Two Japanese “art” films

The Box / Fe

Nakajima Kanji’s films fall under what can be charitably called “art films,” but could also be called “boring pretension” depending on what you like in your cinema. If slow-moving or non-existent, high-contrast black-and-white scenes, and dense, impossible to understand metaphors are your bag, then you might just be a Nakajima Kanji fan.

Nakajima has made three films in total, and this DVD contains two of them. The other, The Clone Returns Home, is his only full-length feature film. Both of the films here, “The Box” (Japanese title “Hako,” 2003) and “Fe” (Japanese title “Hagane,” 1994) are around sixty minutes each. Thankfully, because it was hard to sit through them even at that length.

Thematically, Nakajima likes contrasts. Old people with young people. Metal with nature. Industry with art. Both “The Box” and “Fe” contain these elements. He prefers wasteland scenes, and his visual elements are the most interesting parts of his films. He is a good cinematographer, and a poor storyteller.

“The Box” has as its underlining story an old man who speaks to chunks of raw ore, that tell him what they want to be. His work is to refine and build the ore into whatever machine they wish for. In this world, nature has all but died, and a single tree is kept alive by the old man’s machines. There are two kids running around as well, playing with an airplane. And a sick old woman being cared for. And a sort of feral man. And a box. The box clunks around through the whole film, moving seemingly independently. The old man is still trying to figure out what the box wants to be.

This film is shot in high-contrast black-and-white. It creates an interesting visual, which is the best part. The animation of the box is so clunky that it is funny to watch rather than profound. And whatever Nakajima wanted to say was completely lost on me.

To my mind, “Fe” was the better film. Shot in color, with more of a continuing story, it concerns and old artist who looks to industrial wastelands for inspiration. There he meets a young girl, curious about his work and the machines and metal waste all around them.

Visually, “Fe” was much more interesting. It is filmed in color, and Nakajima used a device where he framed the scene so that it matched the rectangle of the artist’s canvas. Unlike “The Box,” where the story and characters just seemed like random noise, there was an actual connection between the old man and the young girl in “Fe.”

Both of these films are going to be of limited interest at best. I went to art school, and I remember the video artists who were interested in creating visual imagery unencumbered by narrative. Those people would probably find something to enjoy here. But anyone looking for an interesting film had best look elsewhere.

Human Beings are Garbage

All Night Long Collection

The “All Night Long” films are pure exploitation cinema. Cheap thrills shot on digital video featuring (mostly) amateur actors, they are churned out low-plot adventures in rape and murder, Japanese style. Think of these as direct-to-video Z-Grade Slasher flicks that you find in the US. They have never gotten a theatrical release, and 99.9999% of the Japanese population has never heard of them and wouldn’t even know they exist. These are for exploitation fans only.

Director Matsumura Katsuya has made his whole career on the “All Night Long” films. There are currently six in the series, with the most recent one (All Night Long: Anyone Would Have Done) released in 2009. The delve more into psychology and sadomasochism than your average Slasher flick; don’t expect buckets of blood or reams of nudity, although there is some of each. Matsumura is more interested in exploring obsession and attacker/victim power exchanges.

There first three “All Night Long” films are in this collection, “All Night Long (1992),” “Atrocity (1995),” and “Final Atrocity (1996).” The films have no connection other than the aforementioned themes. The stories try to frame real events, like a man going on a revenge spree after his girlfriend is raped and murdered, or a mentally challenged man who obsesses over a neighbor, but ultimately the stories don’t have much depth and are just playing with taboos and darkness.

It is hard recommend this flicks. These three DVDs are not a bad little box of blood. These three DVDs are not a bad little box of blood. They have none of the brilliance of Ichi the Killer or Audition. Keep your expectations low.

If you are an exploitation fan, you will find something to like here. I have this series, and the The Guinea Pig flicks, and a few other collections in the genre. I thought the “All Night Long” films were not as good as the early “Guinea Pig” films, but better than the later ones. The effects are decent. The acting is decent. There is nothing particularly shocking or gut-wrenching. But they can be fun.

