Subatomic Brainfreeze

New York Asian Film Fest '09: Tokyo Gore Night - TOKYO TOWER IS STUCK IN MY ASS!

I don't know where to start with this thing, other than to say it started at 11 PM and didn't end until three. Tokyo Gore Police may have run at NYAFF before (not that I'd gotten around to seeing it before last night) but it certainly never ran like this. I might remember stuff out of order: forgive me. Also, this entry, like the showing, is very, very long, so be prepared for that.

Firstly, the directors of Tokyo Gore Police and Machine Girl, Yoshihiro Nishimura and Noboru Iguchi, along with CG man Tsuyoshi Kazuno and CG's mortal enemy, Tak Sakaguchi, who'd also been around for the showing of his own Otokojuku movie, were all present. I can't emphasize enough that these dudes truly seem to love their work, and that they sure as hell know how to have some fun. Some seriously twisted fun, yes, but isn't that the best kind?

Before you continue, I should probably elaborate on the film themselves. Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, and the rest of these guys' work are not for everybody. There's certainly worse stuff out there that's disgusting for its own sake-- may you never see it-- but these films push the boundaries of the bloody, grotesque and cruel, and they push it so far that they are often very, very funny. This is not the kind of horror that scares: it is the kind of horror where you either laugh or throw up. If you are squeamish about blood and guts, or about graphic descriptions of the atrocities on display in these films, I recommend you move slowly away from these movies and from this post. If you are already laughing, then you're home.

New York Asian Film Fest '09: Be a Man!! Samurai School: THIS MATCH WILL END IN AN INSTANT

This next movie is an adaptation of a series I've talked about briefly before: Sakigake!! Otokojuku. I even posted my anticipation back when the film came out in Japan and then immediately forgot it existed! As you can probably determine from the English title, this is a story about manning up in a comically harsh Japanese nationalist private school. It's one of the classics of Shonen Jump fight manga, and director/star Tak Sakaguchi grew up reading it and wanting to be hero Momotaro Tsurugi. I guess there was only one way to make that happen, huh?

As it's made by a fan, the movie is extremely faithful to the source material, particularly the hyperactive shifts between relatively serious action and extremely stupid comedy. They did it so well that one guy complained during the Q&A after the movie. That's just Otokojuku, man! They even hired the inimitable Shigeru Chiba, who played a couple of roles in the anime version, to narrate. There is no greater entertainment than a freeze-frame on a fancily-named martial arts maneuver as Shigeru Chiba shouts its name at the top of his lungs. The video I linked is from 25 years ago, and the man hasn't lost his touch one bit.

The story is hyper-compressed, as you'd expect from an adaptation of a shonen fight manga, and it covers as many of Otokojuku's characteristic tests of manliness as possible-- like Momo's buddy Genji proving himself by sitting in a vat of boiling oil-- before finishing with the classical shonen fighting tournament. All parties are constantly proving their manhood by fighting, screaming or both until they start to bleed, and then fighting or screaming harder in response. Manly spirit is in great supply here, and the booming yell of headmaster Hehachi Edajima in particular (without his hairdo, the one that Tekken's Heihachi got from him) is done magnificent CG justice.

Not that there's a lot of CG in the film: Sakaguchi kinda hates it, and he made a point to let us know in the Q&A that he tries to make action movies with as little CG as possible. It's all stuntmen here, doing crazy, crazy stuff. In the first five minutes of the movie, a character is hit by a car going about 40mph, which Tak and the stuntman who was hit (also present) are pretty sure is a record. As a result of this approach, his team's stuff has a lot of old-school spirit, like a Hong Kong movie without the kung-fu. After all, most of the guys of Otokojuku aren't suited to that fancy hop-around kinda stuff: just check out Momo's "punch everybody really, really fast" fighting style.

It was shot in two weeks on 400 grand, and yet it's still definitely the best live-action treatment that Otokojuku could ever have hoped for. Probably one of the best of the transitions from anime/manga to live-action that I've seen thus far. Dragonball Evolution probably cost a ton more. Just sayin'.

