Great actors in a tokusatsu? Why not?
I have not read any of the manga nor seen either season of the anime, and so I cannot speak the faithfulness of the adaptation or the film's consistency with the rest of the franchise.The film is an all-ages dive into the human body from the POV of blood cells where the red cells transport oxygen and CO2 and various other cells fight off injury, illness and the occasional inconvenient bowel movement. The bad guys are infections and stray mutations played as OTT as any villain in every afternoon television tokusatsu from Kamen Rider on. And so the question naturally arises: is this film worth seeking out if you're over the age of, say, 10?
For me the answer is an unequivocal yes largely because the casting and the performances elevate the material substantially. Look. They cast Nagano Mei AND Ashida Mana. Based on everything they've ever been in you know their characters will be crying. In this film Nagano is a red blood cell in Ashida's body. In the first two acts, Nagano's character is new on the job and never knows her way around; frequently straying into unsafe places where she is inevitably saved by a white blood cell played by a brooding and cool Satoh Takeru. The film to that point is a light action comedy.
However, the stakes are raised significantly in the final third of the film, and the performances both within and outside the bodies get darker and more real. I do think the film walks the line of how to address illness and death extremely well, and you will be perfectly safe watching it with kids. I must particularly shout out Fukase Satoshi as the final boss for bringing some depth to his performance that gives Nagano and Satoh something to work with that's a bit more real than your usual tokusatsu villain.
Abe Sadawo is along for the ride as Ashida's single, out-of-shape and overworked father and raising the question of just how many times he will play Ashida's father. He brings his usual comedic flare, and easily keeps up with Ashida and Nagano when the film turns darker.
The special effects, huge crowd sequences and fight scenes are all top notch as these things go. The environments inside the body are all creative and fun while still providing a solid metaphorical understanding of how cells in the body work to resist illness, fight infections and heal.
All in all, Cells At Work! is a quality live-action adaptation and an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.
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Love Live! School Idol Musical the Drama
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A short, light but enjoyable mess
The Love Live! franchise is a set of projects running since 2010 that include over 50 issues of manga, 4 anime series, 3 anime movies, games, apps, novels, live music events and a stage musical. I have seen none of those, and fans of the various projects would certainly know more of the context, but my impression is that there is little to no continuity between the projects and the common thread is that they are all about girl idol groups formed as school clubs in high school and aiming to participate in an annual performance event called "Love Live!" This series is the first live action television drama of the franchise and is based on the 2022 stage musical.The protagonist of this series is Rurika who is the daughter of the principal of the prestigious, academically focused Tsubakisakka Girls' High School. Under the pressure of her mother's watchful eye, she's current #2 in the weekly tests, but she has gotten a dream to become an idol which could start by forming an idol club at her school. Meanwhile, Anzu is the daughter of the principal of a new and trending performing arts high school, the Takizakura Girls' Academy. Anzu is the center of Takizakura's successful idol group which is about to have its major label debut. However, while Anzu's the ace of her group, her being an idol is more her mother's dream than hers.
None of the major plot points in this short series make any sense at all, and the characters are all tired tropes and archetypes of the genre. But, to be fair, the whole franchise seems to be squarely pitched towards tweens. Despite Love in the title there is no romance anywhere, it's certainly in no ways near a GL, and there are no named speaking roles for any males.
The series is also not really a musical in the sense that the actors do not have any non-diegetic songs. There are a few typical idol songs throughout the series, but they are all sung at practice or performances.
Despite it's obvious flaws, I found the watch light and enjoyable. Rurika is played by Watanabe Miho, a former member of the idol group Hinatazaka46, and the character charmingly pressures all her friends to join her in her dream of being an idol. Anzu is played by Tomita Nanaka, the current center of the idol group ≠ME, and she does what she can with a character whose actions do not make a whole lot of sense. The acting overall is pretty broad, and the stakes are fairly absurd. But somewhere in there is a message about how the best idol group is the friends we made along the way.
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A Good, Solid High School Romance
I have not read the manga nor seen the anime, and so I cannot speak to the faithfulness of this adaptation. Nevertheless, this live action series is better than I expected. It is a very typical high school romance given a bit more life than usual through by focusing on the two leads entering the world of cosplay, and by the performances of its two young leads, Nagase Riko and Nomura Kota.Nomura's Wakana is shy and introverted, and so I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that Nagase's Marin is outgoing and extroverted. The roots of Wakana's social isolation is absolutely absurd - he was teased as a youngster for liking dolls which, you know, gender stereotypes, but the thing is that his family's business is handcrafting ... dolls and so you'd think at some point before his second year of high school he'd have mentioned that fact to, I don't know, ANYONE AROUND HIM, and accepted and owned the fact that he likes making them. Instead, we have Marin breaking into his bubble of isolation to avail herself of his sewing skills as she begins to explore her new interest in cosplay.