Sick Soldier

Fires on the Plain – Criterion Collection

Many people talk about the realism of Ichikawa Kon’s anti-war film “Fire on the Plains” (A poetic translation of Japanese title “Nobi,” meaning the burning off of fields during harvest season). Personally, I don’t think “Fire on the Plains” is realistic at all. It is an expressionistic film, filled with metaphoric imagery and subtle allusion. It is a bleak film, but also a dark comedy filled with gallows humor. In some ways, with the dead-eyed soldiers feasting on human flesh, it could even be a zombie movie.

Based on the novel Fires on the Plain, PFC Tamura (Funakoshi Eiji) is caught in a no-man’s land of being a sick soldier. Stricken with tuberculosis, he is too weak to help out with the manual labor of digging air raid shelters, yet too healthy to be treated at the field hospital where a small staff are tending to battle-wounded soldiers. All through the movie Tamura wanders, sometimes joining up with small groups of lost soldiers. He has the charmed luck of the survivor, often being the only one to walk away after all his short-time companions are killed.

One of the most interesting things about “Fire on the Plains” is that it has no point. I think this is the first war film I have seen where the soldiers aren’t pursuing an objective. They have no hill to take. No rendezvous appointment to keep. No enemy to kill. They aren’t even really trying too hard to survive. Tamura and the rest are all just the flotsam and jetsam of war, moving from place to place on the tides of battle. Thoroughly defeated, there is some vague notion of evacuation, but as the promised port lies across the enemy-held territory, they know that attempting the journey is tantamount to suicide. Many of them try anyways.

With nothing driving them, “Fire on the Plains” is made up of moments. Tamura encounters soldiers in various stages of degradation and despair. But the dark moments are peppered with oddball humor. In a Charlie Chaplin homage, a line of soldiers discard their boots for slightly better pairs then passing their leftovers to the soldier behind them. Last in line, Tamura ends up barefoot. In another scene, which was straight Monty Python, some officers seeing a corpse lying face down in the mud and wonder if they will end up like that, to which the body promptly lifts up its head in a classic “I’m not dead yet!” moment.

The only real criticism of “Fire on the Plains” is its one-sided perspective. The Japanese soldiers suffer greatly, yes, but there is little sense that these same soldiers were once raping, enslaving, murdering, and eating the Filipino population before the US came and fought them back. There are only some feint allusions to this, such as Tamura’s senseless killing of a young Filipino girl–an act which shows us that Tamura is no more heroic or decent than the rest–or in the Filipino female soldier’s slaughter of a surrendering Japanese soldier. Without knowing some of the history behind this film, the Japanese soldiers come off as too sympathetic. Sure, they are just the useless grunts ordered to fight by their nation, but it was these same useless grunts ravaging the population just a few months earlier.

The Criterion DVD for “Fire on the Plains” is not bad. There is a booklet essay, an interview with Donald Richie, and a video piece with Ichikawa Kon and actor Mickey Curtis who played one of the soldiers. The picture and subtitles are all up to the usual Criterion standards. There is no commentary track, which is disappointing, but otherwise this is a solid DVD.

Two “Ghost at School” Stories

Shadow of the Wraith

“Shadow of the Wraith” (Japanese title “Ikisudama,” or “Living Ghost”) is an entry in the popular gakko no kaidan (ghosts at school)genre, aimed squarely at high school aged kids and younger. These kinds of low-budget spook fests are pretty typical in Japan, and get cranked out during the summer when kids are eager for a scary story. The director, Ikeda Toshiharu, is most famous for his film Evil Dead Trap although he has been cranking out this kind of low-budget work in recent years.

“Shadow of the Wraith” has the extra hook of staring two pop-star brothers, Koji and Yuichi Matsuo from the band “Doggy Bag,” and two “Teen Scream Queen” sisters, Hitomi and Asumi Miwa (Uzumaki, Ju-On: The Curse, Eko Eko Azarak) who are familiar faces to any fan of modern Japanese horror. Think of “Shadow of the Wraith” as the Jonas Brothers appearing on an episode of Goosebumps.

“Shadow of the Wraith” is split into two stories, each staring one Matsuo brother and one Miwa sister. The stories are very loosely linked by the brothers, who play brothers in a band.

