It really felt like they were about to reveal that it was her two friends staging fake videos in order to teach Jin how she'd feel if it happened to someone she dearly cares about, and then how she'd feel if she had to experience pain and the instinctual fear of dying herself.
And yet that ending would be cruel, showing the audience that everybody in her life betrayed the trust she put in them.
And so, instead, the perpetrator is an innocuous bookseller we only see once. There was not enough set-up. The tape and photograph show up very shortly after she mentally tortures and physically threatens Anton. Keeping the torture plot mostly intact, the logical ending feels like it would've been Jas and Anton seeing her slip back again into the same/a similar fascination, and giving her an over-the-top wake-up call. (I would've hated this ending, to be clear). In fact, the audience is primed to believe that it could be staged: the dialogue mentions the editing and the sound effects added to the supposed snuff films, the mannequin bodies shown in the other room, we're shown an excessive amount of cameras in the actual torture room. So for the first half of Jin's torture scene, I couldn't meet the movie where it was at, convinced it was some elaborate reveal.
This is such a small unecessary thing maybe exclusive to my subtitles, but the line from Hiroko revealing who knitted the sweater and baked the cake was meant to be about what Mariko used to do for him, not something Hiroko did herself.
with "bugonia" getting a wide release in a few days i knew that if i watched to watch this without any context i had to watch it soon. i liked it quite a bit, i will say the first 10 minutes or so is a bit over-the-top with the editing style and the style becomes more standard (for the time it was made) after that.
imagine a yakuza crew that is okay with their leader being a 14 year old girl, where they win money at a casino to save a church/orphanage, briefly run a fruit/dessert parlor to hide their gang affiliation from her school admin., and where they're always willing to kick it with her high school classmates... would you imagine the last 3 episodes ending with every member underneath her dying?
loved a lot of the music choices and mayumi's hair styling.
i understand the cathartic experience of watching something painful, where everyone assumes the absolute worst of the most innocent and generous characters, and where its outlined that people only lose their great qualities because of other humans' selfish acts, and its a cycle of bitterness, etc. but personally i can't sit with situations like that for longer than the length of a movie...
mostly started watching because i found the movie poster pretty. it only really had two brightspots for me, the intro dance sequence (so nice they show it twice), and the scene with green lighting near the end of the film. i thought (hoped) it would be more campy.
i didn't realize the same actress played (adult) terue and toyoko until i finished the entire movie and read a review that mentioned it. wow that was excellent
plot is very messy, probably only worth a watch out of curiosity if youre already a fan of the anime/manga series. the amount of rape jokes in this is a bit ridiculous.
also my version with hardsubs has "translate this part!!!" in french for like fifteen seconds as the subs instead of their actual lines
...so nobody figured out that the guy whose house she visited on live tv a few weeks(?) ago was the same guy she was pictured out with? i would try to include it in the plot, and say that they recognized eachother in that moment and then decided to reminisce on a dinner that was totally not a date cause his kids were there.
also what a progressive ending to have her continue to have success, felt a lot of joy in that moment. also felt emotional when akira told her not to quit... the show really grew on me, especially the relationship between akira and miho. it was a tiny bit rushed to have akira be so fond of her in the very end of the episode, but the show was built on their dynamic so i can't say it was rushed overall.
the little brother is annoying and not a fan of the father character, he was most likeable to me when he was portraying a manager for akira in a dream sequence. very cute overall, glad i watched it.
And yet that ending would be cruel, showing the audience that everybody in her life betrayed the trust she put in them.
And so, instead, the perpetrator is an innocuous bookseller we only see once. There was not enough set-up. The tape and photograph show up very shortly after she mentally tortures and physically threatens Anton. Keeping the torture plot mostly intact, the logical ending feels like it would've been Jas and Anton seeing her slip back again into the same/a similar fascination, and giving her an over-the-top wake-up call. (I would've hated this ending, to be clear). In fact, the audience is primed to believe that it could be staged: the dialogue mentions the editing and the sound effects added to the supposed snuff films, the mannequin bodies shown in the other room, we're shown an excessive amount of cameras in the actual torture room. So for the first half of Jin's torture scene, I couldn't meet the movie where it was at, convinced it was some elaborate reveal.
loved a lot of the music choices and mayumi's hair styling.
also my version with hardsubs has "translate this part!!!" in french for like fifteen seconds as the subs instead of their actual lines
also what a progressive ending to have her continue to have success, felt a lot of joy in that moment. also felt emotional when akira told her not to quit... the show really grew on me, especially the relationship between akira and miho. it was a tiny bit rushed to have akira be so fond of her in the very end of the episode, but the show was built on their dynamic so i can't say it was rushed overall.
the little brother is annoying and not a fan of the father character, he was most likeable to me when he was portraying a manager for akira in a dream sequence. very cute overall, glad i watched it.