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70sscifiart · 2 years

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1980 album art for “Yasuo Higuchi, Orchestra 2772” — Tsuyoshi Matsumoto and Shinji ito are both credited for the art on Discogs

#Yasuo Higuchi Orchestra 2772 #Tsuyoshi Matsumoto #Shinji ito #album art

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redsamuraiii · 1 year

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My Favourite Comedy J Drama

Kyou Kara Ore wa!! / From Today It’s My Turn!! (2018)

There’s a few comedy J-dramas that I’ve watched but this is by far my favourite. It never fail to make me smile and laugh no matter how bad my day is. The characters are lovable and the chemistry are strong. The comedy is so crazy and ridiculous that I question their sanity. The fight scenes are cool.

Takashi Mitsuhashi (Kento Kaku) just moved into town and is starting his student life in a new school so he wants to create a lasting first impression. He decides to get rid of his boring looks and black hair by something bold and fresh to give off a delinquent vibes so that he can’t be bullied.

Shinji Ito (Shinji Ito) is another new student who wants to have a different image as well and they both started off the wrong foot getting on each other’s nerves before they both allied themselves against common enemies, the other bullies. The duo’s defeat of the bullies increase their reputation in school and beyond.

This attract the attention of girls school gang leader, Kyoko Hayakawa (Kanna Hashimoto) whose gang came under threat from a boys school gang elsewhere and decides to seek help from the duo, Mitsuhashi and Ito. Ito became infatuated with her and the two eventually got attracted to each other.

While not a delinquent, Riko Akasaka (Nana Seino) is a fierce fighter like Kyoko. She’s the school monitor who ensures the school fights doesn’t get out of hand and perceives Mitsuhashi as a bad influence to the juniors. The two always get on each other’s nerves until Mitsuhashi realises he’s in love with her.

Katsutoshi Imai (Taiga Nakano) is a delinquent from another school who always end up in the middle of the gang fights involving Mitsuhashi and Ito. While he respects Ito for having the same sense of honour as him, he hates Mitsuhashi who play tricks to win and his crush on Riko further adds fuel to their rivalry.

Satoshi Katagiri (Nobuyuki Suzuki) and Takeshi Sagara (Hayato Isomura), the most formidable gang leaders that can match Ito and Mitsuhashi who are the main antagonist of the drama. They are not only skilful in street fights but resourceful in figuring out different ways to beat Ito and Mitsuhashi.

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It’s a fun and entertaining drama to watch, which helps you forget your life problems with good laughs. The action scenes are surprisingly good. I love seeing Kanna Hashimoto and Nana Seino kicking butts. The comedy level is just crazy that you can see the actors wanting to laugh every now and then.

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Pics by My Drama List

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vg-music-i-like · 2 months

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Double Date (Perfect) // Rhythm Heaven Fever

#rhythm heaven #rhythm heaven fever #ost #soundtrack #tsunku #masami yone #shinji ushiroda #asuka ito #nintendo #wii #2011 #2012 #misc series

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hatsumishinogu · 2 years

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Omae no suki ha shinji nai!

#omae no suki ha shinji nai!#ito #boys love #manga

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straycatboogie · 1 year

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2022/12/10 English

BGM: Bob Dylan "World Gone Wrong"

I met a leader of the group home. I gave him the money for various payments. He and his staff helped me a lot this year as usual (really thankful for that). I passed the money and got shocked because it was really tiny. Yes, I'm poor. How can the next year be? After that, I learned that the next book of Shinji Aoyama's "Turtle in Takaraga Ike never sinks" so I sent a LINE message to the leader if I can buy it. We decided that I send LINE messages if I find the book I want. He said that we can think about it after I will get the extra money as a "bonus". But "bonus" will be given to me?

I read Asa Itoh and Takao Murase's "Dementia and Altruism". This is based on the letters these two authors sent to each other, and it becomes an interesting one that describes the real estate of this highly aged society. They try to think about the reality of aged people who need help by using the word "Dementia" as a trigger, and also describe how this world is. Aged people with blurred minds are not impossible completely to understand, but they must have their egos and personalities to live in this world (yes, this is really a clear fact but I must admit that I often forget it). So they try to write and seek about how to live with these aged people together peacefully.