The first story,” Shadow of the Wraith,” is a typical story of jealousy. Popular boy loves popular girl. Strange girl in the corner is jealous and projects psychic doppelganger to clear a bloody path to popular boy’s affections. You know the story. Or maybe you don’t. “Shadow of the Wraith” is about a creature from Japanese folklore, called an Ikiryo, or “living ghost.” The mythology is very old,dating back to the The Tale of Genji, and I have never seen an ikiryo story on film before. So that was kind of cool. Unfortunately, novelty is all the story really had going for it, and “Shadow of the Wraith” is otherwise by-the-numbers.”

The next story, “The Hollow Stone” starts off pretty good as a classic haunted apartment scenario. A new girl moves into down, and finds out that she is living in a cursed apartment. A charming neighbor, still reeling from the death of his brother, falls for the new girl and tries to help her survive where others have died. I am a sucker for a good haunted apartment story, and I would have enjoyed “The Hollow Stone” quite a bit if it weren’t for some unfortunately bad special effects. The director forgot that less is more where ghosts are concerned, and shook some fake props at us that look like they could have been bought at the
local Halloween store. The ending to “The Hollow Stone” was also terrible. It made no sense, and completely broke the rules of Japanese ghosts for no particular reason.

“Shadow of the Wraith” is not a bad DVD. The stories neither rise above nor sink below the level of the genre. They are exactly the kind of show you would see in Japan flicking the tv channels in the summer. It’s too bad that director Ikeda didn’t try a little harder to bring some life into these stories, as they had some potential, but everyone involved seemed to be pretty content to produce something mediocre.

The God of Soldiers

Caterpillar DVD (Region 3) (NTSC) (English Subtitled) Japanese Movie

The first few minutes of “Caterpillar” do not promise a great movie. Shot on what looks like digital video, with bad special effects of a burning building that look like they were done on someone’s home computer, I figured this was yet another low-budget Japanese horror film.

I was wrong.

Nominated for Golden Bear (director) and winner of the Silver Bear (Best actress) at the Berlin International Film Festival, “Caterpillar” is an intense anti-war film, heavily political and nothing even approaching a horror film. Director Wakamatsu Koji made the film in response to the re-release of Mishima Yukio’s militaristic right-wing movie Patriotism, showing the harsh reality of Japan’s military cult of WWII.

Nominally based off of Edogawa Rampo’s banned short story of the same name (Found in Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination), “Caterpillar” shares only the briefest of association with Rampo’s tale. Wakamatsu changed the setting from the Russo-Sino war (where Japan was the victor) to WWII, and swapped the aggressive roles of the husband and wife.

The caterpillar of the title is Kurokawa Tadashi (Katsuya Keigo), who marched bravely off to war and returned a living torso, lacking arms, legs, hearing or speech. His neighborhood honors him as a living God of Soldiers, but his wife Shigeko (Terajima Shinobu) knows a different side of Kurokawa. Lacking anything else, Kurokawa has been reduced to a being of sensations. He eats. He sleeps. And he wants sex. All the time. Shigeko endures as a good wife should, but her hatred of her caterpillar husband overtakes her. To humiliate him, she dresses him in his uniform and hauls him through town in a horse cart, so that everyone can pay homage to the God of Soldiers.

Wakamatsu allows no glory to be shown in war. In Rampo’s story, the caterpillar sustains his injuries in combat, but in “Caterpillar” it is heavily implied that Kurokawa was injured while raping and killing Chinese farm girls in a burning building. Kurokawa is a decorated war hero, but his behavior mocks and degrades his commendations. His wife Shigeko shows the face of a good wife in public, but behind doors we see the suffering she endures. When Shigeko carts Kurokawa around town as a living idol (reminiscent of Johnny Got His Gun), he is the horror of war personified.

I have seen “Caterpillar” as described as having “explicit sex,” but surprisingly this isn’t true, Wakamatsu is an acclaimed Pink Film director, and although he made films like Go, Go Second Time Virgin, he also has to his credits “Violated Angels” and “Angelic Orgasm.” With “Caterpillar,” even though there a sexual element, there is no nudity or titillation. All of the sex scenes are shown from a distance, from a side-view, where you can see Kurokawa’s limbless body hunching on his wife.

