Hollywood has its flaws. Cookie-cutter scripts and commodification of art can often ruin beautiful things. But at least Hollywood gets the cinematography right and doesn’t usually suffer from the pandemic of awkward overacting rampant in Japanese mainstream cinema. 2011’s Space Battleship Yamato live action movie is anime-comes-alive, but in a bad way that constantly reminds you how stupid the world would be if everyone behaved like manga characters.

Still, it’s not a total disaster.

Space Battleship Yamato will be out in Singapore cinemas on 24 March, but I caught a preview screening of it a few days ago.

Although I do enjoy the classics of anime from time to time, Yamato has never been one of them. I also don’t care a single bit about soap actor and SMAP member Takuya Kimura. If you are a fan of either, I suspect that what I write in this review will not matter and you will watch the movie anyway.

But for the rest of us, there are a few things I want to talk about.

This picture cracks me up for some reason

Story

The general gist of the story is that some unknown alien race has turned Earth into a radioactive wasteland for unknown reasons and mankind has been driven into underground bunkers much like in Fallout 3.

Thoroughly beaten in space, the United Nations for Space Exploration (which apparently consists solely of Japan) pools all its remaining resources to construct the Space Battleship Yamato using warp technology provided by another unknown alien race. The ship sets off on a last-ditch voyage to retrieve radiation-scrubbing technology from the unknown alien benefactors in order to make Earth habitable again, but nobody mentions how anyone plans to deal with the hostile invaders who created the mess in the first place and who are still right there in the solar system ready to do it again if necessary. As a wise man once said, “Fuck it, we’ll do it live!”

And for unknown reasons, the design of the ship that is to be humanity’s last hope is based on a Japanese WW2 battleship that was overwhelmingly out-teched and sunk by US carrier-based torpedo bombers. Though, interestingly, there is a hole in the bow where the Japanese imperial seal would’ve been.

I am pretty sure those facial hairs are against military regulation

Okay, so the story has more holes than the moon, but I suppose that is not just expected but required of such a production.

Visual Effects

Digital special effects in the movie are actually better than I had expected given the track record of the Japanese film industry, but the rest of it still bears an unfortunate sentai vibe. The bridge in particular, where it feels like most of the movie takes place in, wouldn’t look out of place in an Ultraman movie. This problem is further exuberated by Japanese cinema’s habit of filming entire movies from one single camera angle.

It feels like the producers blew the effects budget on a few scenes that account for maybe 1/100 of the movie because some of the special effects going on in the second half of the movie look downright comical.

I think it’s really weird how Japan, a country known for its anime and video game industries, still has difficulties producing industrial-grade special effects for its movies when New Zealand has Weta and ILM’s Singapore subsidiary worked on Ironman 2.

If those shades were really needed, they would’ve added shutters to the bridge’s windows

Execution

Yamato does take a page or two from Tinseltown’s playbook with some degree of success. There are few shots in the movie (the aforementioned budget busters) that evoke the kind of grandiose and awe big-budget US titles are very good at creating. You can actually see most of them in the trailer if you want to save some money.

The first quarter of the movie is easily the best part of the movie. This is where we are introduced to the post-apocalyptic Earth and a human race on the verge of extinction hiding beneath its surface. Children grow up in bunkers devoid of proper sanitation and hope. The hero of the story, played by Kimutaku, goes up to the surface in a ghetto hazmat suit to collect scraps for a living. The Yamato, humanity’s last hope, is unveiled.

All great moments in the movie, some of them are unintentionally poignant in light of recent events in Japan. The movie was right on the cusp of greatness and my cold cynical heart was ready to be moved.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the story that follows this fast-paced Hollywood-style introduction quickly degenerates into an endless series of mind-numbingly bland conversations between boring characters taking place in generic enclosed cabins. The existential threat facing humanity becomes tangential to the predictable interpersonal drama taking place between uninspired character stereotypes drifting around the bridge in various stages of comatose. It comes as a huge relief when many of these unbearable automatons are gradually killed off over the course of the movie.

