a theme park.
The character animation isn’t too bad at all either. Emotions come across very clearly from all characters in the rather large ensemble. However I had a few problems with the film. From what I can gather a far whack of material has been cut from the manga including various subplots and character explorations. I’ve read reviews that suggest the movie is both too long and not long enough. I sort of understand where these criticisms are coming from. I think due to the rather large cast there isn’t enough time to explore the motivations of each character. Possibly a few characters could have been cut in order to simplify the story for the sake of the film.
Possibly the other problem I had with this film was that it really, really, hit close to home for me. When I was in high school we did have a deaf girl in my class. I can still clearly remember her as she had an epileptic seizure in class one day. It was first time I had seen anyone suffer such a thing. The teacher was madly trying to remove all of the chairs and tables out of the way until she stopped. I had no idea what to do. That girl was more expressive than Shouko, but was still was teased by classmates due to the way she spoke. I must applaud Saori Hayami’s portrayal of Shouko. In my limited experience she sounds very much like a deaf girl speaking.
I personally found myself empathising with Shouya. While I never have been a bully, I have been bullied pretty much from the first grade right through to the end of high school. Though in the film, you sort of realise that bullying in Japanese schools is on some next level shit. Watching, listening to and reading Japanese pop culture for the last 20 or so years, it really puzzles me that the high school years are romanticised so much. It’s patently obvious that a lot of bullying goes on in high schools (and continues on in the workplace to a degree), yet high school in pop culture is often portrayed as the best years of a Japanese person’s life. In reality it’s often the post high school years, entering college (often a rather easy and free lifestyle, paid by cashed up parents if you’re middle class), which are the best. I don’t think I’ll fully understand the incredible nostalgic pull high school seems to have over many in the Japanese population.
The film portrays the process of attempting to reconcile with people you’ve wronged (or have wronged you) in the past fairly accurately. I mean some people are just arseholes when they were kids and as adults they haven’t changed one iota. Naoka Ueno is one of the more interesting characters. She has an underlying attachment to Shouya and strangely blames Shouko for Shouya’s isolation from the rest of his schoolmates. Shouko’s little sister Yuzuru is also another stand out character. It’s patiently obvious that she is not coping with her family situation at all and her photography of dead insects and animals are not only a symptom of that but also a cry for help at attempting to help her sister cope with what she is going through.
While the film does rather successfully deal with a lot of serious issues such as mental illness, suicide, bullying, loss, grief and being a single parent (often with large doses of humour and a romantic subplot to boot), it does feel rather schmaltzy at times, sometimes to the point of mawkishness. I would have liked a lot of this to be toned down a bit, which I guess in reality would be hard considering the content. While I think Yamada has done a pretty good job of adapting the source material, one thing which sticks out like nobody’s business is the visualisation of Shouya’s aversion to looking people in the eye. It’s a purple cross over people’s faces. This may have worked a treat in the original manga, but here in an animated film it just seems strange. I’m really not sure why Yamada decided to keep this element of the manga when there were other options she could have used to invoke the same sense of isolation.
In conclusion this isn’t a bad film at all. However it was a bit overly sentimental for my liking and some of the visual elements ported over from the manga plainly did not work. I personally had some issues with parts of the material which at times made me feel uncomfortable; however this is not the fault of the film. Having said that Yamada’s direction and sense of where to place the camera and sense of timing are pretty exceptional. I think with the right script and material she could (and should) be up there with directors like Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda. I must also mention the soundtrack which always complements the mood in each scene. Of note is the unusual use of The Who’s “My Generation” in the opening credits. Hopefully that will be retained in any English language video release. But due to various issues I had with it, I can really only give this film a 6.5 out of 10.
