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Kagehinata ni Saku
I went up to Saitama Shintoshin and got a huge avocado burger and watched a huge plot-twisty movie called Kagehinata ni Saku.
It is about as advertised: there's 9 main characters and their lives are all intertwined. Wait, that's not quite right. There's more like... 3 main characters in the past, 6 in the present, and 2 of them sort of don't really connect with the others as far as I can tell.
Basically, the overall theme of this movie seems to be "finding your first (lost) love". I think I understood about 70-75% of the dialogue, which equates to about that much of the plot. It was sadly not a comedy as I was expecting, but more of a... I dunno, romance/mystery? There isn't so much of a plot so much as there is a revealing of how all of these seemingly random people's lives fit together.
We have, uh:
Okada Junichi, playing a dude who is deeply in debt and addicted to pachinko who drives a bus for a living
Miyazaki Aoi, as a lawyer girl who wants to find her mother's first love
Miyazaki Aoi, as the lawyer girl's mother 35 years ago, a naive girl who goes off and forms a manzai comedy duo with this crazy guy
Ito Atsushi, the crazy manzai guy 35 years ago, who was apparently really in love with a girl he called "Jupiter"
Ogawa Tamaki, who apparently went by "Jupiter" 35 years ago... and who may or may not have been Okada's character's mother, too
Nishida Toshiyuki, playing an old homeless guy who turns out to be the older version of Ito Atsushi's character
Miura Tomokazu, playing a salaryman who for some unknown reason decides to go off and become homeless. In time we also discover he's Okada's father.
And then for some reason we also have
Hirayama Aya, as an idol wannabe named Miyako who performs in Akihabara trying to get a big break
Tsukamoto Takashi, as a manga cafe worker in Akihabara who is Miyako's biggest fan.
As it turns out the later two, see, when Takashi's character was in elementary school he fell in love with this girl named Yoko who gave him an eraser or something (this seems like a common Japanese plot device). He couldn't talk to her and then she moved away, but when she moved away he got a bunch of flowers and ended up running after her parents' car at the last minute, but he fell on the ground and thought she never knew. Turns out that Miyako the idol is actually Yoko the girl from his childhood. And after he fakes a ton of fan mail to her she writes back to him like "Hi, I recognized you at the concert. Let's meet again." And they do, kind of. But what the fuck this has to do with anyone else in the story is beyond me.
See, everyone else, you're presented with all of these storylines... eventually you figure out how everyone's related in the story (although you don't quite hook together that the homeless dude is the older version of the manzai guy for quite a while), in terms of who's related to who, who's related to who in the past, and so on and so forth. So all of the top 7 characters are related somehow (and they're really 6 characters anyway -- Aoi, Okada, Okada's parents, and Aoi's parents... well, actually I'm not clear on whether the manzai dude is Aoi's father or not) and they all have these things they regret, whether it's splitting up with their father/son, splitting up with their spouse, whatever. So it seems like mostly happy endings in the end but, eh.
It's just, I thought it was cool how you kept getting people woven into the main plot -- like "OH that's who that guy is! cool!" except, I still never figured out why they needed the Akihabara plot. The only excuse I can think of is that it's based on a Gekidan Hitori book and all. Because there were a LOT of common things to other stuff I've seen him in -- the dude in debt getting his ass kicked by collection guys, the dudes in Akihabara, the manzai -- specifically manzai with a bad comedian guy who gets better at it with a girl who likes him -- and so on.
Or maybe I did miss a major plot point along the line.
Either way I think this movie is worth watching but I think if I ever see it again I really need subtitles. Because when you're watching a major plot-twisty cause-and-effect kind of movie it really sucks when you're not sure whether you're confused due to plot or confused due to language.
Oh, also, there were 10 minutes of previews before the movie. So if anyone reading this lives in Kanto and wants to go see a movie with me in the next month or two, here's what's coming out that I'm interested in seeing:
Gachi Boy (March 1 - Sato Ryota stars as a wrestler wannabe, looks hilarious)
Kurosagi (March 8 - the movie version of last year's dorama, I'm sure it'll suck but HEY COME ON IT'S MAKI AND YAMAPI AGAIN WOOOOOO)
Enchanted (March 14 - I remember seeing the previews for this before I left America and I was so depressed it wouldn't be out in Japan until March)
Postman (March 22 - this movie looks hella boring but it stars Nagashima Kazushige wheeeeeeeeeee!!!)
Utatama (April 5 - I saw posters for this but no preview, actually.)
Sushi Oji - The Movie! (April 22 - I still hate to admit how much I watched this dorama, but, uh, hey, Domoto Koichi in NYC! That's a win, right?)
