[Categories: Specials]
The Leeds Film Festival 2008: Sword of the Stranger, Mind Game, 20th Century Boys, Detroit Metal City
There’s a reason why I haven’t had chance to catch up on posting or replying to comments in the past couple of days: I met up with the UK-A crew for a weekend of socialising (for a change!) and cinematic viewing at the 22nd Leeds International Film Festival. There were some great pieces of J-cinema on offer this year (I missed L: Change the World because I wanted my lunch), some of which were interesting anime movies I’d been looking forward to watching.
This isn’t me. Cool artwork though
Leeds is a great place for this sort of thing: there are some great venues (The Light is nice and central, while the Hyde Park Picture House is wonderfully retro), it’s only an hour’s train ride away from where I live and the prices of tickets and food/drink are slightly cheaper than those in London. It might lack the glamour of the capital but it’s a great event to keep me going until the next Sci-Fi London weekend. In any case, this year I caught Sword of the Stranger, Mind Game, 20th Century Boys and Detroit Metal City. Not bad for 24 hours.
Sword of the Stranger
I’ve never wanted to own a dog. Until now
I knew precious little about this one beyond the historic setting and the presence of plenty of samurai action, so didn’t really have high expectations. Unlike the Kawajiri-directed Madhouse efforts this one was produced by my old friends Bones though, which basically means it still looks consistently pretty and slick from start to finish, and the character designs are good too. The action scenes, arguably the main draw for many viewers I suspect, are superb. I also enjoyed the soundtrack, not to mention the most awesomely bad-ass dog ever to grace the world of anime. Seriously.
As much as Sword of the Stranger is a cracking action adventure, it does get predictable at times and the child protagonist might grate on your nerves. On the plus side, it sets out to something simple and straightforward and does it well; it doesn’t pull its punches in showing blood spillage and body parts fall victim to the sword either, but at the same time injects enough humour (some of which is very dark indeed!) to avoid taking itself too seriously. In the end it looked and sounded excellent, and was a lot of fun to watch. I think it’s a licence that will serve Beez well.
Mind Game
More off-the-wall Yuasa fun
I’m not sure what to say about this one, apart from three letters: W, T and F in that order and with a huge-ass question mark afterwards. How exactly can you judge something that you’re not sure you understand? I actually expected it to be experimental and hard to follow since I’ve already seen Masaaki Yuasa’s directorial skills in Kemonozume and Kaiba; Mind Game is every bit as weird as these, and will probably polarise opinion as much as they did. You’ll either be fascinated with the innovation and daring to ‘do different’ like I was or absolutely hate it.
The story goes off at tangents and seems to go in a big circle, but I think the whole point of the viewing experience is to revel in the oddness, enjoy the imaginative visuals and unpredictability, and ruminate on the more general and all-encompassing issues it addresses rather than get caught up in the details. We see gangster bosses with mechanical dogs, henchmen armed with chainsaws, old geezers and giant whales; all I think trying to tell us to seize the day because you only live once. Probably.
20th Century Boys
You can’t help but admit that it looks epic
Like Mind Game, I went into this on the back of its pedigree. Coming from the same original author as the ever-wonderful Monster, 20th Century Boys was one thing I was really looking forward to. It picks up on the fear of religious cults and domestic terrorism that reminds me of the Tokyo subway gas attack at the hands of Aum Shinrikyo, adding a Stephen King-esque premise of the present linking to childhood memories; it’s bold, big-budget (¥6 BILLION!!), pretty long and generally a massively ambitious film. It also references the T-Rex song that inspired the title within the first few minutes and has a wonderful guitar-playing scene that seems to serve no purpose to the story whatsoever apart from being awesome to watch. Win.
I found the direction to be a bit stilted and awkward at times however, and the dark colours of the finale (which I suspect could be the transfer/encoding of the copy being shown at the time) made the supposed climax lose the impact it would otherwise have had. Nevertheless, the promise of a sequel means I’m expecting an epic conclusion and the way in which the timeline jumps back and forth, linking old friendships and rivalries with the current state of affairs concerning the mysterious cult leader ‘Friend’ were masterful. It was frustrating at points for the aforementioned reasons but otherwise I really enjoyed it for Urasawa’s storytelling. I hope I can read the manga before seeing the cinema adaptation through to the end actually, because I got the feeling that time constraints forced some events and characters out of the spotlight in the movie.
Detroit Metal City
Go! To! DMC! Go! To! DMC!