My friend was sniggering at the corny dialogues throughout the movie, but the cheese gets so bad towards the end that even the more-reserved individuals in the theatre laughed aloud.

The male and female uniform designs have Freudian implications if we consider grey to be negative space

Overall

It’s a run-of-the-mill product of Japanese mainstream cinema with relatively better special effects and decent entertainment value. Imagine a Japanese take on Armageddon but replace every Hollywood trope with its equivalent Japanese idiosyncrasy. It even comes with its own Steven Tyler love ballad.

In my completely professional opinion as a person on the Internet, the best part of the movie is Meisa Kuroki in the role of Yuki Mori, the heroine. She brings the fictional concept of tsundere to life in all its meme-licious glory.

“It’s not like I needed you to save me or anything.”

She has Brazilian blood in her

Summar Wars is director Mamoru Hosoda‘s second feature film (that counts) since the unexpectedly successful Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, which rose from obscurity by word of mouth. Summer Wars is the second child in the family, the one who has to live up to the expectations of others to supersede the greatness that came before it. Did it succeed? My feelings are mixed.

As Hosoda himself puts it in interviews, Summer Wars is a movie about family, particularly a large traditional Japanese family. Just as Tokikake uses time travel to tell the story of a teenage girl’s inner uncertainties about love and growing up, Summer Wars is a story about family love and human communication wrapped in a soft sci-fi story.

The movie takes place in a slightly more advanced version of modern Japan, where the internet has evolved into a virtual world not unlike Second Life. This network is called the OZ and it can be accessed from a variety of devices that look remarkably similar to various real-life intellectual properties. Every user is represented by a personal avatar and uses it to get things done in the OZ. Every action in the OZ is represented by symbolic representations of its real-life equivalent (i.e. a key for a password lock and what not).

Or to put it simply, OZ is pretty much what people in the 90s imagined the future of internet to be because the real internet is too boring to be the setting of a movie.

In the movie, OZ is being attacked by an unknown hacker (guest starring Anonymous) who goes around “stealing” people’s avatars in order to gain their access rights to various systems. As is typical of the Hollywood Hacking trope, every critical system in the world is connected to this virtual funland. Oh noz.

The main character is Kenji Koiso, almost IMO representative for Japan, who is good with computers and works part-time as a OZ administrator (i.e. kind-hearted geek with l33t skills). He is invited by his senpai Natsuki Shinohara (i.e. hot older girl) to help out at her grandmother’s birthday celebration. There, he meets the rest of the Jinnouchi family, a long line of warriors whose ancestors fought the Tokugawa shogunate and held great influence in Japan. On some level, there’s a “tradition meets modernity” theme going on, but its prominence in the story is slight at best.

The direction that the story takes should be quite clear from this initial set-up. Boy meets girl (and extended family) and By Their Powers Combinedâ„¢ they unite to save the world. There are few surprises to be found in Summer Wars and its plot is definitely not one of its strong points. The story has about as much subtlety as a super villain in a 80s cartoon. Compared to Tokikake, this is a step backward in some sense, but perhaps that is simply because Summer Wars is a different kind of movie. (Or it’s just not as good…)

The most interesting part of Summer Wars is probably the Jinnouchi family, a diverse group of people whose mundane banters are strangely entertaining. In today’s world where nuclear families are becoming the norm (and in fact seems to be the only form of family ever depicted in anime), the Jinnouchi family presents an engaging and appealing look into an increasingly rare kind of social structure — that of a big traditional family that has adapted to the challenges of modern society without losing its sense of identity.

As an Asian coming from a culture bearing similar concepts, there are many elements in the film that I personally find endearing, but your mileage may vary on this count. At the very least, the humorous interactions between the diverse range of characters in the Jinnouchi family should make for some heart-warming moments.