I have a question for those of you Japanese-fluent who have read all the manga or watched the anime: there's a subplot that doesn't really go anywhere in the film in which rough, scarred Genji goes out on a date with a cute schoolgirl who was really just pranking him the way that Japanese schoolgirls seem to have a thing for doing in the movies. After being humiliated by her and her friends, Genji yells "THIS WAS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE" and runs off to the park to cry while the girl looks on, ashamed. Momo has to cheer up his bro, and it never comes up again. I couldn't figure out whether they were just checking off the list of scenes from the manga, as they are in the rest of the film, or whether this was one of those studio-mandate scenes where they add a female character to expand the demographic. I expect a response, Internet!

Shin Mazinger Episode 12: Baron Ashura gets UNCOMFORTABLY AROUSED BY THE HOVER PILDER

This episode we're right back to the goofy. You'd think the more competent Baron Ashura we've seen in this show would give Kouji a little more trouble after capturing him and his robot, but it's just not to be. Instead, after putting Kouji away, Ashura sends all the men away and indulges a machine fetish, fondling the Hover Pilder longingly before taking it for a joyride. When an attempted docking with Mazinger turns into a comedy pratfall, Ashura gets all pissy and decides he doesn't need the invincible castle of black steel after all. Ashura was never much of a strategist. Also, there's an Ashura shower gag, about the same as the one in Mazinkaiser.

I didn't mention what happened to Boss and crew last time, but their "secret mission" from Tsubasa was actually to hide out inside the Pilder. Being omnipotent and all, she saw the kidnap coming and actually planted the guys in there to beat up some guards, steal their clothes and bust Kouji out. The guys then get an unguarded Sayaka, and then deal with the last Gamia before picking up Mazinger and getting out of there. As it turns out, Boss' lackeys are better in a fight than Boss himself. Who knew? The only use they've been up until now is in Super Robot Wars, where they supplied sweet extra SP for Boss Borot. Man, when is the Boss Borot reveal coming? There's got to be a whole episode where he puts it together from random junkyard scrap.

Aiding the escape is a backstab from Dr. Hell and Count Brocken, who, remember, never told Ashura to go get Mazinger and aren't thrilled about the prospect of leading Kouji to their secret island headquarters. So they decide to just blow him up! The unloved Go Nagai robot Groizer X is further degraded when Brocken dumps three more Groizers onto Saluud. Man, Groizer must have been a really bad show. In any case, Saluud is done for, it's gonna blow up, everybody out.

Unfortunately for Kouji and friends, the grounded Mazinger is having a hard time getting away from the impending explosion, and it sure looks like everybody's gonna die until the Mazinger Corps' flying-- but otherwise useless-- robots swoop in with the Jet Scrander. See, they figured out that their robots are useless, so they've committed themselves full-time to supporting Mazinger. By the same token, Kouji has realized that hey, maybe having friends isn't so bad after all. There's a big ol' team handshake at the end. Good job, gang!

Bonus Feature-- THE SAYAKA YUMI USELESSNESS WATCH: Before picking up Mazinger, Kouji finds himself in a fight with the last Gamia, Q5. Kouji drops his gun during the fight, and Sayaka picks it up. Gamia runs over to her: keep in mind that in the Go Nagai world, bladed weapons such as Gamia's hair have a different function against women than against men. Men die by swords. Women are just stripped by them. (See also Nanto Seiken.) With Gamia at point-blank distance, and Kouji holding her back by her cape, Sayaka... slides the gun on the ground over to Kouji, who dispatches the android with ease. This version of Sayaka doesn't even want to do anything cool.

New York Asian Film Fest '09: House IS THE MOVIE I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED

That's right, the New York Asian Film Fest is going on right now. If you're into the kind of things I cover on this blog, there is probably something here that you're going to like. Before we get started, I'll direct you very quickly to my coverage of the stuff I saw at last year's fest: Ryu ga Gotoku, Retro Game Master, Dororo, The Bodyguard, and Oneechanbara. Should give you an idea of the kind of thing I go to the fest to see.

Anyway, my first movie of the fest this year was the life-changing House (or as a deep, menacing voice intones at the title card, HAUUUSUUUU). I'd seen clips on the Internet, but taken out of context, you still don't really know what you're getting out of this movie other than a full-on sensory assault. You can find those same clips on Youtube if you search "Hausu", but I really recommend you go into this blind, and I'm going to tell you as little as I possibly can of what happens in this movie.