How does the concept of DMC translate to live-action? Very well actually. Considering how much I’m loving the animated OAV and how it was a series of shortish skits in manga form to begin with, it feels like a story that is destined for live-action. The comparison is quite interesting since the two adaptations play to the strengths of their respective formats and are as funny as hell in both cases.
Ken’ichi Matsuyama’s turn as Negishi paints him as an even more awkard and dorky character than I’m familiar with, while Yasuko Matsuyuki seemed to thoroughly enjoy hamming up the character of the obnoxious record manager. A nice surprise was a cameo appearance by none other than Gene Simmons, which adds to the outrageous nature of the comedy and makes the whole experience an absolute riot. The audience were almost rolling in the aisles during this, and I can only concur that it was one of the weekend’s highlights. Nice tambourine!
Posted on November 17th, 2008 @ 6:05 am
Wow. I’ll be looking for that one with the dog at once. It’s been too long since I watched a straight-up samurai anime that I can truly enjoy.
I’m afraid to watch 20th Century Boys. I’m so in love with the manga. I cried many times during the course of reading it. It’s just so awesome. You should find a way to read it immediately.
DMC… Gene Simmons… too incredible. I must see this!
Posted on November 17th, 2008 @ 5:36 pm
First image is from Yuuhi Romance, ‘innit?
Posted on November 18th, 2008 @ 10:42 am
Oh no, you should have laid off 20th Century Boys. The manga is a true epic and any attempts at bringing its carefully layered exposition and bated sense of horror to the big screen without chopping off the edges would be a tough job, but there’s always the music element to fall back on, I guess…
It’s better than Monster, and that’s saying something.
Owen Ss last blog post..Fate/stay night, Fate Route
Posted on November 19th, 2008 @ 12:23 am
@Ghostlightning: I’m sure you’ll enjoy Sword of the Stranger. I can pretty much guarantee a DVD release within the next twelve months too; 20th Century Boys will be on my to-read list once Viz are done with Monster. Oh yeah, GO TO DMC!
@Emo_Wandering_Bear: it appears you’re right. I actually picked it off Danbooru because it’s cinema viewing-related, totally unaware it’s from an incest manga! 0_o
@Owen S: there was a feeling that the film was struggling to fit the scope of the story in, despite it clocking in at over two hours. Urasawa’s a fantastic storyteller, but I suspect the budget was mostly saved for the explosions towards the end. It’s supposed to be a trilogy or something so fingers crossed on getting a decent adaptation. The idea of it surpassing Monster boggles my mind!
Posted on November 19th, 2008 @ 2:08 pm
I didn’t realize you had yet to see Mind Game. Well, I’m glad to know that you have now. Despite it being Yuasa’s directorial debut I personally found it to be better than Kemonozume, but not quite as good as Kaiba. Although I think my finding of Kemonozume to be his weakest work to date is mainly because jumping from films to a TV series with such a unique, experimental style is a rough transition. With that out of the way you’ve clearly grasped what the film is going for as good as anyone else has since if the message isn’t carpe diem and that your actions today will lead to what you become tomorrow then who knows what the point really was. Perhaps the deity Nishi meets would know. (That scene of course being a favorite of mine as it’s an incredibly interesting portrayal of “God” in an animated setting.)
Sword of the Stranger I actually just checked out yesterday since it has had a mountain of praise heaped upon it. Not a bad film, but I agree completely with it being predictable. The entire thing felt really by the book and in all honesty if it wasn’t an animated film I probably never would have bothered with it. It does what it sets out to do however, which is give the viewer what they want in abundance. In this day and age where everything has to have a fancy twist or seeks to give the viewer what they want but in a unique way SotS just straight up has Mr. No Name and Super Foreigner fight at the end. On one hand this is great because it couldn’t possibly fail by doing this. On the other it comes off as unremarkable and nothing more than a decently satisfying action flick. Quite fun nonetheless.
As for 20CB being better than Monster, believe it. I know I couldn’t before I read it and a friend of mine who loves Monster couldn’t either, but both of us ended up doing so in the end. I keep holding out hope that with the film adaptation they’ll make an anime one next, but at the same time I don’t know if I could watch 20CB without a soundtrack comprised of tracks by Dylan, CCR, Hendrix, The Doors, etc.
Posted on November 25th, 2008 @ 11:41 pm
[...] critiques on his animé consumption. I neither had the weekend free nor the funds to attend THAT meet. Maybe he’s an Time traveller? Or an Alien? Probably not an Esper though - that’s [...]
Posted on March 21st, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
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debpratim.ghosh@gmail.com
Posted on May 12th, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
GO! TO! DMC!
GO! TO! DMC!!
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