I find the OZ portion of Summer Wars and its whole associated storyline to be the weakest part of the movie. Sure, the action scenes and the depictions of 3D virtual world are somewhat entertaining, but they do not mesh well with what appears to be the main focus of the film — the Jinnouchi family. The role OZ plays in the movie is of dubious importance and the final “crsis” feels too convenient as a plot device.

I suppose the sci-fi angle is meant to be the flashy gimmick used to draw the audience in to the real underlying message, but it ends up being more of a distraction. As I previously stated, I believe that on some level the original intent was to create a contrast between this wildly futuristic idea of the internet and the traditional values represented by the family. Unfortunately, only a few feeble attempts were made to actually develop this tenuous link into a coherent message.

Character development in the story is practically non-existent. Where it does exist, it’s really not any good. Considering the story’s premise and Kenji being depicted as slightly socially awkward, one would expect some kind of character growth to occur as a result of his interactions with the Jinnouchi family (he practically said as much himself at one point in the movie), but that doesn’t really happen. In fact, for a main character, he does surprisingly little throughout the movie. Oh sure he gets the girl in the end, but for what reason beyond playing to audience expectation I just can’t say.

Of course, every work of fiction is flawed in some ways especially given how much of it is subjective. Hence, it’s not about how many rights or wrongs, but whether the things that are done right are more important than the wrongs. Summer Wars, in spite of all its execution flaws, provides an extremely enjoyable and heart-warming experience that will hopefully leave a longer-lasting impression than its abysmally bad sci-fi component. Well, it did for me anyway.

To sum up, Summer Wars has its moments and is on the whole likeable and decent, but I expected more from a follow-up to Tokikake. Of course considering the fact that everyone else is hailing it as the second coming of Hayao Miyazaki (a comparison which frankly boggles my mind… They are both Japanese?), maybe it’s just me being an unappeasable jerk as usual.

Those who are in Singapore can catch it in most Cathay cinemas. Just bring with you some rudimentary understanding of Japanese because the subtitles are terribad. White on white? Jeez.

Up until recently, I had been under the impression that industry giant James Cameron was reduced to making a movie adaptation of this. This misconception was finally shattered when I saw the trailer for Avatar and it piqued my interest.

Fast forward to a few months later, I have watched the movie in cinema four times and now believe it to be one of the defining works of the decade. Though not perfect, (is anything ever?) Avatar is an awe-inspiring viewing experience that far exceeds any other productions of similar scale. And though it has done remarkably well in the box office, I still consider it to be a highly underrated title.

Keeping alive my tradition of writing about things only after everyone stops talking about them, here are my thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar.

Story

Avatar has a pretty typical soft sci-fi kind of story. Large future corporation wants to exploit newly-discovered resource on an alien planet and intrudes upon and screws up the life of the native indigenous inhabitants. Maybe it’s influence from American history, but this kind of setting seems pretty common. In the movie, the planet is Pandora and the indigenous people are the Na’vi, a race of 3m-tall wide-eyed blue-skinned elfish-looking people who live in tribes harmoniously with nature. (Where have we heard that one before?)

The name “Avatar” comes from a science experiment being conducted as a side project by the mega-corporation, where human and Na’vi DNAs are combined to create Na’vi-like bodies that a human operator is able to remotely control. The goal of this experiment is to find a way to negotiate with the Na’vi and steal their planet’s resource legally, with Plan B being to blow every shit up. Of course, beyond the liberal tree-hugging scientist folks who seek knowledge and coexistence and all that jazz, the rest of the human colony on Pandora consists of former US Marines who seem to overwhelmingly prefer Plan B. America, fuck yeah!

The main character Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a crippled ex-Marine who ends up operating an Avatar due to the death of his brainier twin brother. He (or rather his Avatar) is sent to live among the Na’vi and learn from them. His love interest is Ney’tiri (Zoe Saldana), the daughter of chief of the Omaticaya Clan. Their romance follows the textbook boy-meets-alien-girl trope that is common in Hollywood and absolutely pervasive in anime.