Oh, I also saw a preview for a remake of Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress but I'm not sure whether I'm up for that or not. Anyway. WHO'S WITH ME?
It is about as advertised: there's 9 main characters and their lives are all intertwined. Wait, that's not quite right. There's more like... 3 main characters in the past, 6 in the present, and 2 of them sort of don't really connect with the others as far as I can tell.
Basically, the overall theme of this movie seems to be "finding your first (lost) love". I think I understood about 70-75% of the dialogue, which equates to about that much of the plot. It was sadly not a comedy as I was expecting, but more of a... I dunno, romance/mystery? There isn't so much of a plot so much as there is a revealing of how all of these seemingly random people's lives fit together.
We have, uh:
Okada Junichi, playing a dude who is deeply in debt and addicted to pachinko who drives a bus for a living
Miyazaki Aoi, as a lawyer girl who wants to find her mother's first love
Miyazaki Aoi, as the lawyer girl's mother 35 years ago, a naive girl who goes off and forms a manzai comedy duo with this crazy guy
Ito Atsushi, the crazy manzai guy 35 years ago, who was apparently really in love with a girl he called "Jupiter"
Ogawa Tamaki, who apparently went by "Jupiter" 35 years ago... and who may or may not have been Okada's character's mother, too
Nishida Toshiyuki, playing an old homeless guy who turns out to be the older version of Ito Atsushi's character
Miura Tomokazu, playing a salaryman who for some unknown reason decides to go off and become homeless. In time we also discover he's Okada's father.
And then for some reason we also have
Hirayama Aya, as an idol wannabe named Miyako who performs in Akihabara trying to get a big break
Tsukamoto Takashi, as a manga cafe worker in Akihabara who is Miyako's biggest fan.
As it turns out the later two, see, when Takashi's character was in elementary school he fell in love with this girl named Yoko who gave him an eraser or something (this seems like a common Japanese plot device). He couldn't talk to her and then she moved away, but when she moved away he got a bunch of flowers and ended up running after her parents' car at the last minute, but he fell on the ground and thought she never knew. Turns out that Miyako the idol is actually Yoko the girl from his childhood. And after he fakes a ton of fan mail to her she writes back to him like "Hi, I recognized you at the concert. Let's meet again." And they do, kind of. But what the fuck this has to do with anyone else in the story is beyond me.
See, everyone else, you're presented with all of these storylines... eventually you figure out how everyone's related in the story (although you don't quite hook together that the homeless dude is the older version of the manzai guy for quite a while), in terms of who's related to who, who's related to who in the past, and so on and so forth. So all of the top 7 characters are related somehow (and they're really 6 characters anyway -- Aoi, Okada, Okada's parents, and Aoi's parents... well, actually I'm not clear on whether the manzai dude is Aoi's father or not) and they all have these things they regret, whether it's splitting up with their father/son, splitting up with their spouse, whatever. So it seems like mostly happy endings in the end but, eh.
It's just, I thought it was cool how you kept getting people woven into the main plot -- like "OH that's who that guy is! cool!" except, I still never figured out why they needed the Akihabara plot. The only excuse I can think of is that it's based on a Gekidan Hitori book and all. Because there were a LOT of common things to other stuff I've seen him in -- the dude in debt getting his ass kicked by collection guys, the dudes in Akihabara, the manzai -- specifically manzai with a bad comedian guy who gets better at it with a girl who likes him -- and so on.
Or maybe I did miss a major plot point along the line.
Either way I think this movie is worth watching but I think if I ever see it again I really need subtitles. Because when you're watching a major plot-twisty cause-and-effect kind of movie it really sucks when you're not sure whether you're confused due to plot or confused due to language.
Oh, also, there were 10 minutes of previews before the movie. So if anyone reading this lives in Kanto and wants to go see a movie with me in the next month or two, here's what's coming out that I'm interested in seeing:
Gachi Boy (March 1 - Sato Ryota stars as a wrestler wannabe, looks hilarious)
Kurosagi (March 8 - the movie version of last year's dorama, I'm sure it'll suck but HEY COME ON IT'S MAKI AND YAMAPI AGAIN WOOOOOO)
Enchanted (March 14 - I remember seeing the previews for this before I left America and I was so depressed it wouldn't be out in Japan until March)
Postman (March 22 - this movie looks hella boring but it stars Nagashima Kazushige wheeeeeeeeeee!!!)
Utatama (April 5 - I saw posters for this but no preview, actually.)
Sushi Oji - The Movie! (April 22 - I still hate to admit how much I watched this dorama, but, uh, hey, Domoto Koichi in NYC! That's a win, right?)
Oh, I also saw a preview for a remake of Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress but I'm not sure whether I'm up for that or not. Anyway. WHO'S WITH ME?