An uncharitable reading of this series might be that Marin is just yet another MPDG dragging a socially delayed Wakana out into something like a wider range of interests and social interactions. And as always YMMV as Marin perpetually grins and invades everyone's personal space in what I assume is genkiness straight from the pages of the manga. But I do think these tired tropes are redeemed a bit by what's happening romantically within the characters, and the fact that the resolution (at least in this season) is not exactly what you might expect given the set up.
Both Wakana and Marin have very small families for reasons that are never touched upon let alone explained: Wakana is being raised by one of his grandfathers, and Marin is largely living alone occasionally visited by her father who is frequently away on business. The series thus focusses entirely on the joint creative adventures that the two share as Wakana makes costumes for Marin. And I do think the series shines as Wakana discovers that his skills are valued in that community and as Marin receives well-deserved attention for her presentation and performances of the characters she loves and brings to life. And I do think both Nagase and Nomura portray their enjoyment of this shared interest quite well.
I also must shout out Ikeda Akana in the small secondary role of Sajuna, a more experienced cosplayer. She plays the role with a very deft deadpan that brings an unexpected and much-needed touch of humor to the series.
My one slight, genuine negative note about the series is purely cinematographic. The production clearly intentionally went for a wide-aperture, utterly washed out look throughout the series. Were they trying to hide acne on the young actors? Neither Nagase nor Nomura seem to need that. Were they avoiding having to clean up exteriors for the MANY shots of the characters backlit by bright windows? Who knows, but at times the feel of the series is that all of this is taking place on the surface of the sun.
But that niggle aside, I do recommend this series as a light high school romedy that does not have much to say, but is a cheerful diversion nonetheless.
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A Chill Sci-fi Web Series Available On YouTube
Three aliens from billions of light years away on the planet Skuld land in Tateyama, Japan having intended to land in Southerland, Scotland. They are beings of pure data and are here to learn about Earth and meet Remi, a part-time property manager, and her friend Ryo. The brief episodes touch upon life and love and art from the three's alien perspective. The stakes remain relatively low throughout, and the script could use some tightening. But the performances are good from the young cast, and the drama is quite well shot and edited. The series is ultimately sweet, but probably not all that memorable.Was this review helpful to you?
Slightly sweet, slightly sad but very formulaic
Wada Masao is the bass player for the popular rock fusion group Gesu no Kiwami Otome under the stage name Kyūjitsu Kachō (Weekend Manager). In 2018 he appeared on the Netflix reality show Terrace House for the end of its Opening New Doors series where he wooed one of the housemates by making his clam curry for her. In 2020 he released a cookbook which formed the basis for this series.Each episode follows the same structure. The show begins with a cold open of the young salary man Wada Masao at work or rehearsing with his band. He then goes to the local grocery when its about to close where he encounters a sales clerk and a stock boy (played by the real Wada Masao who has, maybe at stretch, a dozen lines over the course of the series). Back at home he prepares a meal. Most of the ingredients and timings are mentioned, but I'm doubtful that these scenes would suffice for someone to execute the recipes. At that point, a woman who he has encountered recently appears at his apartment, eats the meal with him and praises his cooking ... and then disappears because these nightly fantasies are all he has going at this point. He then calls his childhood friend Tomoko who is working in New York and there are some final credit scenes with his band or work.
So, in part, this series is about the formation of Gesu no Kiwami Otome. (The diegetic music played by the band is a couple of their songs though Masao's other band Dadaray provides the title and credit tracks for the series.) And, in part, the series is about Masao becoming more assertive, deciding what he wants to do with his life and choosing between a conventional work life and pursuing music more seriously. The series has a few good moments and the last couple of episodes work quite well. The acting is mostly understated and the vibe of the series is quite chill. (You were expecting action scenes in a series based on a cookbook?) All in all, I found the series mildly enjoyable, and the series ends with a nice little crescendo.
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One of the weakest asadoras in the past decade
Mai Agare! was the winter asadora which started in the fourth quarter of 2022, and is the fictional account (as opposed to a fictionalized biography) of Mai who aspires to soar into the sky. She makes a lot of progress towards doing so in the first half of the series in which she grows up and heads to college where she becomes the pilot for a club which works on building human-powered aircraft, and then shifts to flight school where she successfully graduates and is all set to become a commercial pilot in Japan.And so, naturally, at that point the script turns abruptly from the exciting world of piloting to ... the manufacturing of screws and the plight of small production factories in Osaka.
