When I was a kid I grew up on Marvel Comics from the '60s (sourced from my older step brother's horde) and the '70s, and via The X-Men - as well as the 1970 movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes, starring James Franciscus and Charlton Heston - I learned early that radiation causes mutation.
In the case of The X-Men the process granted them some pretty nifty powers; in Beneath the Planet of the Apes the mutants might've been able to read minds, but it seemed to me at the time that they were also bludgeoned with the ugly stick several times over.
Being a Cold War kid meant you seriously expected the end of the world to come from nuclear warfare (since there were something like seven missiles aimed at every major city in the world) and/or the radioactive aftermath.
Mother Nature was another matter entirely.
I grew up being wary of bushfire risks in Australia, and we once caught a Greyhound bus south from the Gold Coast with flames on either side of the highway, but I'm too young to remember it and my mum paints her own memory vivid.
And yet while the earthquake and tsunami here were scary tastes of nature at its most volatile, nothing really prepares you for big business gone incompetent.
These are two cherries we got in a batch as a gift yesterday from a friend.
They're sourced from the prefecture next to Fukushima, where the nuclear plant is still spewing radioactive stuff while the inept owners (TEPCO) blunder on and refuse to give clear details about very much at all - including accurate reading updates regarding the levels of caesium-137et al that are slipping out and across the country.
The cherries are seriously deformed; it's like those three cherries on top of the TEPCO logo were sent back to DNA design school but dropped out too early.
I went cherry picking when I was 18 back in Australia and in a week of plucking the buggers I never came across anything like these. The Siamese ones are particularly striking, but my daughter says the other one, with a poking out appendage, has an eye.
Speaking of eyes, it all reminds me of the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons.
There's a new interview up at Japanese site Clubberia, which is ostensibly there to focus on an upcoming gig I'm playing @ Unit in Tokyo called Charter the Top Number.
It's set to happen on Saturday 7th May, is being put on by the cool cats at Fountain Music/Plaza In Crowd, and features other DJ/producers Shin Nishimura, DJ Wada (Co-Fusion), Hiroshi Watanabe, Foog, DJ Sodeyama, Dublee, Temma Teje, etc.
If you just so happen to be in Tokyo that weekend, I definitely recommend it as these guys are the cream of what's happening over here in Japan in the techno/house/electronica scene; I just happen to be riding roughshod on their coattails.
In the meantime, if you do happen to speak a smattering of Japanese (日本語) or are just plain curious, you can check out the Little Nobody interview/waffle HERE.
There's stuff about the new album, the novel, and the recent disasters in Japan - from a more positive perspective, methinks.
Just got this rather brilliant news from my insider at Production I.G here in Tokyo: there's going to be another take on the Blood anime franchise.
According to the teaser press-release notes I received, Blood-C is a creative collaboration between Production I.G (the people behind anime classics Ghost in the Shell and the original Blood: The Last Vampire) and all-girl artist group CLAMP (they did the original manga of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHOLiC) - supervised by Junichi Fujisaku, one of the key people who developed the original concept for Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) and later directed the spin-off TV series Blood+ (2005).
This baby's slated as a TV series that'll be aired in Japan on MBS/TBS starting from July 2011 (see here), and also a theatrical feature film set for 2012.
The TV series will be directed by Tsutomu Mizushima, who helmed the xxxHOLiC - A Midsummer Night’s Dream feature film, based on CLAMP’s manga and also produced by Production I.G.
Anyway, enough cheating off the promotional notes. I'll let you know more when I do, but in the meantime I'm pretty darned excited about this.
I love my I.G.
This (below) was the trailer for the 2000 original.
And the music - from DJ Wada, Ko Kimura, Jin Hiyama (pictured), Eri Makino, Cut Bit Motorz, Toshiyuki Yasuda, Devin Wine and Paul McQuade - was sublime.