I am an autistic person so often think that it is impossible to understand myself. Like Arthur Rimbaud, do we think about ourselves as "I am the other"? Touching that kind of "otherness" of ourselves is as same as touching the "enigma" of this world therefore we can touch how this world is profound. I remember the movie reviews by Shinji Miyadai, a famous intellectual in Japan. Miyadai was the person who tried to discuss the "enigma" of our world and lives through various movies such as Shunji Iwai's, and tried to approach the real estate of this world (at least, for me). How does he read this book?

This evening, I had time so read Shinji Aoyama's that book (at last). Aoyama was a famous Japanese director and it is his diary. I was impressed because he had tried to "watch" various media. Movies, dramas, music... I listened to Bob Dylan's masterpieces like his and learned that he must have an "anachronic" and keen eyes as a point of view to understand this world. He was never a snob, a fashionable person who must be liked by "cinephiles". I missed him as an important person... but you don't say to me that "everyone is important". R.I.P.

#diary #english #poverty #shinji aoyama #asa ito #takao murase #dementia #altruism #shinji miyadai

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neoneun-au · 7 months

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A post for my book recommendations, to be continuously updated as I read and remember more. Because without reading, I would not be writing.

All time favourites are marked with a ☆

All are sorted by genre and will be linked (if able) to their Goodreads pages so that you can dig deeper into whatever catches your eye.

(ps if you have a Goodreads account, you can add me here)

Anthology/Short Story Collections

Behold This Dreamer - Walter de la Mare ☆

Love Letters of Great Men - Ursula Doyle

Difficult Women - Roxane Gay

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories - Ken Liu

The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami

Essays

Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay ☆

Bluets - Maggie Nelson ☆

On Freedom - Maggie Nelson

In Praise of Shadows - Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Malleable Forms - Meeka Walsh ☆

Fiction (Classic)

Persuasion - Jane Austen ☆

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Awakening - Kate Chopin

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell ☆

Siddhartha - Hermen Hesse

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera ☆

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Fiction (Modern)

All’s Well - Mona Awad ☆

Bunny - Mona Awad

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

The Pisces - Melissa Broder

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

For Today I Am A Boy - Kim Fu

The Vegetarian - Han Kang

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova ☆

Fall on Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Eimear McBride

No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

The Road - Cormac McCarthy ☆

Under the Hawthorne Tree - Ai Mi

The Song of Achilles - Madeleine Miller ☆

After Dark - Haruki Murakami ☆

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami

1Q84 - Haruki Murakami ☆

Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi

Mr. Fox - Helen Oyeyemi ☆

A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

The Overstory - Richard Powers ☆

The Godfather - Mario Puzo

Blindness - José Saramago

How To Be Both - Ali Smith

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt ☆

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

Ru - Kim Thúy

Brooklyn - Colm Tóibín

Big Fish - Daniel Wallace

Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto

Horror/Thriller

The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty

Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Gerald’s Game - Stephen King

The Shining - Stephen King

Audition - Ryū Murakami

I’m Thinking of Ending Things - Iain Reid

Manga/Graphic Novels

Basilisk - Futaro Yamada, Maseki Sagawa

Death Note - Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata

Eureka Seven - Jinsei Kataoka, Kazuma Kondou

Lore Olympus - Rachel Smythe

Nana - Ai Yazawa ☆

Paradise Kiss - Ai Yazawa

Uzumaki - Junji Ito

xxxHolic - CLAMP

Memoirs/Journals

Speak, Okinawa - Elizabeth Miki Brina

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness - Susannah Cahalan

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes - Caitlin Doughty

I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi

Henry and June - Anaïs Nin ☆

The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls ☆

Non-Fiction (General)

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking - Susan Cain

The Red Market - Scott Carney

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern - Stephen Greenblatt

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right - Jane Mayer

The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson

The Elements of Style - William Strunk Jr, E.B White

Non-Fiction (Philosophy/Spiritual)

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge - Carlos Castañeda

Silence: In the Age of Noise - Erling Kagge ☆

The Kybalion - Three Initiates ☆

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo - Chögyam Trungpa

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

Poetry Collections

I Love My Love - Reyna Biddy

Let Us Compare Mythologies - Leonard Cohen

The Prophet - Khalil Gibran

The Anatomy of Being - Shinji Moon

The Beauty of the Husband - Anne Carson ☆

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth - Warsan Shire

Night Sky with Exit Wounds - Ocean Vuong

Speculative Fiction

Dune - Frank Herbert

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel ☆

Battle Royale - Koushun Takami

True Crime

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders - Vincent Bugliosi

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote ☆

Young Adult

A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray ☆

The Diviners - Libba Bray

The Sun is Also a Star - Nicola Yoon

#book recs #mads.recs

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demifiendrsa · 2 years

Video

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War TV Anime - English subbed Trailer #1

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War TV Anime will premiere in October 2022.