The story is without a doubt the weakest part of Avatar. Highly predictable and formulaic, it is serviceable but nothing ground-breaking. The perceived liberal bias underlying the story has also drew criticisms from conservative commentators ever vigilant for Hollywood propaganda, who accuse the movie of being anti-technology, anti-humanity and anti-capitalism.

Personally, I find nothing wrong with the message of the story. It doesn’t preach against technology, but merely the abuse of it — after all the Avatars are themselves products of bio-engineering. It is also rather far-fetched to accuse it of being anti-humanity, considering not all human characters in the story behave selfishly.

Everyone cheered for the triumph of the human spirit over the technological might of the resource-hungry aliens in Independence Day (or was that movie anti-technology too?), so why not for the Na’vi who, in their brave stand against human colonists, display the very same spirit that we as sentient beings value so highly. To me, it is no different from cheering for the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in a WW2 flick. No one would accuse those films of being “anti-German”, and for good reason.

That said, I do think that the story could have presented a more balanced perspective of the conflict, particularly the fear and anxiety of the human colonists who find themselves besieged in a foreign land. In a way, in its current form, Avatar resembles an early WW2 movie where the moral superiority of the Allied forces is undisputed and the viewer knows exactly who the “bad guys” are. WW2 movies have since moved on and taken on subtler approaches in depicting the emotions of war. Perhaps the Avatar franchise will last long enough to do the same.

Visual

The main selling point of the movie has to be the visuals. Instead of filming in exotic tropical jungles and throwing in a few CGI alien creatures, James Cameron decided to digitally create the entire planet of Pandora. Such an undertaking is pretty insane compared to the industry-standard practice of digitally enhancing live-action footages (à la Lord of the Rings), a much cheaper method that usually produces more realistic results. The fact that James Cameron chose to do it all digitally at great expenses is testament to the strength of his vision.

That said, though the amount of effort that went into conceptualizing and animating the flora and fauna is impressive to ineffable extends, the alien-ness of the setting is somewhat dampened by the fact that almost every one of the critters has an Earth-bound equivalent. And don’t even get me started on how every planet in Hollywood history has two-eyed bipedal humanoid aliens. Still, the creature designs in Avatar were creative and detailed enough to make me overlook this fairly standard complaint.

More impressive is how the life-action footages and motion captures are integrated with the purely CGI environment. Actress Sigourney Weaver talked about her experience during a recent appearance on The Daily Show and from what I understand, Na’vi expressions were animated using facial data captured by head-mounted cameras on the actors. So not only do the actors do motion captures and voice overs as in traditional CG methods, they actually have to act out the scene with real expressions. I’m not sure how much of this is promotional hype and how much of it is actual working technology, but it does point to the future direction of such productions. (Are we looking at the primitive ancestors of Holodecks?)

Traditionally, there is a stigma against CGI characters amongst actors (somewhere between “they took our jobs!” and “they are destroying our artform!“), but Avatar’s filming technique presents a possible solution to this age-old conundrum, an opinion that is apparently shared by Signourney Weaver. In fact, not only does this technique help to mend the bruised egos of actors who are given CGI roles, it has the excellent advantage of overcoming the uncanny valley effect that is all to prevalent in such productions. Though not entirely perfect, the facial expressions of the Na’vi are very convincing and occasionally allow the audience to forget the fact that they are merely 3D models.

As a result, though the scenery of Pandora and the aerial battles are all very visually extravagant, I personally find Ney’tiri’s facial expressions and body gestures to be the most well-animated part of the entire movie. Zoe Saldana did an excellent job depicting the character and every single one of her facial nuances is perfectly captured by the fluid animation. Having watched the movie four times (once in 3D), Ney’tiri’s close-up shots always manage to fascinate me in how well they manage to naturally engage the audience without being conspicuous. Animation technology has come a long way since Gollum and the ill-fated Polar Express.