“Caterpillar” is a surprisingly great film; very different from what I was expecting. Terajima Shinobu deserved all of the awards she won in the roll of Shigeko, and director Wakamatsu Koji showed once again that Japan’s Pink Film industry is one of the best proving grounds for talented directors.

Business as usual

OUTRAGE – Japanese 2010 movie 1 disc DVD (Region 3) (NTSC) directed by Takeshi Kitano (English subtitled)

After the critical success but commercial failure of his surrealist autobiographical trio (Takeshis, Kantoku Banzai, Achilles and Tortoise), irector Kitano Takeshi said he wanted to make a flick that was just popular entertainment. Going back to his roots in the yakuza genre, the result of this commercial imperative is “Outrage.”

Like when Kurosawa Akira made his “popular entertainment” flick The Hidden Fortress, Kitano can’t really keep the art out of his filmmaking. He took an unusual approach when writing “Outrage.” After creating his list of characters, he decided how they all died then worked backwards creating a story that would accommodate their deaths. The result is a violent and merciless film, one where one small action tips the dominoes of death, which march on relentlessly until all fall down.

The story is set in Tokyo, where Boss Ikemoto (Kunimura Jun, My Darling is a Foreigner) is recently released from prison, and gathers at a meeting to pay tribute to the yakuza lord of Eastern Japan. It is known that in prison Ikemura swore an oath of brotherhood with gangster Murase (Ishibashi, Renji, 20th Century Boys), an independent gangster who controls some turf and a drug operation. The yakuza lord worries about Ikemura’s new loyalties; is he plotting with Murase for an over throw? Ikemura decides to allay these suspicious by picking a deliberate small-scale fight with Murase, opening an office on his territory and allowing one of his gangsters to fall for a Murase-scam so that he can demand reparations. The plan escalates, however, as there are those in both Ikemoto’s and Murase’s organizations who would take advantage of the strife to advance their own position by killing rivals.

One of the interesting things about “Outrage” is that Kitano gives us no great plot to hang on to. Each player in the deadly game is pursuing their own agendas; be it to create revenue, level-up in the yakuza hierarchy, or simply take out some petty revenge. There is no overriding plot, no clever plan. The gangsters are opportunists, nothing more, each trying to figure out how to advance with their fingers and lives intact. When a line is cut, that story ends completely.

“Outrage” seemed more authentic to the real, everyday operations of yakuza than most films in the genre. There are no super-killers or honorable outlaws. When I was watching the film, I found I didn’t root for any particular character. No matter who came out on top in the end, nothing changed. It would still be business as usual exploiting innocent people and taking without earning as much as you can.

In fact, this made me wonder at the title. There isn’t much “outrage” in the film itself, so maybe Kitano’s “outrage” is at the system that allows these bottom-feeders to exist. Or maybe it is Kitano’s “outrage” that he has to fall back on crowd-pleasing flicks when few people appreciated his Art. Or maybe he just thought “outrage” sounded cool.

The only issue I had with “Outrage” as a film was the pacing. The film got terribly slow in the middle, and a side-plot involving an illegal casino run out of an African embassy dragged on too long. I generally like Kintano’s pacing, with films like Fireworks and Sonatine balancing out the slow and bang-fast. Kitano’s trademark oddball humor was also entirely missing from “Outrage,” and while I didn’t want a lot of it a scene here and there would have been a welcome relief from the grim doings.

The Ups and Downs of International Marriage

MY DARLING IS A FOREIGNER – Japanese movie DVD (Region 3) (English subtitled)

I have to confess upfront about my complete bias regarding this movie: My wife is Japanese, and we both love Oguri Saori’s comic “My Darling is a Foreigner” (Japanese title “Darling wa gaikokujin.”) In fact, it took us awhile to get around to watching this movie adaptation because we were afraid they would make a mess of it. I shouldn’t have worried. First-time director Ue Kazuaki took the source material and made a sweet little love comedy.