House is an idol vehicle and a slasher movie, and it's directed by the man who made this amazing commercial featuring Charles Bronson hawking cologne. We got a little primer on director Nobuhiko Obayashi before the film began, with a talk from Machine Girl director Noboru Iguchi and Tokyo Gore Police director Yoshihiro Nishimura. These guys gushed enthusiasm for the film and gave us a little trivia, some of which, perhaps, Mr. Obayashi would not have liked us to hear. After the intro, we got a short video from Obayashi and his daughter, who gave her dad the story of House back when she was seven years old. And yes, this explains a lot about the film. After that, another gift from Obayashi: eight minutes worth of commercial work, including my favorite Mandom commercials. These commercials serve as a visual preview for House, where you see the same kind of cheesy effects and non-sequiturs out in full force.

But even then, you are not prepared for House. Like Iguchi and Nishimura told us before the show, nothing really happens in the entire first half of the movie, and that doesn't really matter because Obayashi's totally off-the-wall direction supplies the entertainment by itself. Want commercial-length glamor shots? Absolutely! You want abrupt tonal shifts? House has got them! You want the movie to just stop in the middle and comment on itself? Got that, too! Music by Godiego (yes, Godiego, it starts at 1:33)? YES. There isn't a frame of this movie where some bizarre visual effect or unorthodox method of storytelling isn't in use. The plot is total nonsense, things just happen for the sake of it, and Obayashi has the wonderful habit of inserting gags at completely inappropriate times: for example, cutting to a man eating ramen at a stand staffed by a bear in the middle of a scene where two of our schoolgirls are sailing on a sea of cat blood.

A pack of schoolgirls, each named for their sole characteristic-- their names are Gorgeous, Fantasy, Melody, Kung Fu, Sweet, Prof (the nerd), and Mac (the fat one)-- decide to stay at Gorgeous' aunt's house for their summer vacation, which is obviously a terrible idea from the moment they set foot on the property. In the second half of the film, they're picked off one by one by said aunt-- who's a vengeful spirit, of course-- in ways that coincide with their silly, silly names. This is where Obayashi's goofy surrealism really goes into macabre overdrive, and I'm not going to spoil a second of it.

This all sounds pretty cut and dry, but when you're actually watching this movie, you'll understand from the very first moments. Unfortunately, you can't buy the movie on DVD, but you can find it floating around online if you look really hard. If you're in NYC, I highly recommend you go to Thursday's midnight screening: the first one sold out and the second one probably will just on word-of-mouth. Hell, I'm even considering seeing it again. Watch this movie any damn way you can. You will not regret it.

Please don't buy Garou: Mark of the Wolves on Xbox Live Arcade: THE NETPLAY IS SHIT

You guys know I like to tell you to buy videogames, particularly the obscure, under-the-radar kind of stuff. Garou: Mark Of The Wolves is a fantastic game, and normally I would emphatically recommend that you purchase it. But this time around, SNK really doesn't deserve your money.

Garou is one of the last and best-loved Neo-Geo fighting games, a far-future sequel to the Fatal Fury series that makes drastic, ambitious changes to both the character roster and the core fighting engine. It's also easily the best-looking Neo-Geo game, with animation detail that approaches Street Fighter III. Even now, it's a pretty interesting and unique game, with tons of tricks under a simple veneer. Here, watch a match (disregard the video description: the idea that this stuff can't be done by real people is preposterous). By all means, I recommend you play Garou, be it on the Dreamcast, import PS2, emulators, any way you can get it. However, if you are looking to play online, do not buy the Xbox Live Arcade version.

I hadn't been keeping up with this, but as it turns out, SNK's ports to XBLA have universally had terrible online play. If your connection isn't really fast, and if your opponent isn't really close to you, expect a ton of very noticeable lag on your inputs. Moves can come out a quarter second after you press the button, and a couple of times I even picked the wrong character on the select screen because the cursor wasn't moving where I wanted it to go. It's that bad. Symptoms start to appear at 50 ping (itself a very fast connection speed) or more: matches at 70 ping or more were entirely unplayable. Despite fan complaints, SNK could really care less and continues to neglect this critical aspect of the current-generation fighting game.

