Tag: Masato Sakai

Review: Promare

The thing about PROMARE (プロメア) is that just when you think that it can’t get any crazier, the film bursts through the next thin boundary of common sense and stamps that line into oblivion. In other words, it just might be a Studio Trigger masterpiece.

Describing the plot to a film like this is like trying to catalogue each element of a Jackson Pollock painting, but here goes nothing. It’s been thirty years since the appearance of the Burnish, a group of flame-wielding mutants, destroyed half the world. When an extremist group called Mad Burnish emerges, Galo Thymos – a new recruit in the firefighting Burning Rescue brigade – goes up against Mad Burnish leader Lio Fotia. Yet he may not be the real villain.

From the opening credits, blending a kind of animated ‘documentary’ footage with the Benday dots of retro cartooning, PROMARE visually signals that it is going to be something different. In fact, it would be folly to try and follow this as if it were a traditional narrative, as director Hiroyuki Imaishi and writer Kazuki Nakashima have managed to tap into the collective unconscious of anime fans and given us a continuous train of thought of almost two hours.

Yet for the all of the seemingly chaotic shopfront, Imaishi and Nakashima exhibit a very savvy awareness of the conventions of modern anime. So much so that they use all of them: the tropes, inside jokes, visual parodies, genre transitions (from mecha to mock yaoi in a heatbeat), insane cutaways, and literal deus ex machinas. It’s almost as if they compressed several seasons of a show into a single film or wanted to make every anime at once. Either way it works.

The animation is unquestionably mind-blowing. While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea – pastel explosions, CG buildings, rectangular lens flare, and triangular ash – you never forget that you are watching something different. There’s one breakout sequence where the screen fills with a series of massive Burning constructs, each of them seeming to devour the last. At other times, seemingly random inserts will appear as a means of transitions between scenes. This film cares not for your rules.

In PROMARE we have a strange hybrid that is not only a tip of the hat to all the things the filmmakers love, but a weird tribute to itself as well. Fans of Gurren Lagann and Kill La Kill will recognise all the hallmarks of those shows (albeit turned up to 11), while everybody else can happily walk into this without any warning. The looks on their unsuspecting faces will be worth the price of admission.

2019 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Hiroyuki Imaishi | WRITERS: Kazuki Nakashima | CAST: Kenichi Matsuyama, Taichi Saotome, Masato Sakai, Ayane Sakura, Hiroyuki Yoshino| DISTRIBUTOR: Madman (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 24 October 2019 (AUS)

October 31, 2019
Review: Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura

Kamakura. Beaches. Temples. Giant Buddha. Mythical creatures living alongside humanity. That last one may not be found on japan-guide.com or in your Wallpaper handbook, but it’s the basis of director Takashi Yamakazi’s DESTINY: THE TALE OF KAMAKURA (鎌倉ものがたり).

Based on the manga Ryohei Saigan, the basic setup sees the recently married Akiko (Mitsuki Takahata) join her much older husband Masakazu Isshiki (Masato Sakai) in the titular Kamakura. As a writer, Masakazu is frequently called upon as a consulting detective in local spectral cases. When a mystery presents itself, he is on the case and Akiko is drawn deep into the mystical surrounds.

Yamazaki has previously adapted Saigan’s manga into the Always: Sunset on Third Street series, and there’s a similarly carefree charm to to this entry. Trading nostalgia for a more overt magical sheen, DESTINY is in no particular hurry to get where it is going. Indeed, much of the first two acts of the film merely introduce us to the local colour and set up the rules of the alternate Kamakura.

In one scene, Akiko is cooking up mushrooms purchased from a local shop, only to find her husband’s spirit trying to leave his body. Masakazu’s troubled relationship with his parents serves up a separate mystery to be solved. Another extended subplot sees a jinx god haunting their home and bringing bad luck. Similarly, the always wonderful Sakura Ando plays it up as the Grim Reaper in yet another running thread. In this sense, this adaptation might have worked better as a television series, but it’s a testament to Yamazaki’s adapted screenplay that it all still feels cohesive.

The special effects are on par with most ‘big’ budget Japanese productions. They might never be as large-scale as a Hollywood equivalent, but there’s always something going on to remind you this is not the Kamakura you know. Nevertheless, the lion’s share of the CG work is used in the final act and it’s seriously pretty. The Afterworld backgrounds are often breathtaking and a climactic train chase across a disappearing foundation is still a thrill.