Instead of working directly from the comic, the story starts with Saori (Inoue Mao, Kaidan) and Tony (Jonathon Sherr) on their third date. Saori is unsure of her status with Tony, and while the two of them are happy together, they struggle to fit into each other’s worlds. Tony is bilingual, and can float between Japanese and English speakers, but Saori is isolated by her language ability and cannot communicate with Tony’s friends. Saori’s parents don’t know what to make of Tony. He is fluent in the Japanese language, but not in Japanese manners and customs. Saori’s father (Kunimura Jun, K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces, Ichi the Killer) is opposed to the match, but Tony and Saori decide they love each other enough to endure the struggles and misunderstandings of a cross-culture relationship. Meanwhile, Saori is also struggling to fulfill her dream of becoming a comic writer, while Tony has to learn the expectations put on him as Saori’s boyfriend, and what his role is in Japanese society.

What I loved about “My Darling is a Foreigner” is what they got right, not only in Saori and Tony’s relationship but what it is like being a foreigner in Japan. I loved the scene in the movie theater where Tony is laughing first, and the Japanese audience laughs a few seconds later. I have lived that so often in my own life, where I am reacting to the dialog while the Japanese audience reacts to the delayed subtitles. Or Tony’s attempt to ask directions, in Japanese, and be rebuffed by a Japanese person saying he can’t speak English. Hammer. Nail. Head.

And with their relationship, my wife and I couldn’t help smiling as we recognized scenes from our own life. It is the little things in cross-cultural relationships that cause tension. We can accept the big differences, because we expect them. But the small battles; over things like how to fold laundry, or wash dishes, or make tea, or the proper way to eat certain dishes, or a million other little things that we have done one way our whole lives so we both consider that the “right way;” can really bring home the point of just how different you are from each other. I have seen some reviews for “My Darling is a Foreigner” where people don’t get this, and wonder if how you hang your laundry to dry is really such a big deal. Speaking from experience I can saw confidently: yes, it is.

The big problem with “My Darling is a Foreigner” is the acting. Not so much on the Japanese side. There are a lot of first-timers appearing here, so several veterans of Japanese film pop up in supporting roles, such as Saori’s parents and her editor at the manga publishing house. Saori’s father, in particular, takes over the movie every time he appears onscreen. Inoue Mao as Saori does a good enough job playing “spunky, cute Japanese girl” with the appropriate pouts and squeals that are almost required by Japanese law when making a movie. That’s the style. If you on’t like it, don’t watch Japanese romantic comedies.

No, the problem is with the “foreign” cast. Jonathon Sherr does a decent job as Tony, but he seems to have been selected for his Japanese bility rather than his acting ability. He doesn’t bring much chemistry or charisma to the role, and it is sometimes hard to see what a girl like Saori would see in him (The two share one of the most apathetic “finale” kisses I have ever seen in a film.), but he doesn’t do a bad job either. The real train wrecks are the idiot trio playing Tony’s “foreign friends.” I have no idea why these three were cast, as they can neither act nor speak Japanese. Nor are they good-looking. Their performances are bad enough to make you cringe, and wish they would just hurry up and get off the screen. Seriously some of the worst acting I have ever seen. Fortunately for all, their screen time is limited, but it should have been cut entirely.

But flaws aside, I really enjoyed “My Darling is a Foreigner.” Probably my favorite scene in the movie (although marred by terrible acting), was were Tony was trying to explain to his friends what he saw in Saori. Because she doesn’t speak English, they can’t see her personality. They only see her as “that Japanese girl.” But Tony, who can actually talk to her, sees it differently. “To me she isn’t Japanese. She is just…Saori.” I have had that exact conversion many times, and it is nice to see someone else who understands. I might just have to show this film to all of my friends and family, so maybe they can understand too.

Memoirs of Momowaka
The Geisha

Anyone who has seen Memoirs of a Geisha should have to watch this film for balance. “The Geisha” (Japanese title, “Yokiro,” which is the name of the geisha house), is a true look behind the white make-up and fancy silks of the flower-and-willow world, and into the people who practice the profession. It isn’t elegant or pretty. Geisha are like ballet dancers who exude grace and beauty while hiding bruised and damaged feet under dainty pink sandals.