Look. I'll spare you all the details, but I'm entirely the target audience for the second half. My Dad engineered parts for the B1 bomber in the 70s and the Boeing 767 and 777 jets in the 90s. He had his name on several process patents for the use of titanium. I have written tons of poetry. All of those things touch directly on plot points in this series. I should be the one person who should be eating up everything being served by this series in the second half, but let me tell you: the storylines in the second half are ... just ... so ... boring.
The scripts also suffers from tepid or nonexistent resolutions to many of the running story arcs. Are the Goto islanders able to recruit young people to establish lives in the islands and revitalize the community? Does Mai's brother face any real long-term consequences for his illegal investment activities? Can Takashi overcome his writer's block? Can local Osaka machine shops and factories band together to bring in more business opportunities? The answers will not surprise you, and are presented in ways that might well be a cure for your insomnia.
As other reviewers have noted, there also seemed to be real issues in the production budgeting for this series with no expenses being spared for the first half including at least one aircraft apparently specifically built for the production and lots of shots on location at a fight school and also at the reasonably distant Goto islands. After that the story is stuck in a handful of sets including the Iwakura family house which miraculously expands as needed over time. They splurged a bit more for the final two weeks where they still mostly skip over what would probably be a much more interesting plot than the rest of the second half with a couple of multiyear time jumps.
On the other hand, the cast consists of good, solid acting professionals doing what they can with the material. I have enjoyed Fukuhara Haruka in several other things, and would even recommend her turn in her two seasons of the live action Yuru Camp even though those series have even less plot than this one. Here she plays Mai as persistent and cheerful, and she handles the narrow range of emotions required for the role perfectly well. She has little to no chemistry with either of her love interests, but, to be fair, all sexual chemistry is apparently against the asadora style guide in general.
If you enjoy the asadora format, this series is one. If you've never tried an asadora, there are many I would recommend before watching this one with Amachan still being the best pure fiction series and the recent Tora ni Tsubasa being the best fictionalized biography in my experience and opinion.
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Non's Sophomore Effort Is Slow But Charming
This is Non's second film, and this time she "only" wrote, directed, edited and starred in it. It's an art film about art which is always dicey territory, but Non manages to keep the story from being pretentious or self-indulgent by grounding the narrative in the mundane lives of its characters while limiting her representations of the impulses of creativity to brief but necessary moments of cgi and practical images of ribbons.Set at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, it captures the stress of the time and the way it forced us to isolate. Here the stress is compounded for Non's character Itsuka and her friend Hirai as their art school is being put on hiatus right before their graduation and their final projects and exhibitions are canceled. Itsuka shelters in her apartment alone and utterly fails to find a way to continue painting even though she routinely had done so there in the past. It is a story about reconnecting to that creative impulse through the not always welcome intrusions of friends and family.
The film has a larger budget than her first film, Get To The Punchline, and her editorial skills have improved, but the film is a bit slow and probably does not merit it's 2 hour runtime. That being said, it has some solidly funny moments, a beautifully moving climax and a satisfying denouement. The cast is solid and Non exhibits a greater range as an actress than she has in her prior roles.
All in all, it's a good journeyman effort and a surprisingly satisfying next step for this interesting young filmmaker.
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The agency is presented as a quirky and mildly dysfunctional little family that works pretty diligently to keep the business going and the girls safe. The characters at the office are reasonably likable and the actors do a decent job with the material they are given. The story of the day-to-day operations of the agency seems to be a reasonably sober and accurate if slightly gritty depiction of this side of the sex industry in Japan. There is a bit of humor that does land throughout the series, and rather more banjo in the soundtrack than one might expect.
The show is fairly sex-positive but the tone of the production is definitely not approving of the call-girl business in general. Nor is there any fan service here: the women and what they do with their clients is presented in a matter-of-fact manner, and while several gorgeous actresses are part of the cast, they are not presented for the male gaze even in scenes with their clients.
The failure of the series is inherent in its set-up: the show is about Sakita coming to terms with his new job. The arc of the series centers on his repeated failures to be a white knight for the woman at his agency. And so while two of the women he works with are almost certainly raped (trigger warnings for episodes 3 and 12), two of them are kidnapped, and one is physically abused at a rival agency the story only focuses on how those incidents affect him. I think we're supposed to be cheering the fact that Sakita genuinely cares for the women he works with but the series itself really does not.