Key visual

Cast

Masakazu Morita as Ichigo Kurosaki

Fumiko Orikasa as Rukia Kuchiki

Noriaki Sugiyama as Uryū Ishida

Yuki Matsuoka as Orihime Inoue

Hiroki Yasumoto as Yasutora Sado

Kentaro Ito as Renji Abarai

Shinichiro Miki as Kisuke Urahara

Satsuki Yukino as Yoruichi Shihōin

Binbin Takaoka (replacing Masaaki Tsukada) as Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto

Houko Kuwashima as Suì-Fēng

Shouto Kashii as Rōjūrō Ōtoribashi

Aya Hisakawa as Retsu Unohana

Masaya Onosaka as Shinji Hirako

Ryotaro Okiayu as Byakuya Kuchiki

Tetsu Inada as Sajin Komamura

Akio Ohtsuka as Shunsui Kyōraku

Tomokazu Sugita as Kensei Muguruma

Romi Park as Tōshirō Hitsugaya

Fumihiko Tachiki as Kenpachi Zaraki

Ryusei Nakao as Mayuri Kurotsuchi

Hideo Ishikawa as Jūshirō Ukitake

Naomi Kusumi as Ichibē Hyōsube

Yōji Ueda as Ōetsu Mimaiya

Tomoyuki Shimura as Tenjirō Kirinji

Rina Satou as Senjumaru Shutara

Ayumi Tsunematsu as Kirio Hikifune

Takayuki Sugo as Yhwach

Yuichiro Umehara as Jugram Haschwalth

Shunsuke Takeuchi as Askin Nakk Le Vaar

Ayana Taketatsu as Bambietta Basterbine

Yūki Ono as Bazz-B

Yumi Uchiyama as Candice Catnipp

Natsuki Hanae as Gremmy Thoumeaux

Satoshi Hino as Lille Barro

Staff

Director: Tomohisa Taguchi

Character Design: Masashi Kudo

Music: Shiro Sagisu

Chief Animation Director: Michio Hasegawa, Sei Komatsubara, Kumiko Takayanagi

Action Effects Animation Director: Satoshi Sakai, Yoshihiro Kanno, Yong Hoon Chong

Art Director: Yoshio Tanioka

Art Design: Toshiki Amada

Color Design: Saori Goda

Editing: Akinori Mishima

Director of Photography: Kazuhiro Yamada

CG Directors: Toshihiro Sasaki, Kazushi Goto

Sound Director: Yukio Nagasaki

Sound Production: Zack Promotion

Animation Production: Studio Pierrot

#Bleach Thousand Year Blood War #Bleach TYBW #Bleach #Bleach anime #Studio Pierrot #anime #TV anime

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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 2 years

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Frank! What's the weirdest anime you've ever seen? I tried to watch one once called "Naria Girls" and it was the most surreal thing ever. It was just a bunch of actors talking about random topics but animated with MMD models. It was like watching someone's bad podcast, but in anime form. How about you?

I can't think of any of my own that are "weird" – some anime I've watched and enjoyed include (chronically):

Devilman (great animation style, lots of very silly stuff, the most realistic gore is still really over the top and gross out of nowhere)

Kuromi (animation style is great, but overall I would say it's low-key inoffensive – "low-key" isn't quite right, it's low-maintenance), but it's on Netflix and you can watch it and not miss anything.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which was weird in the wrong ways and good in the right ways ("weird" is a relative term; it didn't feel "weird" to me, it just felt "different")

Madoka itself (same feelings as Pmmm)

Dorohedoro (same feelings as Dorohedoro)

Death Note (same feelings as Death Note)

Neon Genesis Evangelion (the show itself, not just its animation) (I actually liked it a lot as a kid, although it had some bad aspects and I did not really know how to enjoy it as a young adult)

I'm also still sort of hooked on Evangelion, even if I've had a bit more distance for a while. And I think that's an extreme case – I wouldn't say that "Majima Goro" or "Shinji Ito" or "Luna" or any other anime that I've enjoyed are the "weirdest" I've seen.