CGI characters have traditionally been relegated to take on the roles of villains and sidekicks, because the audience finds it difficult to empathize with animated characters bearing uncanny expressions. James Cameron challenged and defeated the status quo by not only making the Na’vi people believable and likeable, but having the audience emotionally associate itself with their struggle against human invaders. For that feat alone, Avatar deserves a ton of recognition.

Of course, the technology still has some way to go. Though the 3D environment and the characters look extremely realistic and believable during the daytime shots, night-time lighting still feels like a video game, partly because real-life night lighting is pretty much non-existent.

There are also very few scenes in the movie where both human and Na’vi characters appear on-screen at the same time because there still exists a jarring contrast between the two that serves to disillusion and emotionally distant the viewer from the Na’vi. This effect is most noticeable in three scenes: when Jake first wakes up in his Avatar body, when Ney’tiri touches the face of Jake’s human body and when Grace is being carried by Jake’s Avatar body.

This problem will have to be resolved by future technology advances if any Avatar sequel or prequel is to go into the intricate back-stories of human-Na’vi relations, where physical contact between the two races (and not just through Avatar medium) are inevitable. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole concept of “Avatar” was born to bypass this particular technical limitation by giving the story a reason to minimize contact between humans and Na’vi.

Setting

For a sci-fi epic, the back-story of Avatar is currently not very well developed. It is quite clear that a lot of planned content had to be cut from the movie due to its already lengthy 162-minute runtime. Although a few lines in the movie hint at the current state of Earth and past interactions between humans and Na’vi, much is left unexplained. However, I chalk this up to the limitation of the feature-film format rather than a lack of planning.

For example, the humans are on Pandora to mine for a mineral called Unobtainium. Though not explained in the movie dialogues, unobtainium is apparently a superconductor at room temperature, which explains the floating mountains of Pandora and their magnetic interference on electronic equipment. When considered in that context, it can be deduced that the giant artificial-looking ring structures that surround the Tree of Souls are in fact the hardened form of molten metals shaped by an underground magnetic field.

From such unmentioned details, it’s quite clear that a lot of background planning went into creating the world of Pandora and I can only hope that the subject will be further explored in future works.

Some questions that I have off the top of my head:

• Are the night-time lighting effects real light as perceivable by human eyes or a visual representation of Na’vi extra-sensory perceptions? I’m leaning towards the latter due to the fact that their footprints “glow”.
• Did the symbiotic relationship between the Na’vi people and their mounts evolve naturally? It’s hard to see how they manage to retain their inter-compatible organs through years of natural selection, especially in the case of the predatory flyer who has no survival incentive to enter such a relationship. That said, the concept is actually not that far-fetched.
• What happened to the English school that Grace founded for the natives?
• How did humans first discover and come to Pandora?
• What happened to Earth?

Another thing that absolutely fascinates me is the Na’vi language. Created by Paul Frommer, a Linguistic PhD at USC, it is a fully functional language that the actors had to learn for their roles in the movie. Based on a few interviews and articles by Dr. Frommer and the dialogues found in the movie, language enthusiasts have already assembled a partial learning guide to Na’vi.

Due to contractual issues, the full grammar and vocabulary of Na’vi are unlikely to be made available until a licensed language guide is published (which it eventually will be), but it’s amazing how much progress has been made so far by reverse engineering. For example, we know that the Na’vi have an octal number system as they only have four fingers on each hand. (By the way, the Avatars, being a mix of Na’vi and human genomes, have five fingers.)

A rich and imaginative back-story is the hallmark of any successful sci-fi epic. Although the movie Avatar has an apparently simple story, it can be seen from the examples above that there is much potential for the franchise to expand into a proper fictional universe, much as how Star Wars grew from Episode 4 into a full-fledged epic.

James Cameron mentioned that he has enough materials planned for three movies. I can certainly see potential for at least a prequel and a sequel to Avatar.

Conlusion

Avatar is a ground-breaking piece of work in its ability to create believable CGI characters that the audience can emotionally invest in. James Cameron has managed to break down a long-held line between live action and CGI and it is this achievement that Avatar should be remembered for. The movie was a huge gamble on the prowess of modern animation technology and its high-risk production method probably forced James Cameron to be more conventional in its other aspects (i.e. typical Hollywood blockbuster story-telling).