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A Yokai Drama for Tweens
Set in the Edo Period, this series tells the story of a young samurai, Kazuma (played by Mizukami Koshi) who is teaching young students at a small temple. Kazuma is the oldest of two sons, but has little interest in bushido, and secretly learns everything he can about youkai while hiding his interest from his very traditional father. He hiccups whenever youkai are around, but does not understand that that is the case until he finds a small jade amulet that allows him to see the folkloric monsters even when they do not wish to be seen by humans.It's a short, youkai-of-the-week series in which Kazuma befriends three youkai in an abandoned storage building where one of the youkai, Amanojaku, is trapped at the start of the series. The other two youkai are a kappa (a turtle-like creature) played by Yamada Anna and a cat-like youkai named Nekomata played by Morikawa Aoi. Rounding out the principal cast is one of Kazuma's students, Ohina, who helps out Kazuma and provides the POV character for the intended audience.
It's a light, fun series that does not really go anywhere. The there's a mild romance arc for Kazuma, and an ultimate big bad who must be defeated at the end. It's a mildly enjoyable diversion overall.
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Yone's story immediately after the war
This drama is a follow-up special to the great summer asadora of 2024, Tora ni Tsubasa written by the same screenwriter, Yoshida Erika. It focuses on Yone's experiences from the fire-bombing of Tokyo through to the formation of her law partnership with Todoroki. It is set a very grim time in the history of Japan, and shows how some very dark moments in her life shaped Yone's character in the later episodes of Tora ni Tsubasa.There is some overlap with the cast of the asadora, but Yone's friend-group from law school is mostly only shown in flashbacks taken from the previous series. Ito Sairi as Torachan does appear for an utterly delightful scene at the end of the special, but mostly the special focuses on Yone, her old boss Masuno and her sister Natsu (who is played by a different actress than in the asadora, but that role was much smaller than in this special). Tozuka Junki also reprises his role as Todoroki, but only for a few scenes after the emotional denouement of the special.
Dio Shiori as Yone is excellent as usual as the fiery (probably) non-binary future lawyer. She delivers on a couple of emotionally devastating scenes. And Hirayama Yusuke has much more to do than in the previous series, and acquits himself well.
The scene with Torachan is a must-watch for fans of the previous series, and if you are not up for all of this comparatively dark special, you can safely go to 1:07:29 and watch the last four minutes. All in all, the special is a good exploration of Yone's character and provides some deeper insights into her life.
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Mostly an advertisement for Bandai's toys
Ultraman Omega is a standalone member of the Ultra Series which celebrates the 60th anniversary of the original Ultraman by doing this alternative reboot of original story. In this version, Ultraman falls to earth in the form of an amnesiac human who is found by the protagonist Kosei who quickly gives him the name Sorato. Seemingly coincidentally huge kaiju have started to become active again after millennia of dormancy, and Sorato and Kosei work together to fight them, and soon the team is joined by the biologist Ayumu who holds and maintains the one brain cell that is shared by the trio.As is appropriate for a very young audience, the series is HIGHLY repetitious. In each episode, a kaiju will emerge somewhere near the trio who then investigate. Soon Sorato will decide to become Ultraman using his "Omega Slugger", and will battle the kaiju for a bit, but will learn he needs help at which point Kosei will grab one of three toys, I mean, "Meteor Kaiju" from his bag an point it towards the sky at which point it becomes the same size and joins the melee. But that gambit usually fails too, and Kosei will then tell the toy to transform into a weapon for Ultraman Omega, and the battle will then be won.
The acting is perfectly fine for the genre. Yoshida Haruto overacts as directed throughout the series, but has a nice moment or two in the final episodes. Kondo Shori is appropriately handsome and gregarious as Sorato who is discovering what life is like for humans. He gets to show a bit more range as the series reaches its climax. Ayumu (Kudo Ayano) has nothing much to do during the battle sequences, but is only damselled once and even in that episode retains much of her agency. She largely becomes the liaison with the governmental forces that are martialed to defend against the kaiju.
The series is perfectly safe and probably enjoyable for kids. The time that is left for any plot outside of the battle sequences and the required "hey, kids, look what these cool toys do" moments is pretty minimal, but the principal cast has a good convivial chemistry. It's a good light watch.
