#jap film | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gunsatthaphan · 4 months

Text

~ Monthly BL Breakdown: December 2023 ~

🎆 Happy 2024!!! 🍾

Disclaimer: ALL shows can be streamed here or here, as well as on Youtube and other platforms. For more info on where to watch what, check out this post!

New breakdowns are coming at the end of every month - feel free to add stuff! -> previous breakdowns

What came out this month? (green = seen/currently watching)

🌟 You're My Star (Christmas Special) - December 4th (Philippines)

🌟 Bagan Beginning - December 5th (Myanmar)

🌟 Chains of Heart: The Movie - December 7th (Thailand)

🌟 Cherry Magic Thailand - December 9th (Thailand) ✅

🌟 It's Complicated - December 14th (Thailand)

🌟 Dear Kitakyushu - December 14th (Thailand)

🌟 Colorful Melody - December 16th (Thailand)

🌟 Night Dream - December 16th (Thailand)

🌟 DMD Friendship (reality show) - December 17th (Thailand)

🌟 Scent of Memory (I Feel You Linger in the Air Special Episode) - December 17th (Thailand)

🌟 Dead Friend Forever - December 23rd (Thailand)

🌟 I Became the Lead in a BL Drama - December 24th (Japan)

🌟 Mr. Nice Guy & the Lonely Man - December 25th (Thailand)

🌟 Love on Lo - December 26th (Thailand)

🌟 You and My Stars - December 30th (Thailand)

Monthly likes/dislikes

❣️ Cherry Magic - It's cute so far, this is the first adaption where I've actually seen the original and I'm pleasantly surprised. The plot is familiar but they're adding things to it which is nice. It's extended and more explorative compared to the OG but in an endearing way. TayNew do the roles justice, I couldn't imagine a better fit tbh. And even Mark and Junior make the side couple likable who I really did not like in the original lol. Thumbs up so far 🫶🏻

New series & movie announcements

🎥 Knock Out (produced by Dee Hup) - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 First Time Love - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 Perfect Propose - Coming February 2024 (Japan)

🎥 The Fridge - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 Caged Again - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 Likay The Series/Let Me Into Your Heart (novel adaption) - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 The Only One - Date TBA (Taiwan)

Other news from the BL world

❗️ GMMTV's upcoming BL We Are has started filming. The show will be directed by New Siwaj and stars PondPhuwin, WinnySatang, AouBoom, MarcPawin and more. It is thus the first production from the 2024 lineup to go into production. Aside from that, many other upcoming BLs have started filming including The Trainee, Only Boo and Wandee Goodday.

❗️This year's Y Universe Awards were held on December 11th. The following BL actors & productions won:

Cutie Pie 2 You - Best Series

Moonlight Chicken - Best Series Script

Aof N. - Best Director (MLC)

Gemini N. - Best Supporting Actor (MLC)

Khaotung T. - Best Supporting Actor (MLC)

Fourth N. - Best Leading Actor (MSP)

ZeeNunew - Best Couple

I Feel You Linger in the Air - Best Series Soundtrack, Best Production

Laws of Attraction - Best Social Reflection

❗️The Japanese BL The Man Who Defies The World of BL is getting a third season to air in 2024. Further details are unknown.

❗️After further copyright issues, the Thai remake of the Japanese BL Cherry Magic had to be removed from youtube and will no longer be aired on the site. The show will continue to only be available nationally on VIU. Viewers with a VPN can still access the site, other streaming options are KissKH, Dramacool and KissAsian.

❗️The streaming platform WeTV announced a new original BL titled Caged Again which tells the love story between a penguin and a panther. Both animals transform into humans while travelling between universes and fall in love. The show is set to air in 2024, the cast is unknown.

❗️The Thai BL production company Domundi announced their upcoming project The Next Prince to release its pilot trailer in the first quarter of 2024. The show stars ZeeNunew and others and has a historical theme. Filming will likely begin later this year.