"The weirdest" for me might be things like "Baccano!" which I didn't care for at first but got into later, or "Lucky Star," which I thought was pretty weird but still enjoyed the hell out of.

#i hope you know this isn't how math works

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redsamuraiii · 9 months

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My 3 Favourite Delinquent J Dramas

1) Kyou Kara Ore Wa!! (From Today, It's My Turn!!)

Pic by My Drama List

Two transfer students, Mitsuhashi Takashi (Kaku Kento) and Itou Shinji (Ito Kentaro), are tired of their normal life and unpopularity. They decide to take their arrival at a new school as an opportunity to reinvent their image, and become delinquents!

Itou's sense of honour clashes with Mitsuhashi's mischievous ways, they initially antagonize one another but soon become allies against common enemies- other delinquents, who see their arrival as a threat, throwing the school into chaos.

Lesson Learnt : No matter how good you are, there will always be someone who is better than you.

2) My Boss My Hero

Pic by alchetron.com/

Sakaki Makio (Nagase Tomoya) is a tough 27-year-old school drop-out who is forced by his Yakuza father to return to high school to complete his studies before he could inherit his father's business, while his intellectually smarter brother is vying for the same position.

Things started out rough as his violent temperament and patience is constantly tested and pushed beyond the limits, as he struggles to find motivation to study. Just when he's beginning to get the hang of it, his old enemy from his past threatened to blow his cover.

Lesson Learnt : It's never too late to turn your life around no matter how old you are if you are not embarrass to re-learn.

3) Yankee-kun to Megane-chan

Pic by drama.eklablog.com/

Daichi Shinagawa (Narimiya Hiroki) is a juvenile delinquent who has no motivation in studying and whose family has no expectations of him. In the streets, he's always being target by rivals who wants to challenge him for his reputation as being the toughest of all.

His life began to change when a new student, Hana Adachi (Riisa Naka) befriends him and he finds himself unwittingly swept up into her world, helping other outcasts like them to find meaning and place in school but without realising that she too has a dark past.

Lesson Learnt : People will judge you no matter what you do, so you might as well be comfortable being yourself.

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kamenstranger · 11 months

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Two years after my review of the first Heisei Gamera, it's time to jump back in and talk about the sequel. Following the success of 1995’s Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, the sequel was put into production soon afterwards, with an announcement made in November of ‘95. Much of the same creative team would return for the sequel, including Shusuke Kaneko in the director's chair, a new screenplay by Kazunori Ito, and Shinji Higuchi once again directing the special effects. Here’s the thing about Gamera 2’s story; it’s dead simple. I don’t mean that as an insult, but I can sum up the broad strokes by simply calling it a classic B-movie plot. In some ways that’s doing a disservice to the unique and captivating characteristics bestowed upon Legion, but otherwise it’s standard plot paying homage to classic sci-fi, most notably Ultra Q, with beats not dissimilar to the previous Gamera entry. However, much like its predecessor, Gamera 2’s brilliance lies in the presentation. There’s an initially slow yet well paced suspenseful build towards the mysterious creatures, what they are and how they operate, keeping the audience wondering what event will transpire next.

The film starts off in classic fashion with a strange meteor shower and bizarre lights, prompting the JSDF to respond to a particularly large impact creator. Troublingly, there’s no sign of the meteor.

We’re then properly introduced to our main protagonist Midori Honami (Miki Mizuno), a curator for the nearby Sapporo Science Center, who becomes involved with the JSDF’s puzzling case. Several more bizarre incidents take place, including one of the eeriest scenes as two bumbling security guards witness a strange creature consuming bottles inside a brewery. The only evidence left behind at the scene is silicon, indicating a possible diet for the creature.

Following the brewery incident, multiple underground fiber optics are destroyed, each attack creeping closer to Sapporo until 5 days later a subway is attacked by a number of monsters. Things escalate as Police arrive, which goes about as well as you’d expect. The dread continues to escalate as communications across the region are cut off, and a massive plant erupts from a building above the tunnels.