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Low budget but well acted and well shot and edited
Ramblers is a low budget road movie. Tsuboi, a screenwriter, and Kinoshita, a director, were supposed to supposed to meet up with a mutual friend, Funaki, out in the sticks for a vacation, but he overslept and did not make the train. The two quickly decide to go on without him, occasionally checking in with Funaki to see if he's going to join him. The two are pretty much strangers at the start of the trip, and the thought that Funaki might still make it is more of a Waiting For Godot situation. Nevertheless, they find their way between various scenic spots, ryokans and onsens in the area and have encounters along the way.The point of this indie film is more about the film-making and showing off the skills of director Yamashita Atsuhiro on the film festival circuit. It's not quite a Dogme 95 film, but seems to rely on available light and on-scene sound with plenty of ambient noise. There are some interesting shots, and some fun set pieces with fixed cameras and characters wandering in and out of frame.
Other than that, it's almost entirely free of plot. Nevertheless, the acting is good and there are some surprises and cringe humor to maintain your interest. The largest segment of the film has the two encountering a young mysterious woman (played by Ono Michiko) alone on a beach, and then sharing their adventure with her for a bit. In the end the two run out of cash, but have established a professional relationship by the time they have to head home.
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A story of hopeless misery
Kawai Yuumi won the best actress award from the 2024 Japan Academy Film Prize for her performance in this film's depiction of drug addiction, domestic violence, prostitution, addiction recovery programs, self harm, child abandonment, social service failures, and the exploitation of the vulnerable in general. If you enjoy films like 2004's Nobody Knows, then this film is probably exactly the kind of thing you would like. It is a well-produced film based on a true story with all the endless misery and gritty realism one could want with fine performances by Kawai Yuumi as Ann and Sato Jiro as a police detective, Tatara, who tries to pull Ann out of the mire that her life is under the unrelenting abuse from her mother Harumi played by Kawai Aoba.Ann has been forced into prostitution by her mother since she was 14 and has been an intravenous meth addict for a couple of years when the film starts. She gets arrested when an abusive client overdoses, but an idiosyncratic police detective gets her enrolled in his addiction recovery program. She keeps being drawn back in reach of her mother because she loves and worries about what will happen to her disabled grandmother if she completely abandons the family. Any light suggested by Ann's road to recovery is only present in the film to be quashed in the denouement that made the news in Japan.
Both Kawaii Yuumi and Sato Jiro have excellent moments of portraying the anguish, grief and anger of these characters' lives. But, honestly, Kawaii had at least three more effective and moving scenes in her jdrama Kazoku Dakara Aishitan Janakute, Aishita no ga Kazoku Datta than anything in this film and I would direct anyone who is catching on to her talent to seek out that series long before diving into this film.
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A Slice Of Life With No Dramatic Stakes
Imaginary OL Diary was the 2017 winner of the annual Mukoda Muniko Award given by a small committee of television writers to one such writer each year. Sakamoto Yuji, one of the members of the selection committee, called it his favorite drama series and said it is a "world-class masterpiece". And as much as I stan Sakamoto, I have to disagree with that assessment, and note that both he and Bakarhythm have written series that are much better than than this one. Bakarhythm's Brush Up Life is a world-class masterpiece. This series: not so much.This series is the thoughts of a thirty-something bank teller, and the quotidian details of her and her friends'/co-workers' work life at a bank branch. They get ready at the branch's locker room, talk over lunches and dinners, and occasionally work out or go shopping together afterward. That's it. That's the series.
On the positive side, Bakarhythm is probably the best writer of dialogue currently working in Japan. He has a great ear for the normal dysfluencies of natural speech, and it's flow and repetitions. The series is pretty much focused on the difference between the tatemae of what the women say and do and honne of what they really feel and want. There is a bit of exploration of how they police each other's tatemae, but it never really rises to any level of critique of that policing. It's tone is more, "well, that's just what we do." But you can see the seeds of the conversations, relationships and interactions in Brush Up Life in this work which shares some of the same actors.
The elephant in the room, of course, is that the cishet man Bakarhythm plays the protagonist in a sort of minimal drag: make-up and clothes and that's it. I guess we're supposed to oooh and ahhh at a guy writing and acting from the POV of a woman of his age and at all of the rest of the cast acting like he's just one of the girls. It's a perfectly valid exercise for any writer to try writing from POVs outside of their experience. But do we laud any woman writer for routinely doing exactly that for virtually every series she writes? Have not men played women in classical theater both in Japan and the West for centuries?
And so I had to constantly ask myself as I watched: would this series work with a woman playing the protagonist? I still enjoyed the series with that thought in mind. But I do not think it was any kind of revelation about gender norms, nor do I think it was it trying to be. Instead, it's a deep dive into the minutia of daily work relationships at a bank branch with no dramatic stakes whatsoever. They talk about who has refilled the toilet paper in the woman's room the most often, and collectively deal with a broken space heater in the locker room. And if that's the level of excitement you are looking for in a drama, this series will provide it.
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