Upcoming series & movies for January

👉🏻 BL Drama no Shuen ni Narimashita: Crank In Hen - January 2nd (Japan)

👉🏻 Ossan's Love Returns - January 5th (Japan)

👉🏻 Refund Love - January 7th (Thailand)

👉🏻 Time The Series - January 9th (Thailand)

👉🏻 Intern in My Heart (BL side couple) - January 10th (Thailand)

👉🏻 Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka - January 11th (Japan)

👉🏻 I Wish You Love - January 21st (Thailand)

👉🏻 Beside You (mini series) - January TBA (Thailand)

👉🏻 Love for Love's Sake - January TBA (South Korea)

#doreens monthly bl breakdown #thai bl #bl drama #upcoming bl #update #bl news #that caged again series is getting so much backlash already and im laughing lmao like why did they think this was a good idea??#but anyway #happy 2024!!!!!#shall I continue with my breakdowns?#it's a good way to stay up to date lol #but idk let me know #what a year it has been #oof #heres to a better 2024

57 notes · View notes

meat-wentz · 10 months

Text

okay going to try to be clear and concise but i will probably do a bad job at articulating this. histories are deeply complex and nuanced. for one i am a new mexican, my entire life my state has been living in the shadow of the bomb. we are a state with a horrific history of colonization that continues to effect the majority of our population which is indigenous/hispanic, i am neither of those but our culture is so deeply entrenched with these populations that we grow up here with these cultures and histories as our primary source of culture. the impact of the bomb on these communities has been immense and devastating. two i am japanese, my great-grandparents were japanese immigrants in california that were interned in ww2 along with my grandparents and that generation of my japanese family. my us-born grandmother was interned at 10 years old for being a threat to her country. the reason my family does not speak japanese is because my grandmother forbid my great-grandmother from teaching my mother and her siblings japanese, she forbid her from helping them learn to read and speak as small children so they would not grow up with accents. this was an act of assimilation in order to survive, in order to tell the rest of the country that her family was not a threat, i am extremely distanced from my culture because of this generational act of survival. the first time we learned about the bomb in third grade a classmate of mine came up to me during recess and told me i deserved it. i have been called a jap by older customers i’ve helped at previous jobs. i have been sent death threats for being japanese. someone on tiktok said they were going to kill me, that it would be “hiroshima all over again.” my identity has been so generationally impacted by ww2 that it’s hard for me to take something like oppenheimer lightly. my intention in speaking about the cutesy memeification of the film is not to persuade you not to watch it but to bring to light the way so many populations of people have been impacted by this event and are still recovering from such, it’s one of the most important if not the defining event in our world’s history, keep this in mind when watching, exercise empathy.

65 notes · View notes

aphrodite1288 · 7 months

Note

Just prove that you are right and Kaisoo is real with a photo or video that we haven't seen

First if all you should know when you receive something from an insider or a KExoL or Jap or Chinese ExoL, it's either they show it to you directly they don't send it to you they make you see it directly. Or! They send it if it's old photos and irrelevant and tell you if you share it and if they see it online they're gonna ruin you or mass block you or ask you for money as a payback or simply they would tell you : You'll never hear from us bye! And who wants to lose their sources please? Are you dumb or are you dumb?

Did you see 1% of the hate comments I receive from Dandanies and Jongin's solo stans, you saw the hateful asks I share from time to time, do you think I would trust any of them or any of you to give you such beautiful photos and videos of Kadi in their vacation to Japan, or Kadi in their Ski date or Kadi in Spain or their video in Practice room laying on the floor with Ji leaning above Ksoo and removing something from his eyes, or their dates photos in Han River, Or Ji's photos in his car at 2am waiting for Ksoo to finish his filming..

You think any of you deserve to see that? NO.

I can't risk my faves personal life to be exposed and get hate and backlash from ugly fugly people online. Why would I need to prove to you? Who are you? Why should I care about how you feel?

If you wanna believe, believe it. If you don't , Don't. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm here to share news, I'm not here to prove they're real. This is a question you should ask me in 2013 not after 11 years.

You would say to share the Kadi photos and videos in DMS in private! How would I know if I can trust you or anyone else? What if they're a hater disguised?

You can ask the old insta group members the old admins made they trusted every kaisooits there turned out 3 were moles and they shared and exposed everything in the group to others and even went digging about the admins'personal lives and tried hacking them. You think these kind of people won't harm KAISOO? Don't be selfish.