Date: Friday 7 April 2017
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Format: Digital Projection, Japanese dialogue with English subtitles
Length: 129 minutes
Production Date: 2016
Currently on Home Video in English (as of writing): No
After watching “Ghost in the Shell” the previous day, I ventured into town to watch Naoko Yamada’s (“K-On!”, “Tamako Market”) new film. Madman is really spoiling anime fans in this country with so many recent theatrical releases. I suppose with digital projection, the cost for screening these types of films has gone down dramatically. In the old days you’d have to get 35mm prints and burn the translation into a pre-existing print. A rather costly affair. At any rate there seems to be a substantial market for theatrical releases of anime films here. Like the rather niche “Sword Art Online the movie: Ordinal Scale” (which I didn’t see), this film is also a limited release. Even for a late morning screening on a work day I was surprised to see that around 15 people had shown up. I’ve noticed in the last couple of years the demographic for these screenings has changed; there’s a lot more people of Asian descent, more variations in age and less otaku types. Although for this screening there were more than a few otaku types in attendance. One guy had a “Attack on Titan” jacket on. Anyway, on to the film itself…
This film is based on a manga by Yoshitoki Oima was originally published in Weekly Shonen Magazine during 2013 and 2014. Shouya Ishida is a rough, spiky haired young boy in late primary school. One day a new girl transfers into his class, Shouko Nishimiya. Much to the class' astonishment when Shouko introduces herself she reveals she is deaf. She tells everyone that she would like to communicate via a spiral ring notepad that she writes on. Initially everyone is curious and welcoming to Shouko. One girl who is close to Shouya, Naoka Ueno, takes it upon herself to help the newcomer. However Shouya along with his best friends, Kazuki Shimada and Keisuke Hirose begin to bully Shouko. But despite the harassment, Shouko continues to try and be best friends with everyone and to keep a smile on her face. Eventually Naoka tires of helping Shouko and joins in the bullying, as well as other class members.
The bullying becomes worse with Shouya constantly taking Shouko’s hearing aids and throwing them out the window or tossing them in water fountains. Eventually Shouko’s mother intervenes and the school principal lectures the class and asks who is bullying her. The class put all the blame on Shouya who tries to argue that other members of the class were in on the bullying too. However no one listens to him. Soon the bully becomes the bullied with the entire class shunning him and his former friends Kazuki and Keisuke beating him up after school. The school advises his mother of what he has done and later when he sees his mother compensating Shouko’s mother for the destroyed hearing aids, the he realises the full extent of his actions. The class are later advised that Shouko has transferred to another school.
As Shouya enters high school, he loses contact with his former schoolmates, however he does not make new friends and becomes rather isolated. In late high school he decides to end it all. He saves up money to compensate his mother, quits his job and sells his possessions. He attempts suicide but can’t bring himself to do it. His mother finds out and is furious at him and makes him promise to not to do it again. Soon after he unexpectedly runs into Shouko and decides to redeem himself. He learns sign language in an attempt to apologise to her. However a young boy at the sign language centre she visits claims that he is her boyfriend and blocks him from seeing her. He eventually manages to avoid the “boyfriend” and little by little begins to reconcile with her, though naturally she initially is reluctant to want to talk to him. Meanwhile a friendship begins between a stocky curly haired boy called Tomohiro Nagatsuka and Shouya after he manages to stop a bully stealing Tomohiro’s bike.
These two budding friendships raise Shouya’s self-esteem enough for him to believe that he can have friendships and relationships with others again. He attempts to contact his former classmates in order to reconcile with everyone. Some are far more willing to do so than others. In the midst of all of this tragedies and triumphs do occur. Shouya often find himself advancing then taking three steps back and starting again. However Shouya is completely unaware of the deep seated unhappiness that has taken root within Shouko.
This is the third film that Naoko Yamada has directed and her first that isn’t a sequel to a TV series (“Tamako Love Story” should be coming out in English this year or next, which makes me very happy). It’s great that there are so many established and emerging female directors in anime now. I really liked Yamada’s direction in “K-On!”, “Tamako Market” and her work on “Sound! Euphonium”. She’s a very interesting director who is quite details orientated. For example in an early scene Yamada concentrates on a young Shouya playing with the lead in his clutch pencil from his perspective. Shouko’s habit of feeding koi fish in the local stream also allows Yamada to craft some very interesting underwater sequences. The best being an underwater shot of one of the fish as it seems to swim past the moon. While the film doesn’t play with light as beautifully as other Kyoto Animation productions such as “Sound! Euphonium”, there are still a number of really beautifully rendered sequences such as fireworks at a summer festival and a rollercoaster ride at a theme park.