The JSDF intervenes shortly after, and once they rescue the subway survivors (the attacks upon whom seem random) they begin monitoring the colony and various forms of atmospheric changes, notably, the oxygen levels are rising dramatically, creating a toxic environment. Honami theorizes that the Legion and the plant are like Leaf-cutter ants colonizing fungus to survive. Ergo, you destroy one, the other will die with it in a symbiotic fashion. Furthermore, the purpose of the plant is called into question given that it’s not a food source. The more dire theory being that’s how the Legion spreads its colonies. I.e. What crashed in Hokkaido may have been a seed launched from such a plant. As such, the JSDF plans to destroy the structure before it can bloom. Because the Legion emits electromagnetic waves to communicate, Radios are largely useless in the surrounding area, leading to more basic forms for communications such as Morse Lamp. I find it notable that the film manages to incorporate a “fear of technology” angle without it being the technology itself being demonized or the threat as it often was in mid-late 90s media. Rather it's the loss of modern conveniences in a hyper modern city, it’s a concept that still holds up really well today. Additionally, the Legion see tech as a threat, as it’s discovered the subway victims all had phones, pagers, radios etc. This will be important later on.

Meanwhile, operations with the plant hit a snag; Oxygen levels have risen so dramatically that attempting to destroy the structure could be just as catastrophic as the flower blooming. A smaller explosion is set off which temporarily disrupts the flowing plant and the Legion, allowing radio communication to resume just in time to hear that Gamera has emerged from the sea and is headed towards Sapporo. Gamera arrives, inhales the excess oxygen, burns the flower, and rips it up by the roots. Thousands of Legion swarm and attack Gamera, who only manages to escape when the fiends are sent into a frenzy by a nearby Transformer. In the ensuing chaos, a larger winged Queen Legion emerges and escapes.

From here on the movie is in full swing. We’re given well needed breathers that keep the film from being suffocating, allowing us to reflect on the events at hand. But the pace is very brisk after Gamera shows up, and we’ve pretty much learned most of the mystery behind Legion, so now it’s about seeing how that knowledge can be applied to defeat them. The one last truly notable story piece that pops up is Asagi Kusanagi returning from the previous film. She is mentioned early on, showing that her story is known about if not widely believed. She appears a couple more times before finally crossing paths with Honami during an evacuation near an airport, just as a battle between Gamera and a now fully grown Legion Queen breaks out over a second flowering plant.

Asagi still has a connection to Gamera, which is both a great focal point of the film and also probably one of the few things I wish was handled better. As poignant as Kusanagi’s role is in this film, she’s barely featured and quite frankly it feels like more should’ve been done to emphasize her significance. I don’t know if they just couldn’t get Ayako Fujitani for more than they did, but it feels like they didn’t have her for long, as she’s in relatively few scenes. One thing I do like is that her connection is far weaker than the first film, which makes sense given that it was implied to be severed after Gyaos’ defeat. It’s questionable how much Asagi’s connection even remains, certainly not enough for Gamera’s injuries to reflect upon her as in the past, nor much to aid him in battle. The Legion Queen is victorious in their first fight and she burrows away. Gamera limps his way to the second flowering plant and manages to topple it over, but it still goes off causing a 6 mile explosion and carbonizing an already wounded Gamera.

In the coming days a vigil of sorts would form around Gamera, becoming something of a pilgrimage site for people hoping for Gamera’s revival, even harkening back to the Showa era’s “friend to all children” angle with families visiting the site.

Asagi remains by his side, still acting the role of priestess, and eventually catalyst. The religious parallels become more blatant when the gathering results in a formation of energy that revives Gamera. However, Asagi’s Magatama breaks apart, unquestionably severing her connection to Gamera, and his to Humanity.

After his revival, Gamera goes off for the climatic battles, a very minor subplot regarding the JSDF’s hesitancy to assist Gamera gets wrapped up when they ultimately fight alongside him against Legion (I can only assume this was a severely downplayed component due to the whole kerfuffle with the JSDF and Godzilla vs. Mothra) We get a few more character moments for our cast, and Gamera finally decimates the Legion Mother in spectacular fashion by demonstrating a power he’s never used before.

But it looks cool as shit. In the aftermath, Honami playfully, if ominously, theorizes that maybe Gamera didn’t save humanity so much as all life on earth, and they should be careful to never be seen as a threat.

And that’s pretty much all of Gamera 2’s story, it’s as simple as that. At an hour and thirty-six minutes long, there’s not much to go over, for better or worse.