This is the main reason KexoL and Cherries and Jap Le don't share anything with us because they simply don't trust us with our own faves. Because the whole fandom became Akgaes and Solo stans especially the Dandanies they're terrible have you seen them in twitter, now that Ksoo left they're trashing over Exo day and night and hating on each member. So they don't share anything because they're afraid solo stans and akgaes will hate on the other members they share news about. Some people are just here to hate. It's their job. They're jobless.

Also if I wanted to share Ksoo's mother's photos and his cousin's photos from Chuseok with the dogs but after reading these two asks I just received and posted before this one here, I stepped back and said " Why and to whom am I doing this? Does anyone deserve to see this?"

Yeah.

29 notes · View notes

bumblebeeappletree · 2 years

Text

youtube

Jerry meets up with a guerrilla gardening group taking over empty public spaces to grow food for those that need it, sharing growing skills to increase community resilience. Subscribe 🔔 http://ab.co/GA-subscribe

Over the pandemic lockdowns, many of us were alarmed by images of empty supermarket shelves and supply shortages. Rather than running out and hoarding toot-roll, a group of young people saw it as an opportunity to provide for the vulnerable in their community and rethink how public space was being used.

Al Wicks says they’d “always had the pipe-dream of doing community gardens…over covid me and my friends started getting worried about food security for vulnerable people in the community”.

One of these friends was Ruby Thorburn, who says “there was an overwhelming sense of fear, seeing these empty supermarkets. We wanted to produce food overnight…to avoid red tape and bureaucracy and use direct action”.

In response, they formed “Growing Forward”, a community organisation dedicated to setting up guerrilla community gardens in underutilised public space. We’re visiting a site they’ve successfully converted from forgotten space to thriving community gardens with a purpose.

What started out with a bit of rule bending, has now garnered support of the whole community – including the council.

“We looked around and found a plot of land that was owned by the state government, but had been abandoned for over 90 years. Our neighbour works in council and looked into contamination reports that had been done on the soil and found it was good” says Ruby.

Leaning on Ruby’s permaculture background, they conducted a site assessment and identified a tap for water supply and a promising full-sun aspect. “The goal was community food resilience, and to get people thinking differently about food”.

After speaking with local indigenous elders to gain their permission to use the land, the group studied successful guerrilla community gardens to try to replicate what factors had made them work.

The first was wide community consultation. Every house in the surrounding area to the proposed garden was repeatedly doorknocked, to canvas any issues or concerns with establishing the garden- and identify anyone who was willing to help. Flyers were also distributed.

The next was rapid implementation. “Our goal was to set it up in 2 days, to skip the uncertain period where people are not sure what’s going on” says Ruby. “We just went ahead and did it” says Al.

“We brought in about 20 m2 of soil, and spent our personal money on it” says Al. “It took about a day to get it all in, there was a lot of community support”. While a lot of elbow grease went into the set-up, there’s no permanent infrastructure, which helps avoid the ire of bureaucrats

The first garden is at West End, in inner-south Brisbane, and it’s been a total success. Occupying around ¼ acre, it’s ringed by edible native plants with mounded beds of vegetables inside.

Everything grown goes back into the community to feed those who need it most. “The founding principles were doing free work for the community, and the produce is free”. “We have signs saying this food is going to vulnerable people, and it seems to work”.

At West End the produce goes to refugees living in the community, so Al and Ruby asked the refugee community organisation what they would like to eat. Accordingly, the fare is a little more diverse than what’s on offer at the shops, with sweet potato, okra, cassava, elephant foot yams and papaya thriving. It’s also become a place for meetings and picnics.

The approach has been a big success, regularly supplying food to community organisations and those most vulnerable, as well as building local connections. The program has expanded.

Featured Plants:

PAW PAW - Carica papaya cv.

SWEET POTATO - Ipomoea batatas cv.

CHILLI - Capsicum cv.

PUMPKIN ‘JAP’ - Cucurbita maxima cv.

OKRA - Abelmoschus esculentus cv.

Filmed on Turrbal & Yuggera Country | Brisbane, Qld

#gardening australia #Australia #Solarpunk #guerrilla gardening #pandemic #covid 19 #food #Al Wicks #community garden #Ruby Thorburn #Growing Forward #permaculture #indigenous people #West End #Brisbane #Youtube

144 notes · View notes

wanderfan2000 · 2 months

Text

@clover-the-awesomest

To answer your question on this GIF you reblogged from me, the scene is from the original Japanese opening of the JAP version of the Pokémon films, Pokemon 4Ever and Pokémon Heroes. In fact, a little bit of this Japanese opening was seen in the English dub of the 8th movie, Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, as a flashback scene.