Hopefully, with its now established credentials and matured production techniques, the franchise can move on to more subtle storytelling and further explore the intricate history and culture of the Avatar universe.

By the way, I recommend everyone watch Avatar at least twice, especially if you watched the first time in 3D. In my opinion, the lost of visual fidelity and details for such a beautiful movie is not worth the gimmicky 3D effect that is only really effective in a few “long hallway” scenes. Watch the movie in 2D and take some time to appreciate the amazing details found in Ney’tiri’s every expression.

P.S. I want to learn Na’vi. Who’s with me?

Big Dreams Little Tokyo (IMDb entry) is one of those movies that seek to explore the meaning of culture in today’s globalizing world that serves as a melting pot of ethnic identities. It has been making its way around various independent film festivals and has received many positive reviews. Two weeks ago, Mr. Dave Boyle, the director and also the lead actor, presented me with an opportunity to review the movie before its DVD and theatrical release in America next year. Of course I was not the only blogger offered to do this, but I did feel a tingle of joy to receive such a request.

Two weeks later, I’m sitting in my room with the screener DVD (digitally watermarked to prevent piracy) in hand and a movie review to write. So here we go.

“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”

The story is about Boyd, an American who speaks fluent Japanese, and his dream of success as a businessman. He wrote a book which teaches English to Japanese speakers and he runs his own one-person company (his apartment) where he conducts English lessons. He spends his days going from house to house to promote his book and he frequently gets chased out of the book store’s owner for trying to peddle his goods in the store. He lives with a 200-pound Japanese American guy called Jerome who spends his time putting on weight and learning Japanese because he wants to be a professional sumo wrestler.

“Just…another…20…pounds.”

In a way, this film reminds me of Lost in Translation, except it doesn’t really deal with Japanese culture. It has a lot of “Japan” element in it and indeed Japanese plays an important role in the story, but it’s not a movie that deals with Japan and its culture the way Translation did. It’s really a movie about ethnic identity in today’s generation, with Japanese being used as a device to tell that story. Or at least that’s what I think anyway.

Besides the main character and his room mate, we get to meet a Mexican who works as a sushi chef, a Japanese corporate boss who likes to shake hands instead of bow and various other characters who seem somewhat out of place in their roles. It is through the (often humorous) interactions between this cast of cultural misfits that we, the viewers, get to enjoy an interesting commentary on the way we think about our own racial identities in today’s world.

“I should be saving the world in New York right now.”

Interesting side note: James Kyson Lee, who plays Ando in the hit TV series Heroes, is an angry shopkeeper in the movie. He doesn’t really do much, but it’s kind of cool considering how I just started watching Heroes recently. LOL. Actually the shopkeeper is also quite fascinating because he’s clearly Japanese but he always speaks English and he hates it when Boyd speaks Japanese to him. In a way, he seems to have rejected part of him, perhaps in his attempt to integrate himself into American society.

“Good day, would you like to learn English?”

While nominally a comedy, it’s not the kind of “Jim Carrey” humour that’s commonplace in cinemas today. It’s subtle in execution, perhaps too subtle sometimes. Much of the dialogue is in Japanese, and some of the jokes make use of it. For example, in the opening scene of the movie, Boyd is trying (but failing) to convince three drunken Japanese businessmen to buy his book. They are more amused by his command of Japanese and one of them asks him to say “this morning, every morning” in Japanese. If you don’t speak Japanese, it’s a little hard to get this joke. Basically, it’s “kesa maiasa” (今朝毎朝), which sounds like “kiss my ass” when you say it out loud. There’s also a tako/taco joke in a later part of the story.

Two Mexican chefs preparing udon.