You may have noticed I didn’t detail the characters the way I usually do, and that’s because I don’t have much to say about them. Midori Honami obviously gets the most focus. She’s very similar in character to Mayumi Nagamine from the previous film, with that sorta plucky go get’em attitude. She’s someone whose knowledge can be applied to the current situation, and her dynamic with the JSDF’s Hanatani (Tamotsu Ishibashi) isn’t that different from Mayumi’s with Yoshinari. It’s a starchy independent 90s woman of science paired with a well meaning military man. She has a couple of cute moments that reinforce her personality, such as refusing help getting down from a raised platform, but there’s not much to her than that. As for Hanatani, he has less to work with and I didn’t feel he was worth mentioning much.

Another character I’ve yet to mention is Obitsu (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) an engineer at NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) You may recognize Fukikoshi from Ryusoulger, or perhaps Takashi Miike’s Lesson of the Evil. He plays a supporting role here, but he’s probably the most interesting character just for his outside the box thinking. His best moment is near the climax of the film when Gamera is once again swarmed by Legion drones. Obitsu manages to get a power plant to divert a large chunk of their output to a series of nearby transformers, drawing the Legion away and saving Gamera. But that’s about all there is to say. Like the first film, the monsters are the real stars while the human cast moves the story along. The opening 45 minutes or so are the absolute best story wise. But I also think it’s fair to point out that outside those moments with Legion, most of the story beats are the same as the first film. Mysterious creatures require investigating, a woman of science & military man cross paths to solve said mystery, Gamera gets injured and is incapacitated until the final battle. In a way, it feels like a soft do-over of what the filmmakers wanted previously but couldn’t. So most of the story is repeated with a few original tidbits, and another excuse to prop up the big selling point: the Special effects.

Gamera GOTU had some of the most incredible miniature work at the time, blowing anything of the Heisei Godzilla era out of the water. So when we get to Gamera 2, there was a presumed expectation that they had to up the ante-- and they did.

Firstly, the team had much more creative freedom after the surprise success of the first film. Gamera underwent a redesign much more in line with what was originally intended for GOTU; sharper angles, sea turtle fins for a flight mode, and the elbow spikes are now permanently visible. It feels like a proper Heisei era design with all the kinks worked out, in much the same way ‘89 BioGoji is to ‘84 Goji. That’s even seen in the poster at the top, which feels more of the era by emulating Noriyoshi Ohrai’s style rather than a call back to the Showa Era.

The main body was mostly left unchanged, although redesigned dimensionally to better fit Akira Ohashi, taking over from both Manabe and Suzuki from the previous film. The biggest change to the design aside from the sculpt is the mechanical components being improved. Gamera’s eyes are much more expressive, and there’s a wider range of motion for the neck that would move along with Ohashi’s.

Likewise, they were free to incorporate an original monster, by far the best part of the movie. And Legion… What is there even left to say? The Soldiers are great, but the queen is one of the most fascinatingly intricate and unique designs. I have to commend the team for not only the sheer complexity of the aesthetic and size (requiring both Mizuho Yoshida and Toshinori Sasaki to operate) but still making good fight scenes centered around something that’s even more cumbersome than King Ghidorah (Although the soldiers pick up some the slack there) What’s even more amazing is how much of the suit was being worked on to the last minute, and I don’t mean before shooting. According to designer Fuyuki Shinada, they were constantly modifying the suit throughout, and if you look closely, you can see that the arms gain articulation as the film progresses. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a review that didn’t hold Legion as the pinnacle of Gamera 2’s assets. Although they’re far from the only highlight, the best visuals are often built around them. The suspense of the brewery attack, the subway scene that makes the soldiers look like they’re on the ceiling, the massive swarm that attacks Gamera. All of that makes 2 stick out from what otherwise would be a too familiar retread, and that care is seen throughout the film. One of the best examples of their love and attention to detail is when the first flower topples over. In just about any other film it would’ve simply fallen and pyrotechnics go off. But we see the roots of the plant tear through the snowy roads, because it would- and it looks amazing, which sums up a lot of the film. It’s just full of little touches like that.