#And that’s my fun facts for tonight

2 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 9 months

Text

It may sound like fun and games, but it’s no joke. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, this decentralized group of activists came together to raise money for Ukraine and demolish Russian narratives on social media. They even have their own version of NATO’s Article 5 for mutual assistance, with the hashtag #NAFOArticle5, a cry for other fellas to pile in on social media posts. The fellas took a big step toward recognition last month by staging the NAFO summit in Vilnius. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas congratulated the group on its first summit and tweeted, “Behind every Fella is a real person who believes in #Ukraine’s victory.”

The world has changed markedly in the more than three decades since political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. popularized the term “soft power” in the pages of Foreign Policy. When that article was published in 1990, the dust had barely settled on the ruins of the Berlin Wall, most American homes didn’t have a personal computer, and the first internet meme of a dancing baby was still a few years in the future. The notion of government ministers attending a wartime summit and taking time to praise smack-talking cartoon dogs would have struck many political observers as far-fetched.

Although the modern vernacular of soft and hard power implies opposition, since the earliest civilizations it has been more of a continuum. In ancient times, Hellenization spread throughout the known world in the wake of Alexander the Great’s army. Proselytizing priests followed in the footsteps of Spain’s conquistadors. Imperial China presented a cultural wall against the steppe as powerful as any fortifications. The information age has modified the nature of soft power but not human nature. As Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine grinds on and governments in West Africa fall to coups, it’s evident that no surfeit of wishful thinking will reduce the appeal of hard power for some.

Today, many world leaders still reach for sports, language, food, music, and movies to advance their interests. These efforts aren’t inherently more persuasive than bullets or blockades, but it’s a much more pleasant and humane way of seeking to influence world events. Occasionally, soft power seems to work like a charm. The United Kingdom is widely viewed as having benefited from the recent royal pageantry, despite it coinciding with some messy political infighting in London’s Parliament. India certainly benefits to some degree from the widespread popularity of yoga and Bollywood, but the country’s status as a rising Asian nation and counterweight to China explains much of its appeal in the West.

Increasingly, some political representatives are taking the extra, and risky, step of engaging directly with global popular culture. China’s ambassador to the United States, for example, recently tweeted, “An American friend asked me: what kind of flower will grow out of China?” A torrent of responses cast doubt on this anecdote and questioned whether the ambassador had any notion of how Americans actually speak.

Advancing soft power through pop culture may get more difficult as the internet evolves. The NAFO fellas, for example, generally organize themselves on Twitter, which has been a popular platform for social movements from the Arab Spring to Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. But Elon Musk’s rebranding of Twitter as “X” raises the question of whether the fellas will still be able to “tweet” and if anyone will notice if they do.

In a similar vein, Hollywood, which arguably did more in the 20th century to promote a beguiling image of the United States than the Marshall Plan or the Apollo program, is struggling with challenges at home and abroad. Labor strife casts doubts on new productions, artificial intelligence is encroaching, and competition from overseas is increasing. Content from Nigeria, Mexico, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and, of course, Bollywood is clamoring for the global attention span. Filmmaking can also backfire: Sony Pictures Entertainment suffered a major hack in 2014 that included threats to terrorize cinemas showing The Interview, a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s leader.

North Korea may be a touchy Hermit Kingdom. But South Korea’s K-pop, its brand of popular music, furnishes Seoul’s leaders with a deep well of soft power to draw from. In September 2021, when the United Nations opened the first fully in-person General Assembly in New York after lifting COVID-era restrictions, South Korea’s then-president, Moon Jae-in, invited the group BTS to sing and dance (and speak) their way through the U.N. headquarters as his special presidential envoys for future generations and culture. At the time, South Korea was riding high, having recently been catapulted into the top 10 largest economies in the world. Now, it has just been elected to the U.N. Security Council.