The character animation isn’t too bad at all either. Emotions come across very clearly from all characters in the rather large ensemble. However I had a few problems with the film. From what I can gather a far whack of material has been cut from the manga including various subplots and character explorations. I’ve read reviews that suggest the movie is both too long and not long enough. I sort of understand where these criticisms are coming from. I think due to the rather large cast there isn’t enough time to explore the motivations of each character. Possibly a few characters could have been cut in order to simplify the story for the sake of the film.
Possibly the other problem I had with this film was that it really, really, hit close to home for me. When I was in high school we did have a deaf girl in my class. I can still clearly remember her as she had an epileptic seizure in class one day. It was first time I had seen anyone suffer such a thing. The teacher was madly trying to remove all of the chairs and tables out of the way until she stopped. I had no idea what to do. That girl was more expressive than Shouko, but was still was teased by classmates due to the way she spoke. I must applaud Saori Hayami’s portrayal of Shouko. In my limited experience she sounds very much like a deaf girl speaking.
I personally found myself empathising with Shouya. While I never have been a bully, I have been bullied pretty much from the first grade right through to the end of high school. Though in the film, you sort of realise that bullying in Japanese schools is on some next level shit. Watching, listening to and reading Japanese pop culture for the last 20 or so years, it really puzzles me that the high school years are romanticised so much. It’s patently obvious that a lot of bullying goes on in high schools (and continues on in the workplace to a degree), yet high school in pop culture is often portrayed as the best years of a Japanese person’s life. In reality it’s often the post high school years, entering college (often a rather easy and free lifestyle, paid by cashed up parents if you’re middle class), which are the best. I don’t think I’ll fully understand the incredible nostalgic pull high school seems to have over many in the Japanese population.
The film portrays the process of attempting to reconcile with people you’ve wronged (or have wronged you) in the past fairly accurately. I mean some people are just arseholes when they were kids and as adults they haven’t changed one iota. Naoka Ueno is one of the more interesting characters. She has an underlying attachment to Shouya and strangely blames Shouko for Shouya’s isolation from the rest of his schoolmates. Shouko’s little sister Yuzuru is also another stand out character. It’s patiently obvious that she is not coping with her family situation at all and her photography of dead insects and animals are not only a symptom of that but also a cry for help at attempting to help her sister cope with what she is going through.
While the film does rather successfully deal with a lot of serious issues such as mental illness, suicide, bullying, loss, grief and being a single parent (often with large doses of humour and a romantic subplot to boot), it does feel rather schmaltzy at times, sometimes to the point of mawkishness. I would have liked a lot of this to be toned down a bit, which I guess in reality would be hard considering the content. While I think Yamada has done a pretty good job of adapting the source material, one thing which sticks out like nobody’s business is the visualisation of Shouya’s aversion to looking people in the eye. It’s a purple cross over people’s faces. This may have worked a treat in the original manga, but here in an animated film it just seems strange. I’m really not sure why Yamada decided to keep this element of the manga when there were other options she could have used to invoke the same sense of isolation.
In conclusion this isn’t a bad film at all. However it was a bit overly sentimental for my liking and some of the visual elements ported over from the manga plainly did not work. I personally had some issues with parts of the material which at times made me feel uncomfortable; however this is not the fault of the film. Having said that Yamada’s direction and sense of where to place the camera and sense of timing are pretty exceptional. I think with the right script and material she could (and should) be up there with directors like Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda. I must also mention the soundtrack which always complements the mood in each scene. Of note is the unusual use of The Who’s “My Generation” in the opening credits. Hopefully that will be retained in any English language video release. But due to various issues I had with it, I can really only give this film a 6.5 out of 10.
Friday, April 7, 2017
Hollywood Adaptations of Anime and Manga On the Big Screen: “Ghost in the Shell”
Venue: Hoyts Belconnen, Westfield Belconnen, Level 3, 18 Benjamin Way, Belconnen, ACT
Date: Thursday 6 April 2017
Distributor: Paramount Pictures Australia
Format: Digital Projection, English dialogue with some Japanese dialogue and English subtitles
Length: 106 minutes
Production Date: 2017
Currently on Home Video (as of writing): No
Ignoring everything written about it, I decided to go watch this film on the second last day of my annual leave. Thinking it would be cheaper before 4pm (it wasn’t) and wanting to park for free (as well as wanting to do a few other things on that side of town) I traveled all the way over to Belconnen. Gawd, there are some dodgy looking people in that area now. It didn’t seem that that way when I first lived there back in the mid 1990’s. The township’s demographic has also substantially changed in the last decade or so. There are a lot of Chinese immigrants here now. Not sure why they have congregated here and not spread out more over the city, which is interesting.