Another would be the first Legion Queen battle. There are wonderful overhead shots of the monsters, Gamera’s shell gets a chunk taken out, but my favorite moment is where Gamera looks at the flower in the distance about to bloom, the camera pans to the flower, and the Legion Queen sidesteps to put herself between the flower and Gamera. So much personality conveyed in a few simple shots.

That said, there is one other area where the films SFX is rough, and that’s the CG…kinda. Frankly I don’t wanna spend too much time on this because A: It’s no worse than Spawn’s released a year later, and B: They only use it when they absolutely need to. It’s also worth pointing out that Gamera 2 was something of a transitional film for special effects. GOTU used composite and some CGI, while in 2 it’s the opposite, more CGI and almost no composites.

I’m kinda shocked at the stuff they don't use it for. When the hundreds of Legion soldiers crawl up Gamera, that’s CGI, of course. But then it transitions into a practical effect with hundreds of miniatures attached to the suit. Sure, it was probably cheaper than CGI at the time anyway, but it’s incredible that they pulled it off.

There’s also other areas where the CG is actually really great for the era, such as the light effects. The tone matching upon the Actors sells it. Honestly, I’m hard pressed to find any fault with the visuals because Gamera 2 is so much more polished than the previous entry. The one major criticism I would hold against the film’s visuals is how many night scenes there are. The first film was a bit more balanced with a slight skew towards day scenes. Here, the only day scene between the monsters in the airport- that’s it. While I do appreciate the contrast, it also makes it difficult to actually see finer details… which might’ve been intentional given the mechanical issues with Legion and the technological angle with CG looking far better in low light. That said, it’s still better lit than most modern modern Hollywood films. I can still see what’s happening. The fights are more interesting with Legion than Gyaos, scene transitions are better, the snowy environment is fairly unique for this medium and genre. Even the pacing of individual set pieces is better. I can overlook dark environments for all the other positives, which sorta leads into my final overall thoughts.

As much as I notice the flaws more than I did years ago when I first saw G2, it’s still a notable improvement over the first film. Even with some of the repeated character archetypes, it’s hard not to look at G2 as better in almost every other regard. Gamera 1 is by no means a bad film, I heaped a lot of praise on it. But if we compare it to the sequel, well, the first is a hell of a lot more clunky, if more fresh. Gamera 1 has a lot of moving parts for what it is with the whole Atlantis angle and having to explain Gamera in addition to the Gyaos, his connection to Asagi, the environmental angle, etc. Gamera 1 does a better job with the two main leads, but it’s also much rougher around the edges experience compared to Legion. G2 manages to capture the same mysterious aura the Gyaos had and even more so, while trimming out a lot of the awkwardness. Say what you will about the CGI, it’s aged, but I think that’s more forgivable than some of the opticals in 1 which was simply inexcusable for ‘95. You can tell certain aspects in the first film were rushed due to time, or were too ambitious. While that can make the first film more charming in its own way, G2 curbs many of those problems with the experience gained from the first go. You also don’t have anything as contrived as not knowing how to get their schoolgirl protagonist to the base of Mt. Fuji for an important scene, so just have a taxi driver manage to break through a military blockade. Everything is just more streamlined and better thought out in this sequel. It’s not perfect, of course, it sometimes feels like it strokes the JSDF a little too much, bordering on propaganda.

(This Salute and a stand off with a single Legion solider near the climax are perhaps the most embarrassing moments of the movie)

Still, I don’t think you can ask much more from a follow up than working out the kinks and then excelling in nearly all the parts that worked and then some. Gamera 2 is a fantastic sequel that, for whatever flaws it has, is ultimately better than the first and too fun to be down on. If I am allowed to make a very strange comparison, I would say it’s very much like Evil Dead 2. Sure, it’s basically the same plot as the first one, but everything is refined and has enough cool new shit that it doesn’t matter. And for the most part, that's how Gamera 2 was received in ‘96. It won a Seiun Award just like its predecessor, and (Controversially) the 17th Nihon SF Taishō Award. But those accolades sadly didn’t translate to ticket sales. While G2 made a respectable ¥700 million, 180 million more than GOTU, G2 had considerably more weight behind it. While I wasn’t able to find any solid numbers on the budget, we do know that it was more than the first, and Gamera 2 was Toho’s Big Summer release for July. By contrast, GOTU was dumped off in March and was considered to not have made as much as possible due to not courting the Theaters. So expectations were high for a sequel to hit the magical ¥1 Billion mark. I would argue that’s a slightly unrealistic goal for a Kaiju film at that time (outside Godzilla and Mothra). But the fact it only made 180 more than a film released in March, and a poorly distributed one at that, is pretty sad if not pathetic.