Sports and pop culture don’t have a monopoly on soft power. A little more than a decade ago, Russia was viewed favorably by nearly half of Americans. (Russia’s favorables have since dropped to single digits in the United States.) But with the possible exception of the dissident punk-rock band Pussy Riot, Russian pop culture was almost entirely unknown, then and now. Americans are more familiar with the cannons of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov came to define classical dance; ironically, these Soviet defectors made ballet cool for a generation of Americans enrolled in classes during the Cold War. Only much later would some balletomanes understand that Nureyev self-identified as a Tatar and Baryshnikov as a Latvian.

Some government cultural campaigns are deliberately nostalgic. In 2020, Spain’s food ministry launched a campaign with the slogan El país más rico del mundo—which translates as either the “richest” or “tastiest” country in the world—plastering the motto on billboards in train stations and at bus stops. Centuries have passed since Spain had the world’s silver at its fingertips, but Spanish food and chefs are ubiquitous.

Language, and the pleasure of wordplay, is one of the most enduring aspects of a culture. Romance languages, a Roman legacy, flourished in medieval Europe. Many of the top-ranked countries in a recent survey of soft power subsidize global language schools, including Spain’s Cervantes Institute, Germany’s Goethe-Institut, China’s Confucius Institute, Italy’s Italian Cultural Institute, and the United Kingdom’s British Council. The guidepost has been France’s Alliance Française, which was founded independently by a circle of preeminent late 19th-century Parisians that included Jules Verne, Louis Pasteur, and Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French diplomat, developer of the Suez Canal, and leader of the plan to bring the Statue of Liberty to New York. French President Emmanuel Macron feted the 140th anniversary of the organization’s founding on July 21, remarking at a celebration at the Élysée presidential palace that the hundreds of schools scattered around the world, mostly underwritten by student fees, are “absolutely key for the diffusion of French culture but also of our values.”

Soft power may be pricey, but world leaders continue to pour money into a range of cultural offerings because they can’t be certain what will resonate. Last month, Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched the Bastille Day parade in Paris, including a flyby of three French-made jets in the Indian Air Force. Modi’s visit concluded with an announcement that India would buy 26 more Dassault Rafale jets and three additional Scorpène-class submarines. This year, during a state visit to Beijing with plenty of cultural baggage, Macron sealed commercial deals for aircraft, cosmetics, financial products, and pork. Soon thereafter, a French television station called it a “jackpot” when the news broke that China had agreed to extend the stay of a pair of giant pandas at the ZooParc de Beauval in France’s Loire Valley. The zoo’s director had been among the entourage that had recently accompanied Macron to Beijing, which has a monopoly on pandas around the world.

Sports, especially hosting global events, can be an expensive and risky way to project soft power, and in some cases, countries have been accused of “sportswashing.” None of this is new. Adolf Hitler wanted the 1936 Berlin Olympics to showcase his Nazi regime; it showcased instead the superlative skills of Jesse Owens, the African American athlete who walked away with four gold medals. More recently, pro-Tibetan protesters stormed the field during an Olympic torch-lighting ceremony ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Last year, Qatar faced widespread criticism when it banned soccer fans from wearing rainbow gear into games because visible support for LGBTQ rights is prohibited in the socially conservative kingdom.

Currently, the thorniest debates center on the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and how to handle it when they face Ukrainian competitors, a headache that host countries probably had not envisioned when they bid for these events years ago. Some star Ukrainian athletes are refusing to shake hands with competitors from Russia or Belarus, which Moscow has used as a staging ground for its war in Ukraine. Some tennis fans, who may have thought they were witnessing poor sportsmanship, booed at the end of matches at Wimbledon and the French Open. Ukrainian fencer Olga Kharlan was disqualified after winning a world championship match in Milan for refusing to shake hands with her Russian opponent. She later posted a video on Instagram saying that what happened “raises a lot of questions.”

One question that hasn’t been answered is whether the fellas are making a real impact. Their social media messages have been so pointed, at least in part, because they echo the agitprop communication style developed by the Soviets to agitate nonbelievers and motivate the like-minded. But the fellas didn’t get their most cherished wish at NATO’s Vilnius summit, which ended without a major advance in Ukraine’s bid to join the security alliance.

The term “soft power” evokes more than wishful thinking, although that was certainly part of its appeal after the barbarism of the 20th century. Alongside other forms of persuasion, it can help a country cut trade deals, win friends, or join new clubs. Or not.

