Bikuru

Matt Alt, AKA God Jesus  Robot,  chimes in with the first review of  Takashi Miike`s  latest  -  Yokai  Daiseno. He also plays a yokai in the film. The sexy one. He also wrote a book.

"The Great Spirit War"?  "The Great War of the Yokai"? "Battle of Yokai
Without Honor or Humanity"? However you want to translate the title,
Hiroko and I just caught a sneak preview screening of "Yokai Daisenso."
The plot, in a nutshell: when elementary schooler Tadashi's pet yokai
is kidnapped (by a beehived, whip-weilding Chiaki Kuriyama), he doesn't
just get mad -- he enlists his alcoholic, doddering grandfather (Bunta
Sugawara, in his most challenging role yet) to school him about the
yokai legends of the sleepy seaside town they live in.

But what's a yokai? To most Americans they'll look like little more
than actors in wacky foam suits, but there's more here than meets the
eye. In times of old, the Japanese believed the world around them was
filled with spirits and supernatural creatures, collectively referred
to as "yokai." Some lived alongside humans, in the form of everyday
items and objects. Some symbolized natural phenomena in the oceans and
forests and mountains. Some were physical incarnations of human
emotions and habits. Some were helpful. Others were angry. Many were
indifferent. But they were always there. In fact, they're a charmingly
literal extension of the Japanese traditions of polytheism and animism.
You could even go so far as to say that they subtly inform modern
Japanese culture in the same way that Judeo-Christian traditions infuse
American life. The yokai represent the very first Japanese character
designs. They are the great-great-great granddaddies of the Pokemons
and and Godzillas and Ultra-kaiju that populate Japanese fantasies
today.

A brief panel discussion kicked off the festivities. On hand were
director Takashi Miike, novelist and co-producer Natsuhiko Kyogoku,
screenwriter Hiroshi Aramata, and eighty two year old "Ge ge ge no
Kitaro" creator Shigeru Mizuki (who regaled the crowd with tales of
sleepwalking into a pit latrine on the front lines during World War
II). A Richter-five earthquake capped the presentation, gently shaking
the building as if the yokai themselves were giving their blessing to
the proceedings.

I'll leave the analysis of where "Yokai Daisenso" falls into the Miike
oeuvre to the "professionals," but If you're expecting the usual
exploitation fare -- vomit consumption, S&M gangsters, limb amputation,
crybaby hitmen, or salarymen huffing enormous lines of coke -- you may
be disappointed. But hey, what did you expect? This is Miike's first
film for kids. Guys in suits! Giant computer-animated robots!
Prepubescent swordsmen! Fun for the whole family!

Then again, this is Takashi Miike we're talking about, so don't expect
bubblegum. It's a peculiarly Japanese mix of fuzzy-wuzzy Pokemon-cute,
PG-rated slapstick humor, grotesque imagery, and casual apocalypse,
topped off with a surprisingly downbeat finale. In the end analysis
it's a film with a message, articulated at the end of the movie by no
less a figure than the Lord of Yokai: "War is bad; it just makes you
hungry." It's a sentiment that would sound unbearably simplistic and
cheesy if it weren't being uttered by Mizuki himself, who in real life
(as the audience was reminded during the panel discussion) lost his
left arm when his Imperial Army unit was wiped out in combat in the
South Pacific. Hammering the point home, the film also opens nationwide
on August 6th, which happens to coincide with the anniversary of the
bombing of Hiroshima.

While the anti-war message may come through loud and clear, the
subtleties of the yokai themselves will undoubtedly be lost on most
non-Japanese. If you aren't aware of the lengths to which Miike and his
staff went to research and portray the various creatures, they may
grate more than they enchant. C'est la vie, because if you ain't
Japanese, you ain't the intended target audience. On the other hand,
the crowd at the preview screening -- a good quarter of which consisted
of kiddies -- appeared to eat it up. "Yokai Daisenso" is that rarity in
the world of current big-budget Japanese horror/fantasy cinema: a
production designed by and for Japanese, with little to no worry of
international audiences or marketing. Here's to hoping we see more of
them. (And in fact, we probably will: rumor has it that "Yokai
Daisenso" is but the first in a trilogy of films to be directed by
different people.)

(And the best news? Hiroko, in full frog-yokai regalia, is clearly
visible in one of the major scenes. She's famous! Sort of.)

Comments

[Brian]

Speaking of Japanese films (which is generally what goes on around here and isn't much of an introductory lead-in to this comment, which doesn't have anything to do with Miike's new film per se), any thoughts on what your buddy Tomohiro Machiyama had to say about the Japanese film review industry on his blog (and covered in English at http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/000627.html )? Have you faced anything similar in any of the writing you've been doing?

[Brian]

I actually just saw ROTS the other day when I was in Austin. (It was the first film I'd seen in a theatre in over six months -- this is what happens when you have a new baby.) I did get to see it in digital projection, though. It was not as bad as I had feared, although not nearly as good as I had (foolishly) hoped.

So, as anyone who pays attention to these things knows, Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" was one of the big influences on "Star Wars." However, I noticed another alluision to Kurosawa's film in ROTS -- the outfit Natalie Portman wears when she visits the lava planet (the name of which escapes me right now) bears a striking resemblance to the outfit Misa Uehara's character wears in "Hidden Fortress."

And I still claim that I remember seeing the first film in the theatres when it came out (I know my parents went to see it), even though "Star Wars" was released two months before I was born.

[Carl Horn]

I went over the comments on Néomarxisme, but I should say that it looked to be a bit of a bitch-fest.

[Gilles Poitras]

Miike does a yokai film?

I SO WANT THIS!