This is pathetic. Everybody else making fighting games understands how important this is: Capcom has reasonable, if not perfect, online play for Street Fighter IV that's extended its shelf life considerably for the many people who bought it. Blazblue just came out in Japan this week and by all indications, the online play is excellent. Even on Live Arcade, Street Fighter II HD Remix has online play that makes SNK's look like the joke it is. To add insult to injury, fan-run services like GGPO and 2df exist, enabling near-perfect online play for many, many arcade games via emulators, including Garou. There's no question that these unofficial services outdo SNK's own product.

The worst part about this is that it doesn't look like it's going to change, and SNK has two big releases for its flagship series coming up. The first is King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match, an extensively revised version of evergreen classic KOF98. The second is King of Fighters XII, which I've talked about twice here already. After being ripped off (yes, this port is a ripoff) by Garou, I am cautious, to say the least, about buying these two games. They were both definite purchases for me, but I don't see any point owning a fighting game with broken online play in this day and age. I could spend $60 on the KOFXII machine at the arcade and probably have a better time with it. XII in particular is a huge release, and such bad online play will likely ruin all the good will that the gamer community has had for this game.

SNK is not a company that can afford to lose its customers, but it certainly seems to be trying. Bad show, guys. I'll be on 2df.

(Update 7/01/09: King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match is out on XBLA, and the port is much worse than Garou. SNK didn't bother translating much of the text, the 3D backgrounds have been removed, and the netplay is as bad as ever. SNK just does not give a shit, and at this rate I won't be buying KOFXII. I recommend that you don't either.)

On Friday I PLACED THIRD IN A PAC-MAN TOURNAMENT

I didn't really expect to. I came in with a buddy who told me about it, and I expected to just stand by and watch while he played. I'm not very good at Pac-Man, and I figured that at any tournament for any game there would be 50 guys just passing through who were better than me. I guess it's different when the tourney is at Uniqlo, the kinda-fancy-schmancy NYC branch of the Japanese clothing chain and one of very few purveyors of non-humiliating nerdwear. Of course, nobody knows it's nerdwear: it was all 70's Tatsunoko Pro superheroes and I bought a pile of shirts.

The first event was between staff of various magazines/blogs/whathaveyou, and after a little while I joked to my friend that we could probably have signed up (as Colony Drop Industries, of course) and taken it. The format was a three-minute score attack, which is understandable considering how long Pac-Man can go on. After I watched this whole thing, I decided that it was probably manageable, put in some DS practice, and entered the walk-in tourney.

Given three minutes, you can only worry about the first two stages. If you rush, like I did in the start, you just get stuck watching that little cutscene between the second and third stages as the clock runs out. So you take it easy and lure the ghosts into a corner and go for all of them at once as many times as you can. That's about all there was to it. I actually kinda bombed my first stage run and had to pick it up hard at the end. I might have done a little better, maybe?

Not that it mattered: the top three spots all got the exact same awesome prize package. Boy, am I glad I came out for this. Check it, I got:

-A big Pac-Man plush.

-A mousepad.

-A tote bag.

-A $50 gift card.

-This last one is in the mail: A t-shirt signed by Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani (holy shit did you hear what I just said)

On the way out, we joked that maybe we should hit more casual game contests, but I kinda doubt the prizes are as good at bar Wii Sports and Megatouch contests.

Shin Mazinger Episode 11: Kouji Kabuto GETS SO HYPE HE CRIES

A lot of wrong people out there-- people who are losers, ladies and gentlemen-- have boo-hoo-hooed that Shin Mazinger is just too slow for their tastes. Why doesn't the robot fight other robots more often, Dad? Characterization is boring, Dad! Dad, I don't want to watch all these people do ridiculously awesome things! Dad, where's your animation budget? Are we there yet? And Yasuhiro Imagawa turns around to the backseat and speaks in the voice of Tesshou Genda:

"AH, THE MAGNIFICENT SPECTACLE OF ROBOT BATTLE! A SOUND THAT ECHOES THROUGH THE HEAVENS, A BESTIAL ROAR THAT, FOR BUT A MOMENT, CHILLS THE BLOOD OF GODS! SOON, MY DEAR CHILDREN, YOU TOO WILL BEHOLD SUCH A MIRACLE!!"