The story follows Momowaka (Ikegami Kimiko, House), the daughter of a female-procurer and his geisha lover. Her mother was murdered when Momowaka was a child, and her father (Ogata Ken, Vengeance Is Mine) sold her to the Yokiro geisha house when she was twelve. Under the harsh tutelage of the Mistress of Yokiro Momowaka has grown to become the top geisha in the most famous geisha house in Western Japan. She is perfect in form and figure, but empty inside and cold like a statue. Momowaka frustrates her patrons who find that although they can rent her body they cannot touch her heart. Her father, a blunt and hard dealer in flesh, is neither a good man nor a bad one. He sells his daughter to a geisha house and his underage lover to a brothel with little regret, but at the same time he has single-handedly protected Yokiro from the influence of the yakuza gangsters for years. He has kept the geisha district a haven for pleasure-seekers, but like everyone in the district, he is getting older and his enemies are getting bolder. Even timeless traditions cannot carry on forever.

As you can see by the DVD box, “The Geisha” has won more awards than there are room to print. The Japanese Academy’s 1984 winner for Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematography and five other Academy Awards. It is, needless to say, a great film. Director Gosha Hideo (The Wolves) is one of the greats of Japanese cinema, and “The Geisha” is one of his best films. He trademarks are everywhere, like vicious fight scenes accompanied by uplifting music, or a slow burning plot that explodes in the final scenes.

There are so many scenes I loved in this film. There is a great bar scene, where a group of geisha share the establishment with a group of prostitutes. Although lower of the social scale, the prostitutes are wild and free, and can drink and dance the Charleston, while the geisha are constrained by their position. The envy mixed with disgust is palatable. I loved how “The Geisha” takes place in Koichi, on the island of Shikoku rather than the more famous Gion district in Kyoto. There was a time when no major city was without its pleasure quarters, and it is a nice reminder that Kyoto does not have a monopoly on geisha.

As always, Animeigo has done a remarkable job with a remarkable film. Their dual translation, showing cultural notes along with the dialog, is necessary for the complex relationships of the pleasure quarters, where everyone is “daddy” or “big sister” or “mamma” or “lord.”

Social politics and ninjas

Kamui Gaiden: Movie

From its very beginning, the story of the renegade ninja Kamui has been political. Created in 1967 by leftest-artist Sanpei Shirato, Kamui was a symbol of Japan’s rigid social classes and rules, and the woes that befall those who try to rage against the machine. Sanpei used Kamui to tell tales of discrimination, oppression and the exploitation of workers. Since the characters first appearance in Garo magazine, Kamui has been adapted into anime and continuing manga series, but this 2009 movie is I believe the first Kamui live-action film.

Directed by Yoichi Sai (Quill, Blood And Bones), “Kamui Gaiden” (translating as something along the lines of “A Supplemental Biography of Kamui,” to distinguish it from Sanpei’s original “Kamui Den”), this version of the Kamui story retains the political nature of the character while thrusting him into an action-packed ninja spectacular. In this film, Kamui is not only an outcast ninja but a member of the hinin-caste. Hinin, which translates as non-human, were the Japanese equivalent of the Indian Untouchables, a caste so low that they had no legal rights or dignity. Discrimination against the hinin caste continues even today, known by the term burakumin.

From birth, Kamui (Matsuyama Kenichi, Death Note) faces horrendous abuse and discrimination, like all of his caste, and his experiences causes him to harden and dedicate himself to becoming strong. He is adopted into the Iga ninja clan, where as a young boy he takes part in the assassination of Sugaru (Koyuki, The Last Samurai), a woman seeking to escape the clan. It is one of their rules; no one leaves the shinobi. Years later, now a ninja of some strength himself, Kamui finds the hunter/prey role reversed as it is Kamui who flees the shinobi and is pursued. He fights and fights, and eventually finds some sort of shelter with a fishing village on an island far from the known cities. There he meets a man Hanbei (Kobayashi Kaoru, Princess Mononoke), who offers him a life of peace and the hand of his daughter in marriage However for a man like Kamui there can be no peace, as Hanbei’s wife is none other than Sugaru, still alive, and both Sugaru and Kamui find that there is nowhere they can run from their troubles.