As Boyd and Jerome try to achieve their dreams, they face the challenge of overcoming social prejudices due to their unique circumstances. Boyd has trouble making people take him seriously because they are too busy getting excited over his fluent Japanese. Jerome feels like he’s too American to be a sumo wrestler and at the same time too Japanese to really be American. In one scene, two guys from Okinawa refuse to take English lessons from Jerome because he’s not white, despite the fact that he speaks perfectly accented English.

Along the way, Boyd meets a Japanese nurse, Mai, who wants to improve her English and ends up taking lessons from him. Hilarity and some light drama ensue. With her help, difficulties are resolved and eventually Boyd and Jerome learn to come to terms with both sides of their identities and everyone lives happily ever after. Or something like that.

“She’s hot!”

One of my favourite scenes happens near the end, when Boyd and the Mexican Japanese chef ends up as interpretors for a takeover negotiation between a Mexican factory owner (who bears an uncanny resemblance to George W. Bush) and representatives of a Japanese corporation. Unhappy differences are resolved thanks to some creative interpreting by them. This reminded me of a scene in Lost in Translation where the director passionately gives out instructions to Bob, the main character, in Japanese and his interpretor condenses everything into brief translations that lose their original meanings.

The Mexican factory owner and the Japanese salarymen eventually hit it off despite the cultural and language barriers, with a little help from the universal male language: alcohol. It’s a pretty entertaining scene.

It’s like one of those yakuza movies…except with some Mexicans.

It’s also very interesting to note that throughout the movie, there’s no direct mention of where it is set in. Indeed, from the first few scenes it seemed like the movie was set in Japan. I was somewhat confused when Boyd said that his book cost eighteen dollars because it’s kind of weird for people to use dollars in Japan. It is only later in the film where you see signs that say “Japantown” and even then we never get to find out which Japantown it is. I think this is a very clever set-up because it really makes you realize just how we perceive the world through stereotypes that can turn out to be very wrong in this age of rampant cultural cross-pollination. Or perhaps it was completely unintentional and I’m just reading too much into it. LOL.

My girlfriend thinks that the girl in the middle is cute.

In conclusion, it’s a great movie! Having studied Japanese for the past five years, I find that the film really resonated with the way I feel. I’ve always been a supporter of cultural globalization and I think that the movie did an excellent job of telling that story in a light-hearted and digestible manner. I especially loved the final scene which I find to be the perfect cumulation of the film’s messages, but I shall refrain from describing it. You’ll just have to watch it for yourself when the movie is released in early 2008! Meanwhile, I have to mail the DVD back.

P.S. I wish more movie directors would send me their works for pre-release reviews. Steven Spielberg, I’m looking your way! ;)

According to Moon Phase Zakki, the animation production is by ufotable, production is by Aniplex and a commemorative Kara no Kyoukai shopping bag will be given away at TYPEMOON’s C71 booth.

[アニメ]æ‚雨沢恵一「キノの旅」劇場版アニメ制作決定！
アニメ化は3度目、映画化は2度目。前回の「キノの旅～何かをãã‚‹ãŸã‚ã«ï½žã€ã¯ã€å˜é¤¨ä¸Šæ˜ ã ã£ãŸã‘ど、今度はどうだろう？劇場版「灼眼のシャナ」と同æ‚上映だったりして？

Moonspeak to English (ok I’m running out of funny things to say here):

New “Kino no Tabi” (by Keiichi Shigusawa) movie confirmed!
This is the third anime adaptation and the second movie adaptation. The last movie “Kino no Tabi ~nanika suru tame ni~” was only shown in a single cinema, we wonder how it’ll be this time. Will it be in theatres the same time as the “Shakugan no Shana” movie?

Kino is a reverse trap! :3

UPDATE: The official site will be updated with more details in October. There’s currently a placeholder page.

[アニメ]「新世紀エヴァンゲリオン 新劇場版」前編、中編、後編、最終話の4部作にて製作決定。

以前のタレコミ情報では、TVシリーズの総集編3部＋完全新作の全4部作という話だったけど、4部全てが新作という位置付けらしい。続編でもリメイクでもないとか。タレコミ情報を頂いたæ‚は、正直まゆつば情報だと思ってたんだけど、本当に4部作で再映画化だったとは。

Un-moon-ed:

“New Evangelion Theatrical Version” will be a 4-part project.