And knowing kids, they probably got bored and started eating their own toes or something. But you know what? Imagawa delivers anyway. The question of what happened to the animation budget is definitely cleared up here: up until this moment, they were just saving up their money for a special occassion. Kouji and the three mechabeasts throw down in a serious "event" fight-- you know they mean business when the theme song starts playing-- and the animation is smoother than it has ever been. The promise of the first episode is really starting to take its true shape, and I am more excited about this show than I have ever been. You should all know that this is saying something.

I don't want to spoil the details of the fight-- other than to say it's really memorable-- but back at the Photon Power Labs, everybody is regrouping. There's a funny bit where the three doctors and Yumi are talking about all they learned from Grandpa Kabuto to make their totally useless robots, and the doctors yell at the Mazinger Corps pilots because it can't possibly be that the robots they built are, you know, totally useless or anything.

I will, on the other hand, spoil the end of the episode: in the Great Mazinger manga, there's this bit where a monster has children tied to every part of its body, so that Mazinger can't fight it. Of course, since this is Go Nagai we're talking about, there are children tied to the fists, too, so when it punches Mazinger, kids go splat. This week, they've tied Sayaka to the robot, and Kouji has no choice but to get out of the robot and enter "negotiations" with Dr. Hell and Ashura in their undersea fortress. The Jet Scrander is shown again, but if Kouji has to get out of an undersea fortress, I'm gonna assume that we won't see it for two more weeks. And to that I say, patience, children. Every single episode of this show has been important, and I'm willing to follow this story wherever it goes.

Live-Action Akira is dead: NOW STOP CRYING, NOBODY WANTS TO KILL YOUR PRECIOUS ANIMES ANYMORE

There's been a minor trend in Hollywood lately towards getting live-action film rights for various popular Japanese cartoons: as they've already done (or are planning) movies for all the major American superheroes it makes sense to get your hands in some other properties before Well A runs dry. Unfortunately for all the studios, two big studio movies based on anime have come out and bombed: one was Speed Racer, which was awesome and everybody involved knew would tank, and the other was Dragonball: Evolution, which was fucking terrible and everybody involved knew would tank. I would dare speculate that the failure of Dragonball in particular has put some fear in the studio heads who've already put themselves behind other live-action anime projects, of which there are a few.

Well, gang, count one down. The Akira live-action film, which, if I recall correctly, has been on and off in the planning stages since the early 90s anime boom, is once again dead. This isn't to say that this particular movie's dead for good, or that the Ghost in the Shell and Robotech productions are doomed, but perhaps it signals a, shall we say, cautious attitude towards our beloved big-eye catgirl robot maid cartoons?

So is it a good thing or a bad thing that this trend seems to be getting finished before it started? I've already pre-emptively insulted all the people who want Hollywood to stay away from their anime forever (Nippon banzai wai wai sugoi kawaii), but it's not like I'm not cautious. On the one hand, "anime movie" could become the next "comic book movie": we could have a nice 20/80 ratio of quality to shit, and maybe a couple of those movies would be outstanding adaptations or even outstanding entertainment in their own right, completely apart from their source work. Maybe somebody would make a really good version of something shitty, like, I dunno, all those old Ohata OVAs. On the other hand, "anime movie" could become the next "video game movie", nearly all of which I have ignored and been better off for it.

The way I figure, Hollywood is just a total crapshoot, but I'd rather they take the 99-to-1 chance of making a decent movie than not take the shot at all. That said, you can usually tell whether the movie's gonna suck or not when they tell you who the director is and you take a look at his past work. And remember that sometimes, even terrible movies are salvageable, and you get a beautiful stroke of cosmic luck, like Raul Julia getting to play M. Bison.