The other thing which surprised me was the metamorphosis that Hoyts has undertaken. It’s fucking awful and soulless. There’s a Ben & Jerry’s in one corner and a whole heap of things in your way from the box office to the cinemas just to make you buy shit. This must have been a recent change as workers were seemingly putting the finishing touches to various areas of the interior. The cinemas themselves had changed too, with the one I was in being all reclining seats. This made it rather difficult to sit up straight, but at least they were comfortable. Around 25 people showed up for a 1pm screening on a weekday which did surprise me. And despite the whole “whitewashing controversy” the vast majority of cinema goers were Chinese or Korean. Obviously they weren’t perturbed by the lack of an Asian lead in the film, unlike everyone else making noise about it (i.e. mostly “white people”).
Unfortunately some of the patrons in front of me decided to play with the phones on and off during the entire film. There’s nothing worse than trying to concentrate on a film and seeing the light of a mobile phone flicker on and off in the corner of your vision. This shitty little group also decided to talk on and off during the film, just barely audible enough to be distracting. Hey kids, how about watching the film or fucking off? I felt like slapping them and hurling their phones across the cinema. The audience also had to endure 25 minutes worth of adverts and film trailers for nothing but truly terrible Hollywood sequels and remakes. Why do we need a big screen remake of “Baywatch” with really bad jokes and lame dialogue?
Anyway, on to the movie; set sometime in a future Hong Kong, the city now looks like a hyperreal version of Los Angeles in “Blade Runner”. A young woman named Mira Killian (played by Scarlett Johansson) has survived a terrorist attack and is taken in by the robotics division of multinational corporation Hanka. She awakens and is told by her physician, Dr Ouelet (Juliette Binoche, Julie Vignon de Courcy in the “Three Colours” film trilogy), that her body had been virtually destroyed and that her brain has been transferred into that of a very human-like cyborg body. Against the objections of Ouelet, Hanka CEO, Cutter (Peter Ferdinando), orders Killian to be transferred to Section 9, an outsourced government counter-terrorism group run by Hanka.
A year on and Killian has earned the rank of major in Section 9 and functions as the group’s leader. Section 9 is headed up by Daisuke Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano) who essentially gives the group orders, sometimes handed down directly from Cutter. While the team is made up of several specialised members, Major Killian has very close ties to one of her underlings, Batou (Pilou Asbæk, best known for his portrayal as Euron Greyjoy in “Game of Thrones”). Batou is quite protective of her. Section 9 is given the task of rescuing delegates at Hanka business dinner as the hacked Geisha android hosts take the delegates hostage. After rescuing the delegates and destroying one of the Geishas, Killian begins to wonder if she is really a robot and not a human. Batou assures her she is human. Later Killian begins seeing strange visions and is concerned that she cannot remember her past. Dr Ouelet dismisses her concerns as glitches in her software. Section 9 soon discover the culprit behind the Geisha attack was someone known as Kuze. Killian decides to dive into the remaining Geisha robot’s brain in order to obtain more information. Though it is a risky move, Killian discovers that the Geisha is linked to a seedy nightclub. Killian and Batou infiltrate the club but soon discover the culprit has trapped them. Both fight off their attackers and explore the rooms behind the club’s façade, only to find a booby trap in the form of a massive bomb. The resulting explosion severely injuries Killian and destroys Batou’s eyes which he replaces with cyborg versions.
Kuze’s next move is to hack into sanitation workers and make them kill Section 9's consultant, Dr Dahlin (Anamaria Marinca, Dita in “The Politician's Husband”). With the deaths of several Hanka researchers and scientists, Section 9 realise that Dr Ouelet is next in line to be assassinated. Using one of the sanitation workers captured by Section 9, Kuse hacks his vocal cords and briefly taunts Section 9 before compelling the sanitation working to commit suicide. However Section 9 manage to track the location of Kuze’s hack before his death. There they find nearly a hundred people mentally linked together as a makeshift signal network for Kuze. Kuse uses his underlings to capture Killian where he tells her that the scientists at Hanka stole her memories and identity. Kuze then frees her and makes his escape. Later Killian confronts Dr Ouelet who confirms Killian’s worst fears. Cutter decides that Killian is too much of a risk and orders Section 9 to exterminate her.