7 notes · View notes

tolgaulusoy · 6 months

Text

Çocuk ve Balıkçıl (Jap. Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) büyük usta Hayao Miyazaki'nin son filmi. Miyazaki ile büyümüş birisi olarak on yıl sonra çıkan bu filmini hemen sinemada gidip izledim. Usta yine büyük bir iş çıkartmış. İnsanlık olarak bize böyle bir film hediye ettiği için ne kadar şükretsek az. Film ikinci Dünya Savaşı esnasında Japonya'da geçiyor. Mahito savaşın tüm acılarını yaşayan ergen bir çocuktur ve bir bombardıman sırasında çıkan yangında annesi yanarak ölür. Mahito ve babası taşraya giderler. Babası oradaki bir uçak fabrikasında çalışmak ve dul kalmış baldızı ile evlenmek durumundadır. Mahito için tüm bunlar büyük bir yıkımdır geldiği kırsal alanda bir balıkçıl onu uzun zamandır terk edilmiş olan kütüphane-kuleye doğru çağırmaktadır; ona annesinin ölmediğini kulenin içerisinde kurtarılmayı beklediğini söyler. Nihayetinde hamile olan teyzesi büyülenir ve kuleye girer Mohito da onu kurtarmak için kuleye gider. Ama anlaşılır ki kule tüm dünyaların ortasında duran bir yapıdır ve farklı dünyalara açılmaktadır. Mohito türlü maceralara atılarak hem bu dünyaları keşfeder hem de annesi olduğunu kabullenmediği teyzesini kurtarmaya çalışır. Miyazaki büyülü dünyalar ve çelişkiler içerisideki güçlü karakterler yaratma becerisini bu filmde yine muazzam biçimde ortaya koymuş. Böyle yaratıcı bir zihnin bir gün yitip gidecek olması (çok uzak olmayabilir 82 yaşında artık) insanı gerçekten üzüyor. Umarım kendisinden bir film daha izleme şansımız olur.

4 notes · View notes

kacic1 · 7 months

Text

A todos, boa noite!

O excepcional drama MONSTER, do genial Hirokazu Koreeda, será exibido no Festival de Cinema do Rio de Janeiro a partir do próximo dia 08 de outubro. Então, convido vocês a visitarem Os Filmes do Kacic, para conferir (ou reconferir) minha crítica publicada no dia 19 de maio sobre este drama destaque em Cannes, imperdível para os fãs do gênero!

Crítica: MONSTER (KAIBUTSU) | 2023

🎬🎞🎥📽📺

#movies #cinema #filmes #geek #popculture #nerd #osfilmesdokacic #review #drama #hirokazu koreeda #monster #kaibutsu #critica #movie review #critica monster #monster review #monster movie review

5 notes · View notes

verseno · 1 year

Note

Who was aniki

8 notes · View notes

petrorabbit · 1 year

Text

Let's Watch Batman Movies #1: The 1943 Serial

The first thing that needs to be said about the Batman 1943 serial is that it was anti-Japanese propaganda created during WWII. The stated and overt purpose of these films is to rally white Americans against Japanese-Americans and citizens of Japan. For some reason, I went in like, oh, I’ve seen racist propaganda before, this won’t be so bad. I was quite wrong! Early on, the action moves to Little Tokyo and the narrator informs us that it is vacant ever since “a wise government rounded up the shifty eyed Japs.” Extremely bad! And it’s like that the whole way through!

The villain is an original character named Dr. Daka who uses advanced technology to turn people into zombies that he can control, which is textually linked to the stereotype of Japanese people being subservient and willing to die for their leader. There are multiple scenes where Daka is about to use his brainwashing machine on someone, and they announce that he will never break their spirit of American independence and capitalist ambition! Although bizarrely no one ever breaks out of the brainwashing on their own, so I guess the American spirit isn’t that strong?