Nevertheless, the film made money and was critically well received, leading to a third and final entry. But while I won’t be jumping into that just yet, I do want to talk briefly about the legacy Gamera 2 left. I don’t think I can overstate how much Gamera 2 was a major touchstone for the Kaiju Genre. While that’s true for the whole trilogy, and I even touched upon something similar in GOTU in how much the Legendary Monsterverse took from it, I think it’s a bit more poetic here. Gamera 2 is an unabashed love letter to the Ultra series. You can draw a direct line from Ultra Q all the way to Gamera 2.

The kids who grew up with Ultraman were themselves becoming the next step in refining Japanese special effects, emulating concepts that were established, but doing them better, and eventually elevating the production standards of the franchise that inspired them. The entire time I was watching this for the review I kept thinking “This still looks amazing, but TsuPro is able to do the same if not significantly better nowadays” and that’s not a knock, this movie is nearly 27 years old, many of the artists went to work on Ultraman. But it’s also fitting that's how far things have come. Just like how the Ultra series was putting anything from the Godzilla films to shame because of Toho veterans and new blood, and then Gamera was doing better effects work than Heisei Godzilla. Now once again Television productions are far surpassing the level of detail that was once dominant and only possible in theatrical productions. I can see Gamera’s foot crash through a street and a bike topple over along with a phone booth shattering…and I can see the same thing 3-4 times better in an episode Ultraman Z. I think that’s wonderful. We're not done with the Ultraman comparisons, either. We'll be getting back to those when we get to Iris in Gamera 3.

And for those interested in checking out Gamera 2, annoyingly, it along with G3 were taken down from Tubi just as this was going up (GOTU is still up, oddly) Gamera 2 is (as of this posting) still available on Amazon Prime, along with the other two films. Of course there’s also a fantastic release by Arrow Video, both a Steel book of the trilogy, and a release containing the trilogy and Gamera The Brave. I highly recommend these sets, particularly the steel book, which tend to be pretty affordable. As for the next review, well, I had planned on getting to Gamera 3, but getting screen shots is too troublesome at the moment. Of course, the next big thing on everyone's mind is Shin Kamen Rider. I'm only going so say "We'll see" 7:00 showing on a Wednesdays is far from ideal, even for someone flexible. Regardless of whatever happens there, perhaps it's time to tackle another series...

#tokusatsu #gamera #kaiju #toho #daiei #attack of legion #review #sci fi

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rz-jocelyn · 2 years

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[NEWS UPDATE] Live Spectacle NARUTO: The Full Cast, Main Visual and Other Information for the "Live Spectacle NARUTO ~Ninkai Taisen, Kaisen~" have been Revealed

CAST

Nakao Masaki as Uzumaki Naruto

Sato Ryuji as Uchiha Sasuke

Ito Yui as Haruno Sakura

Kimisawa Yuki as Hatake Kakashi

Kitazono Ryo as Namikaze Minato (Fourth Hokage)

Kojima Sari as Uzumaki Kushina

Daigo Cecile as Tsunade

Ikeoka Ryousuke as Nara Shikamaru

Sena as Hyuuga Hinata

Takagi Katsuya as Maito Gai

Naya Takeru as Gaara

Kitamura Keigo as A

Koyanagi Shin as Killer B

Yata Yusuke as Yakushi Kabuto

Ise Daiki as The Masked Man

Kawai Ryuunosuke as Zetsu

Rachi Shinji as Uchiha Itachi

Nakamura Seijiro as Uchiha Madara

NOTE: Joining as a new member of the ensemble cast is Ohno Ryota, who is one of the dancers featured in the "Musical Touken Ranbu ~Kashuu Kiyomitsu Tanki Shutsujin~".

DATES AND VENUES

Tokyo

Dates: September 17, 2022 to September 25, 2022

Venue: The Galaxy Theatre

Capacity: 746 people

Hyogo

Dates: October 01, 2022 to October 10, 2022

Venue: Kobe Bunka Hall

Capacity: 904 people

Tokyo Gaisen

Dates: October 15, 2022 to October 22, 2022

Venue: The Galaxy Theatre