Let’s put the elephant in the room to bed for once and all; outside of western anime fandom and western media, no one really gives a flying fuck about the supposed “whitewashing” in this film. It’s a commercial product (with a budget of the size of the GDP of a small African nation) from a large Hollywood movie studio, hence the reason why they got a bankable star as the lead. Go name an Asian female lead that the public knows, just one. Most of the complaints about this are from people who aren’t fans of the franchise or really don’t understand it. Masumune Shirow himself said that Major Motoko Kusanagi is to a certain degree stateless and chose a body that was generic to avoid her parts being harvested. I have also read that Shirow stated that Kusanagi chose a Caucasian body, however I can find no evidence whatsoever that he actually said this.
Overall the cast is quite diverse with Takeshi Kitano, Pilou Asbæk, Juliette Binoche, Chin Han (as Togusa) and Danusia Samal (as Section 9’s weapons specialist Ladriya), so to say the film whitewashes the characters totally misses the forest for the trees. Focusing on Scarlett Johansson and not the rest of the film misrepresents it as whole. Killian’s origins are exposed later in the film and it totally fits in with the promotional material in regards to her past and memories being stolen. Another recent article I’ve read interviews several Japanese American actresses (none who were born in or lived in Japan as far as I’m aware) who criticise the casting, the “twist ending” and how a Japanese woman in the film expressed herself. Again I think this is rather myopic and doesn’t view the film as a whole or understand that this film is made for a worldwide audience, not a Japanese one or one that was quite familiar with Japanese traits and social behaviour (and let's be honest, a lot of these are completely alien to those outside Japan).
One of the key themes in this film is loss of identity. It is rather amusing that most of the critics of the film failed to pick this up. I note again that the audience I saw the film with where almost entirely Chinese origin with some Koreans and very few westerners. They obviously had no problem paying to watch this film. The Japanese media also don’t give a crap about the whole “whitewashing controversy”. They vast majority of people making noise about it are Americans who are absolutely obsessed with race in entertainment, rather than actually being concerned about the content and themes presented in that media. I do love to see casting against type as it makes cinema far more interesting. However I personally I don’t give a shit about demographics or ticking ethnic, disabled or gender boxes, especially when it's at the detriment of the story being told. Just give me an entertaining film and screw the annoying and frustrating politics.
Admittedly due to the negativity surrounding this film, I had set a pretty low bar for it. However it passed that bar with flying colours. I was initially rather taken aback by the futuristic setting of Hong Kong which looked a lot like the Los Angeles of 2019 in “Blade Runner” on steroids. It looked garish and absurd but as the film progressed it made sense to me and seemed a plausible view of what the future may look like, especially for those with augmented brains. The film replicates scenes and concepts mostly from the first anime film as well as taking bits and pieces from “Innocence (Ghost in the Shell 2)”, “Stand Alone Complex” and the manga. Unlike the “Arise” film series which also reused and reinterpreted sequences from the manga and previous anime adaptations, here it feels rather fresh and different. In “Arise” it just felt uninspired. The film also does seem to understand the messages and themes of the original manga and anime adaptations such as identity, hackers implanting false memories and forcing people to commit crimes against their will etc. I really liked how several ideas from all versions of the anime were mashed up to create new concepts for this film. Kuze for example is taken from “Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig”, but infuses the same ideas from Puppet Master and Project 2501 from the manga and first anime film.
Scarlett Johansson portrays Major Mira Killian as someone who is tough on the outside, but also quite vulnerable as she searches for her true identity. One of the more interesting sequences is where Killian hires a sex worker and then proceeds to caress her face ask if she really human. It really portrayed Killian as woman confused about her identity and not feeling human within her cyborg shell. I thought this was a rather intriguing take on the major we are all familiar with. Pilou Asbæk also does a great interpretation of Batou. It’s patently obvious he has great affection for Killian and Asbæk’s performance expresses that brilliantly and effortlessly.