According to previous leaks, it was thought that the new project consisted of 3 summary movies of the TV series and 1 new movie, but now it turns out that all 4 movies will be new productions. Also, the movies are neither sequels nor remakes. We had previously thought that those leaks were faked, but apparently there really are going to be 4 new movies…

Here’s the scan (from Newtype I presume) linked by the article that supposedly proves it:

The words on the left say　劇場４部作で描かれる「新作」 or “A new project consisting of 4 theatrical releases”.

So it seems like we are getting 4 new Eva movies that are neither sequel nor remakes… Hmmm… I guess we just have to wait for Newtype October, though Moon Phase is pretty reliable so there’s a pretty good chance that it’s true. Also, Hideaki Anno will once again be in charge, for good or for bad.

Yay! Now we can look forward to 10 more years of Evangelion merchandise! (Okay, so it was going to happen any way)

UPDATE: Just want to add that the first movie will be out Summer 2007, about one year from now.

Movie guide sold with all movies in Japan.
As if the movie tickets weren’t expensive enough.

There are a few major differences between the manga and the movie. Shiori is Raito’s girlfriend and Naomi (the FBI agent’s fiancee) plays a much larger role in the movie than she did in the manga. There are also numerous original scenes added, though not all of them suitable. For example, in the manga there was nothing about what happened between the time Raito picked up the Death Note and when Ryuku appeared in his room, whereas the movie fills that part in with some new scenes. Raito Yagami also seems to be a much more… emotional character in the movie than the manga, especially in the first half.

The FBI incident is also changed quite a bit. Naomi follows Raye (the FBI agent) onto the train and witnesses his death. She then vows to avenge Raye, which she does by holding Shiori hostage and threatening Raito to kill her if he wants to save Shiori.

The movie covers the mainly the introduction and the FBI incident, thus you don’t really get to see Misa Misa… As a fanboy that is bad. But she does look cute, almost as close as you can get to the manga version. Misa fans, look out for the second movie because it will cover the Misa chapters. :3

On another note, I’m not sure how many movies there will be, but the maximum number should be three. This movie is 前編 (First Part) and there will be a 後編 (Last Part) coming out in November.

Sure, DOA isn’t exactly the greatest game ever or anything, but I still have to pay my respect to yet another video game that has fallen victim to Hollywood idiocy. Click to see the rest of the screen caps.

General Advisory: May cause blindness.

WTF?

WTF happened to Kasumi?

WTF is this one?

WTF are they using katana?

Kill Bill 3? WTF?

WTF?

She’s no Japanese ninja! WTF?

Looking more and more like Kill Bill! WTF?

I warned you, didn’t I?

Anyway, Video Ezy has set up an online DVD retail service in Singapore. (About time…) Basically, just like Netflix, you sign up for an account with a flat monthly fee. Then you get to have any DVD in their catalogue mailed to you in a return-paid envelope. You can only have a certain number of DVDs on-hand at any time and each time you mail back one DVD, the next DVD on your list is delivered to your mailbox.

I signed up for one month to test the service. The movie library seems quite acceptable, although it lacks a lot of Japanese movie. The anime stuff also seems quite haphazardly chosen, but all the big-title movies are there (Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed and a lot of Ghibli stuff). However, it does have all but one of the twenty or so IMDb Top 250 titles I tried searching for. The one that it didn’t have was Pulp Fiction.

Since I watch most DVDs only once anyway, this could save me a lot of money and keep me occupied during the school holidays. The downside is that I don’t end up with a nice row of DVD casings to display on my bookshelf at the end of the day… XD

The website is somewhat buggy though, especially on Firefox but also on IE for certain things. Hopefully they do something about those bugs after receiving my complaint suggestion e-mail.