Daka’s lair is in this… okay, wait, let me try and explain this. So no one lives in Little Tokyo anymore and the only thing still there is this dark ride that shows scenes of anti-Japanese propaganda. The way to get into the villains’ lair is to ride the ride for a while, then get out at a certain point and buzz in on a patch of wall that opens into the hideout. But it does seem that Daka is owning and operating this dark ride, which is already a baffling thing to do, I mean I guess it has “the last place they’d think to look” energy? But people are also, you know, riding this ride, all day every day. Seems like a pretty big security risk, I don’t know. I feel like this is a pretty good encapsulation of the mood of the whole thing - villain’s lair is in a dark ride feels like a normal fun Batman thing, and then also, abject racism.

The version of this that I watched was edited to be one single movie, so the cliffhangers and previously ons were edited out. Every twenty minutes or so, Batman would just get into a life-threatening scenario and then almost immediately Robin would save him. It was always Batman almost dying too - I guess maybe they thought that audiences would not be sufficiently worried about Robin? This doesn’t do much for Batman’s competence, though. He definitely comes off as less than able.

Part of this is also that this Bruce is real young. I’m used to thinking of Bruce as a long-suffering father, but here he and Dick are presented as basically peers. They are collectively referred to as the “American youth” defending their country. Bruce apparently just takes Dick along on dates with him? At one point, when Bruce misses a date because he’s on an undercover operation, his excuse is that he took Dick to the amusement park and they were having so much fun, they lost track of time. The Brucie act is out in full force, but it also doesn’t seem to be much of an act. Like, this Bruce just isn’t actually very pressed about anything. He kind of does seem like he’s dressing up like a bat and punching people because it’s fun and gives him a thrill. Plus, since he doesn’t really do anything as Batman that he couldn’t do as Bruce most of the time, it kinda just feels like he’s wasting time by leaving to get into costume. There’s one scene where his girlfriend, Linda Page, is being attacked in a room he just left, but instead of walking back in and punching the guys, he has to leave, dress as Batman, climb through the window, and then punch some guys. Really feels like he’s playing kind of fast and loose with Linda’s life.

The inciting incident is also very funny. Linda wants Bruce to come with her to pick up her uncle, who is getting out of prison, but Bruce is purposely late to, I guess, make him seem like not a masked vigilante. As a direct result of this, the villains are able to pick up Uncle Martin first and brainwash him. Classic stuff.

There is a pretty cool effect during the car chase that follows, where the kidnappers release a gas that changes the color of the car and hit a button that turns the license plate around. A lot of the effects, sets, etc, actually look pretty good, which might just be me coming in with low expectations. The Batcave - called the Bat’s Cave here, which implies to me that Bruce is just renting it from the bats - looks decent but is very empty, and the shadows of bats flying around are pretty comical.

They access the Bat’s Cave through a grandfather clock, which I think might be the first time that idea showed up? It’s also, if not the first appearance of Alfred, a very early appearance, and rather than the highly competent backbone of the family, he is a comical boob who’s afraid of everything. He’s also directly involved in their operation - like, he fully goes undercover more than once. He also gets to kill Daka at the end, by hitting the button that opens the trap door to Daka’s alligators that he has for some reason. And then Commissioner Not-Gordon, who didn’t see that happen, yells, “And let that be a lesson - The Batman never needs any help from the likes of you!” Whomp whomp.

I quite liked Douglas Croft as Robin, he had a Jack Dylan Grazer vibe that I really enjoyed. Batman and Robin are also explicitly working for the American government here, which is strange. What else? Oh yeah, there are TONS of costume changes, I guess they wanted to have Bruce and Dick & Batman and Robin in each segment? So they’re always running off to change clothes. They also go undercover a lot, Bruce constructs a criminal alter ego named Chuck White who “accidentally” lets the location of the Bat’s Cave slip. His description of it, btw, is “a big cave full of bats… and there, in the center, sitting at a desk… one giant bat, the size of a man.” Incredible.

A few last details: when Batman and Robin leave criminals tied up for the police, they put little bat stickers on their heads, which is cute and whimsical. Also, there’s this x-ray device? I guess? That identifies the criminals before they are let into the lair, and somehow this device positively identifies Batman. Like he puts his hand on it and the Batman logo shows up on the x-ray, as if it was printed on his bones. Anyway, at my count Batman and Robin broke 5 windows by leaping through them, including one skylight.

There is another serial but I’m not gonna watch it bc these are like 4-5 hours long and I just can’t. Tune in next time for Batman: The Movie (1966)!

#batramble #batman 1943

7 notes · View notes