While most of the film looked gorgeous, some of the design aspects didn’t work for me. The obvious one is Killian’s flesh coloured battle suit which looks a bit silly. The other thing which I was surprised about that the optic camouflage systems used to great effect in the anime adaptations were underutilised in this film. While most of the acting in this film was pretty good, Takeshi Kitano’s Daisuke Aramaki shat me. Essentially he just growled his lines in Japanese and sat about. When he did leap into action he hobbled about like an old man. I really don’t understand why they chose him for this film. Why not Ken Watanabe or some other Japanese actor who has more range and doesn’t look like they’ve had a stroke? Of course the most baffling thing is why all of Kitano’s dialogue is in Japanese and everyone else’s is in English? You could put that down to everyone having augmented brains and being able to translate it instantaneously, but for example, why don’t we hear anyone speak Cantonese since its set in Hong Kong?
Overall I quite liked this film. Though this is only the second film Rupert Sanders has directed (“Snow White and the Huntsman” was his first, he was previously a director for high end commercials), it looks fantastic. As I said before he seems to understand the concepts behind the franchise and injects new material such as Killian’s confusion between her cyborg body and human mind, her search for original identity and interestingly the outsourcing of government tasks to the private sector (in Hanka’s handling of Section 9) and the conflicts, overreach and corruption that can cause. What impressed me is that even though the material was based on something I was quite familiar with (and lifted almost shot for shot from some sections of the first anime film), it did feel rather fresh and new. Despite a few problems I have with the film, this is easily one of the better if not the best Hollywood adaption of anime and/or manga material so far. Admittedly that’s not a high bar to jump. I think it’s a such a shame that the stupid “whitewashing controversy” has just about drowned out anything positive people have to say about the film. It’s already set to make a loss of $60 million. I am going to give this film a solid 7 out of 10. I was going to give it .5 more, but on balance a 7 is more than fair.
Date: Thursday 6 April 2017
Distributor: Paramount Pictures Australia
Format: Digital Projection, English dialogue with some Japanese dialogue and English subtitles
Length: 106 minutes
Production Date: 2017
Currently on Home Video (as of writing): No
Ignoring everything written about it, I decided to go watch this film on the second last day of my annual leave. Thinking it would be cheaper before 4pm (it wasn’t) and wanting to park for free (as well as wanting to do a few other things on that side of town) I traveled all the way over to Belconnen. Gawd, there are some dodgy looking people in that area now. It didn’t seem that that way when I first lived there back in the mid 1990’s. The township’s demographic has also substantially changed in the last decade or so. There are a lot of Chinese immigrants here now. Not sure why they have congregated here and not spread out more over the city, which is interesting.
The other thing which surprised me was the metamorphosis that Hoyts has undertaken. It’s fucking awful and soulless. There’s a Ben & Jerry’s in one corner and a whole heap of things in your way from the box office to the cinemas just to make you buy shit. This must have been a recent change as workers were seemingly putting the finishing touches to various areas of the interior. The cinemas themselves had changed too, with the one I was in being all reclining seats. This made it rather difficult to sit up straight, but at least they were comfortable. Around 25 people showed up for a 1pm screening on a weekday which did surprise me. And despite the whole “whitewashing controversy” the vast majority of cinema goers were Chinese or Korean. Obviously they weren’t perturbed by the lack of an Asian lead in the film, unlike everyone else making noise about it (i.e. mostly “white people”).
Unfortunately some of the patrons in front of me decided to play with the phones on and off during the entire film. There’s nothing worse than trying to concentrate on a film and seeing the light of a mobile phone flicker on and off in the corner of your vision. This shitty little group also decided to talk on and off during the film, just barely audible enough to be distracting. Hey kids, how about watching the film or fucking off? I felt like slapping them and hurling their phones across the cinema. The audience also had to endure 25 minutes worth of adverts and film trailers for nothing but truly terrible Hollywood sequels and remakes. Why do we need a big screen remake of “Baywatch” with really bad jokes and lame dialogue?