Yet planet-shaking moments were never the goal here, and this climax merely acts to tie up the many stories presented in the first half. More than anything, DESTINY is a charming love story set inside a storybook version of Japan. If that sends you back in search of the source material, or leaves you with a smile on your face, then it has more than successfully done its job.

[stextbox id=”grey” bgcolor=”F2F2F2″ mleft=”5″ mright=”5″ image=”null”]2018 | Japan | DIR: Takashi Yamakazi | WRITERS:Takashi Yamakazi, Ryohei Saigan (manga) | CAST: Mitsuki Takahata, Masato Sakai, Sakura Ando | DISTRIBUTOR: Toho (JPN), Japanese Film Festival (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 129 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2017 (JFF) [/stextbox]

November 12, 2018
JFF15 Review: Buddha – The Great Departure

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Buddha – The Great Departure (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Yasuomi Ishito

Runtime: 119 minutes

Starring: Sayuri Yoshinaga, Masato Sakai, Hidetaka Yoshioka

Country: Japan

Rating: Wait for the DVD/Blu-ray (?)

More info

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The works of Osamu Tezuka have the distinguished honour of being considered masterpieces in both the East and West, with his manga works adapted into anime series that became popular all around the globe. If you don’t know the name instantly, you might recognise some of his more famous works: Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Black Jack. “The Godfather of Manga” is also known as the “Walt Disney of the East”, which may reduce his works to a simple comparison, but also give an indication of just how significant his works are in their native Japan. Along with Phoenix, the 14 volume Buddha is one of his most significant and spiritual works, taking 10 years of Tezuka’s life. An adaptation to the big screen might be considered madness.

Buddha – The Great Departure (手塚治虫のブッダ赤い砂漠よ！美しく) takes elements from the first three volumes of Tezuka’s work, and begins with the birth of Siddartha Gautama and the death of his mother shortly after. As the country is torn apart by famine, drought and bloody warfare, Siddartha tires of his life as a prince and seeks a higher calling. This is the start of his journey towards enlightenment, as he will eventually become the monk that is revered by millions across the globe today.

Even with a planned three-film saga, the reduction of any literary work into the compressed format of cinema is always a tricky affair, especially when the source material is a whopping great set of shelf-fillers from a revered manga artist. Buddha proves to be something of a contradiction in this sense, rapidly squishing some of the significant elements of the source material into mere seconds of screen time. For example, a number of commentators have picked up on the abbreviated telling of the tale of the rabbit who sacrifices himself for a starving monk at the start of the film. Yet at the same time, director Yasuomi Ishito revels in extending battles out to epic proportions that seem to be contrary to the spirit of the Lord Buddha. As the film drags its bloodied feet into the prolonged second hour, one would be forgiven for crying out “Is he Buddha yet?”

When Prince of Egypt was released by the fledgling DreamWorks back in 1998, it went out of its way to be careful to depict an Old Testament religious figure that was revered by half the world in such a honourable way as to suck all the life out of the story. Buddha suffers the opposite problem, in that it seems to spelling Buddha with a capital B for Blood. The chaotic editing muddies any semblance of a plot that viewers not intimately familiar with the legend of Siddartha, lurching from one moment to the next so as to give that B a tertiary meaning of boring.

The animation, from the giants at Toei Animation (Digimon) has stripped all the Tezuka out of the piece, with a “barely there” animation style that is reminiscent of the “illusion of animation” style of the mid-1990s. This cheap-looking approach lessens the impact of the scattered story even more, and with the exception of a few pretty backgrounds, most of the action on screen is a disengaging mess. If the aim is to either pay respect to the creator of the anime or its subject, very little ground will be gained on either front by the end of this first film.

[stextbox id=”custom”]We can only hope that the other planned parts of this trilogy will do more to engage audiences that this bloody snoozer of a journey through Siddartha’s formative years.[/stextbox]

Buddha – The Great Departure played at the Japanese Film Festival on 26 November (Sydney) and 6 December (Melbourne) 2011 at the 15th Japanese Film Festival in Australia.

December 14, 2011