As befits the character, “Kamui Gaiden” is a pretty dense story. Those looking for some light ninja action might find themselves with a little more plot than they bargained for. You can enjoy the film without the political background of the hinin and Japan’s Edo period caste-system, but some of the finer points might be lost, as well as some of the motivation of the characters. Especially at the beginning, when a young Kamui rages against the children who pelt him with rocks asking “What is so different about me?” and in classic Shakespeare style shots “Prick me, will I not bleed?”

But the film does a good job of lightening its heavy moments with some over-the-top ninja wire-fighting. Sadly, this is something Japan has just never done as well as China, and the fight-scenes are never really more than decent. This is the first CGI-heavy film that Yoichi has done, and that is his weakness. In his films like “Quill” and “Blood and Bones,” he has shown he can do intense human drama, but he is not really an action director. There is a particular rubbery shark in one scene that ruined my suspension of disbelief.

Funimations release of “Kamui Gaiden” is superb, with other 45 minutes worth of extra features including a “Making of” and “Behind the scenes.”

Japan’s Holmes vs. Moriarty

K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces

Niju Menso, the Fiend with Twenty Faces, is one of the classic villains of Japanese literature. Created in 1936 by mystery author Edogawa Rampo (Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination), Niju Menso played Professor Moriarty to Rampo’s Sherlock Holmes archetype, consulting detective Kogoro Akechi. The two characters are as well known in Japan as Holmes and Moriarty are in the West. Since his creation, like many great villains Niju Menso took on a life of his own has gone on to appear in several manga and anime series, as well as two novels by So Kitamura.

This 2008 film versions is adapted from the two So Kitamura novels, which takes a decided spin on the original detective Kogoro Akechi/Niju Menso dynamic. So’s novels were revisionist to say the least, and this version of the Niju Menso story has as much in common with the original as Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes does with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original tales. However, since Rampo’s Kogoro Akechi stories have never been translated into English, most viewers will be unaware of the shocking twist of So’s novels.

But enough with the history lesson. As a straight film, “K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces” is one of the best Japanese superhero films I have ever seen. Too many Japanese films are marred by somewhat amateur CG, but the lessons have been learned and “K-20″ mixes a great story with very satisfactory effects. Not quite a straight action movie, there are still some spectacular moves and fights mixed in with the intrigue. Kaneshiro Takeshi’s use of parkour urban-traveling was as well-done as Mollaka in Casino Royale.

The story is set in an alternate history 1948-49. Niju Menso has been locked in a battle with Kogoro Akechi (Nakamura Toru, Umizaru) for years, with a clear victor on no side. When announcing his engagement to the wealthy and beautiful Hashiba Yoko (Matsu Takako, The Hidden Blade) he is interrupted by Niju Menso (called K-20 in the English translation) who is then unmasked as young acrobat Endo Heikichi (Kaneshiro Takeshi, House of Flying Daggers). But Endo is not the true Niju Menso, and appears to have been set up to take a fall. Not only is Endo “exposed” as Niju Menso, he will also take the blame for the ruling aristocratic powers’ plan to use Nikola Tesla’s technology to cause a new Tunguska event which will help to consolidate their power. For Endo there is only one way out. He must truly take on the guise of Niju Menso to clear his own name and to put an end to the dangerous scheme. Oh, and also to save the circus and win the heart of a girl in true hero fashion.

There are some great nods to the original Edogawa Rampo story strewn like breadcrumbs to those who can find them. Kogoro Akechi’s young assistant Kobayashi Yoshio (Hongo Kanata, Returner) is a clever nod to Kogoro’s Boy Detectives’ Club that emulated Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars. Even without the background though, K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces is a fully-enjoyable movie.

The DVD is bare-bones. I know this film didn’t get a great US release, but its too bad they couldn’t put something together on the history of Kogoro Akechi and Niju Menso even as a paper supplement to put in with the DVD.