Anyway, on to the movie; set sometime in a future Hong Kong, the city now looks like a hyperreal version of Los Angeles in “Blade Runner”. A young woman named Mira Killian (played by Scarlett Johansson) has survived a terrorist attack and is taken in by the robotics division of multinational corporation Hanka. She awakens and is told by her physician, Dr Ouelet (Juliette Binoche, Julie Vignon de Courcy in the “Three Colours” film trilogy), that her body had been virtually destroyed and that her brain has been transferred into that of a very human-like cyborg body. Against the objections of Ouelet, Hanka CEO, Cutter (Peter Ferdinando), orders Killian to be transferred to Section 9, an outsourced government counter-terrorism group run by Hanka.
A year on and Killian has earned the rank of major in Section 9 and functions as the group’s leader. Section 9 is headed up by Daisuke Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano) who essentially gives the group orders, sometimes handed down directly from Cutter. While the team is made up of several specialised members, Major Killian has very close ties to one of her underlings, Batou (Pilou Asbæk, best known for his portrayal as Euron Greyjoy in “Game of Thrones”). Batou is quite protective of her. Section 9 is given the task of rescuing delegates at Hanka business dinner as the hacked Geisha android hosts take the delegates hostage. After rescuing the delegates and destroying one of the Geishas, Killian begins to wonder if she is really a robot and not a human. Batou assures her she is human. Later Killian begins seeing strange visions and is concerned that she cannot remember her past. Dr Ouelet dismisses her concerns as glitches in her software. Section 9 soon discover the culprit behind the Geisha attack was someone known as Kuze. Killian decides to dive into the remaining Geisha robot’s brain in order to obtain more information. Though it is a risky move, Killian discovers that the Geisha is linked to a seedy nightclub. Killian and Batou infiltrate the club but soon discover the culprit has trapped them. Both fight off their attackers and explore the rooms behind the club’s façade, only to find a booby trap in the form of a massive bomb. The resulting explosion severely injuries Killian and destroys Batou’s eyes which he replaces with cyborg versions.
Kuze’s next move is to hack into sanitation workers and make them kill Section 9's consultant, Dr Dahlin (Anamaria Marinca, Dita in “The Politician's Husband”). With the deaths of several Hanka researchers and scientists, Section 9 realise that Dr Ouelet is next in line to be assassinated. Using one of the sanitation workers captured by Section 9, Kuse hacks his vocal cords and briefly taunts Section 9 before compelling the sanitation working to commit suicide. However Section 9 manage to track the location of Kuze’s hack before his death. There they find nearly a hundred people mentally linked together as a makeshift signal network for Kuze. Kuse uses his underlings to capture Killian where he tells her that the scientists at Hanka stole her memories and identity. Kuze then frees her and makes his escape. Later Killian confronts Dr Ouelet who confirms Killian’s worst fears. Cutter decides that Killian is too much of a risk and orders Section 9 to exterminate her.
Let’s put the elephant in the room to bed for once and all; outside of western anime fandom and western media, no one really gives a flying fuck about the supposed “whitewashing” in this film. It’s a commercial product (with a budget of the size of the GDP of a small African nation) from a large Hollywood movie studio, hence the reason why they got a bankable star as the lead. Go name an Asian female lead that the public knows, just one. Most of the complaints about this are from people who aren’t fans of the franchise or really don’t understand it. Masumune Shirow himself said that Major Motoko Kusanagi is to a certain degree stateless and chose a body that was generic to avoid her parts being harvested. I have also read that Shirow stated that Kusanagi chose a Caucasian body, however I can find no evidence whatsoever that he actually said this.
Overall the cast is quite diverse with Takeshi Kitano, Pilou Asbæk, Juliette Binoche, Chin Han (as Togusa) and Danusia Samal (as Section 9’s weapons specialist Ladriya), so to say the film whitewashes the characters totally misses the forest for the trees. Focusing on Scarlett Johansson and not the rest of the film misrepresents it as whole. Killian’s origins are exposed later in the film and it totally fits in with the promotional material in regards to her past and memories being stolen. Another recent article I’ve read interviews several Japanese American actresses (none who were born in or lived in Japan as far as I’m aware) who criticise the casting, the “twist ending” and how a Japanese woman in the film expressed herself. Again I think this is rather myopic and doesn’t view the film as a whole or understand that this film is made for a worldwide audience, not a Japanese one or one that was quite familiar with Japanese traits and social behaviour (and let's be honest, a lot of these are completely alien to those outside Japan).