None of us are going to finish Eden of the East for AT LEAST ANOTHER YEAR

I just watched the tenth of eleven episodes of Eden of the East, which is probably this season's big-deal standout anime (that isn't Shin Mazinger Shougeki Z-Hen on television, the King of Cartoons). If you're not yet watching this show, I highly recommend you get on the train, as it's exceptional. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex director Kenji Kamiyama has finally gotten free reign on an original project, and it's best described as a mashup between a sci-fi thriller and a Chica Umino comic. The Honey and Clover author only provides character designs, but her look and feel are very strong in these characters, as their mannerisms and cutesy expressions are borrowed directly from her manga. Despite her having no further involvement, the tone of the show often feels like it is on a swinging pendulum between Kamiyama and Umino. In one moment it's a near-future SF thriller about a deadly game being played to control Japan: in the next, it's a slacker drama about a college club that's stumbled upon the ultimate social networking tool. Even now, the plots are only beginning to converge.

For a very slim eleven episodes, the show has been a big, fast, complicated ride. It was clear about halfway through that there was too big a world, too many plot threads, and too many people for this show to satisfactorily wrap things up in eleven episodes. It's been known for some time that there's going to be an Eden of the East movie, and the title of the last episode is to be "The East that Goes On" (Sara ni Tsuzuku Higashi, さらにつづく東).

 For those of us in the West watching the show along with the Japanese broadcast, this is a big problem. It's one thing to grab a new TV episode as it comes out, but we can't exactly go to the theater to see the end of the show. As always with anime movies, we will just have to wait for a home video release. Japan's theater-to-video cycle isn't exactly as fast as Hollywood's these days, where a movie is typically out on video three months after theatrical release. A video release for Eden of the East could take a long, long time: at least a year after the movie itself opens. Even now, I am still waiting to see the last Hokuto no Ken movie, which came out in October of last year. The movie version of Eden of the East doesn't even have a release date yet. It could get to two years before we see this thing.

So, you guys ready for a two-year cliffhanger this coming week? After you watch the show, just do yourself a favor and try to forget it ever happened.

One Outs is over, BUT AKAGI BASEBALL WILL NEVER DIE

This post might have come a long time ago, but the last few episodes of One Outs were very slow to be subbed, and so, well into this season, I'm finishing up a show from last season. Being cliffhangered for two months is not fun. Here, by the way, is the first post I made about this show. If you need an explanation of the premise, go ahead and read that first.

I've gotten the feeling, from this and Liar Game, that Shinobu Kaitani is a more accessible, but not as talented Nobuyuki Fukumoto. Of course, considering the quality of Fukumoto's stuff (Kaiji, Akagi, Ten) this isn't a huge sacrifice. One Outs followed up pretty well on its initial promise, taking the idea of a gambling pitcher indirectly battling the J. Jonah Jameson-style team owner steadily to its logical extreme by the end of the show. At first Toua has to use unorthodox methods to deal with players who are better than him, but the show really hits its stride at the "trick stadium" arc, where Toua's Lycaons go up against the Blue Mars, a team of pro cheaters whose stadium is indeed a huge trap. From here, the problems and Toua's solutions get further and further out of the box, and One Outs just keeps showing us that yes, it can have less to do with baseball than it does now.

If there's one thing that bothered me about the show, it was the total invulnerability of the protagonist. Even Akagi has setbacks: Toua, on the other hand, just knows everything about everything, all the time. There's never a moment where he's genuinely troubled by his situation: he only acts like he is to further ensare his witless foes, who are in turn always outdone by their second-guessing him. After the first few episodes, I came to terms with the fact that this guy was never, ever going to have any trouble and allowed myself to enjoy the ride despite that. Unfortunately, this means that the only suspense for the viewer comes from "I wonder how he'll do it this time?". To the show's credit, Toua's solutions, while crazy, are never actually implausible.

As One Outs is a long-running, ongoing manga in Business Jump, the anime staff had no chance of offering a satisfying conclusion to the story-- one doesn't exist, after all-- so they had the kind of ending you've probably seen before in similar adaptations. At the end of the climactic game, Toua reminds batter Kojima (and us in the audience) that "it's not over yet" and the narrator tells us that Toua continued to have amazing adventures in gambling baseball, that J. Jonah Jameson continued to yell at his TV as Toua foiled his plans, the end. They at least stop short of telling you "READ ONE OUTS COMIX FOR MORE BALL-BLASTING BASEBALL BRAVADO". No, wait. That would have been pretty cool.