One of the key themes in this film is loss of identity. It is rather amusing that most of the critics of the film failed to pick this up. I note again that the audience I saw the film with where almost entirely Chinese origin with some Koreans and very few westerners. They obviously had no problem paying to watch this film. The Japanese media also don’t give a crap about the whole “whitewashing controversy”. They vast majority of people making noise about it are Americans who are absolutely obsessed with race in entertainment, rather than actually being concerned about the content and themes presented in that media. I do love to see casting against type as it makes cinema far more interesting. However I personally I don’t give a shit about demographics or ticking ethnic, disabled or gender boxes, especially when it's at the detriment of the story being told. Just give me an entertaining film and screw the annoying and frustrating politics.
Admittedly due to the negativity surrounding this film, I had set a pretty low bar for it. However it passed that bar with flying colours. I was initially rather taken aback by the futuristic setting of Hong Kong which looked a lot like the Los Angeles of 2019 in “Blade Runner” on steroids. It looked garish and absurd but as the film progressed it made sense to me and seemed a plausible view of what the future may look like, especially for those with augmented brains. The film replicates scenes and concepts mostly from the first anime film as well as taking bits and pieces from “Innocence (Ghost in the Shell 2)”, “Stand Alone Complex” and the manga. Unlike the “Arise” film series which also reused and reinterpreted sequences from the manga and previous anime adaptations, here it feels rather fresh and different. In “Arise” it just felt uninspired. The film also does seem to understand the messages and themes of the original manga and anime adaptations such as identity, hackers implanting false memories and forcing people to commit crimes against their will etc. I really liked how several ideas from all versions of the anime were mashed up to create new concepts for this film. Kuze for example is taken from “Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig”, but infuses the same ideas from Puppet Master and Project 2501 from the manga and first anime film.
Scarlett Johansson portrays Major Mira Killian as someone who is tough on the outside, but also quite vulnerable as she searches for her true identity. One of the more interesting sequences is where Killian hires a sex worker and then proceeds to caress her face ask if she really human. It really portrayed Killian as woman confused about her identity and not feeling human within her cyborg shell. I thought this was a rather intriguing take on the major we are all familiar with. Pilou Asbæk also does a great interpretation of Batou. It’s patently obvious he has great affection for Killian and Asbæk’s performance expresses that brilliantly and effortlessly.
While most of the film looked gorgeous, some of the design aspects didn’t work for me. The obvious one is Killian’s flesh coloured battle suit which looks a bit silly. The other thing which I was surprised about that the optic camouflage systems used to great effect in the anime adaptations were underutilised in this film. While most of the acting in this film was pretty good, Takeshi Kitano’s Daisuke Aramaki shat me. Essentially he just growled his lines in Japanese and sat about. When he did leap into action he hobbled about like an old man. I really don’t understand why they chose him for this film. Why not Ken Watanabe or some other Japanese actor who has more range and doesn’t look like they’ve had a stroke? Of course the most baffling thing is why all of Kitano’s dialogue is in Japanese and everyone else’s is in English? You could put that down to everyone having augmented brains and being able to translate it instantaneously, but for example, why don’t we hear anyone speak Cantonese since its set in Hong Kong?
Overall I quite liked this film. Though this is only the second film Rupert Sanders has directed (“Snow White and the Huntsman” was his first, he was previously a director for high end commercials), it looks fantastic. As I said before he seems to understand the concepts behind the franchise and injects new material such as Killian’s confusion between her cyborg body and human mind, her search for original identity and interestingly the outsourcing of government tasks to the private sector (in Hanka’s handling of Section 9) and the conflicts, overreach and corruption that can cause. What impressed me is that even though the material was based on something I was quite familiar with (and lifted almost shot for shot from some sections of the first anime film), it did feel rather fresh and new. Despite a few problems I have with the film, this is easily one of the better if not the best Hollywood adaption of anime and/or manga material so far. Admittedly that’s not a high bar to jump. I think it’s a such a shame that the stupid “whitewashing controversy” has just about drowned out anything positive people have to say about the film. It’s already set to make a loss of $60 million. I am going to give this film a solid 7 out of 10. I was going to give it .5 more, but on balance a 7 is more than fair.
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