Back in the mid 1990s in Melbourne when I used to buy most of my vinyl from my mates at Octave Records, the stand-out 12-inches on the shelves were the ones by Djax-Up-Beats, the Dutch label run by Saskia Slegers (aka Miss Djax).
A stand-out not just because the music sitting pretty on this wax – sourced from the likes of Mike Dearborn, Steve Poindexter, K. Alexi Shelby, Claude Young and Thomas Heckmann – was sensational, but because the actual record labels on each one of those 12-inch releases were even more gorgeous. Turns out they’d been lovingly designed by another essential musical contributor from Detroit, Alan Oldham (DJ T-1000), and he even took up the time to draw up a few thumping action-based comics for Djax as well.
Seventeen years on Oldham is still making essential tunes and in fact has a brand new LP on the cards. Funnily enough it’s called the Beyond Djax LP, it will be coming out in March 2011, and in the promo notes it’s listed as the companion CD to last year’s sold-out art show in Amsterdam.
“I had a gallery show late last year, at a venue in Amsterdam that also sells limited-edition toys,” Oldham related in an email interview I did with him this week.
“I was in the middle of a tour, so I was present for the opening, and it was attended by such friends as Dave Clarke, DJ Bone, DJ Kammy, Ritzi Lee, Shinedoe and other friends and art lovers who came in from Dresden, Paris, Berlin, and London. It was a very successful show. Ben Sims bought two pieces right off the wall! I was in A’dam for a week, so I painted new pieces to replace the ones that sold, and they sold too. There were only two or three pieces left over at the end of the show, which lasted a month. The CD digipak will contain pics from the opening! There’s also a hardcover art book to go with the event.”
On the new LP, ‘Theme From Vectra’ is cited as a score for Oldham’s comic-book, Vectra: Black Girl From The Future. That comic, like much of the man’s artwork, has a clear nod in the direction of Japanese manga.
“Well I was into anime and manga years ago, before they were so available in the United States,” he says.
“Although we had Speed Racer when I was a kid, anime didn’t really make an impact with me stylistically until Macross came to America as Robotech. Then, I met a girl in college named Reiko, who gave me a few original manga from Japan, which I still have in storage. That really opened my eyes. I then changed my superhero-type art style to a manga-inspired one, and created Johnny Gambit. It was one of the first American manga published in the USA, along with Reggie Byers’ Shuriken and Doug Rice’s Dynamo Joe. Wow, that was long time ago – before I got into electronic music.”
The track ‘Theme From Vectra’ is futurist electronic tech stuff that somehow captures the essence of the speed, style and colour of the comic.
You can read more of this interview over on a new blog thingy I'm doing for the Elektrax label on electronic music; it's called Techno How? ...get it? ;)
The latest Doraemon movie will hit cinema screens across Japan in early March, when I'm fairly certain it'll surge straight to the top in box office receipts in the very first weekend it plays.
That process is actually like clockwork every year in this country.
But despite the fact he isn’t at all well known in the Western world, this isn’t some recent-hit sensation – and the title has a history to die for (or at the very least to swoon over in gob-smacked new ways) in terms of anime.
For starters in 2002 Time Magazine dubbed Doraemon the cuddliest hero in Asia, and in 2008 the Japanese Foreign Ministry appointed him their first anime cultural ambassador.
Doraemon started out in manga form in the 1960s, fashioned by Fujiko F. Fujio – a smoke screen coined by its real creator Hiroshi Fujimoto.
It did the big switch to TV in 1973, promptly fizzled, and then was revamped by TV Asahi six years later.
Doraemon hasn’t surrendered his grip on Japanese TVs over the three decades since, or the Japanese everyman’s psyche; I swear that every person in this place can draw his happy face.
And yet while you might be forgiven for thinking this show must set some sort of TV animation record (The Simpsons is a decade younger), it in fact comes in second to another Japanese series, Sazae-san (40 years on air).
Then there are over two-dozen theatrical movies, including the latest, which is titled 映画ドラえもん 新・のび太と鉄人兵団 ～はばたけ 天使たち～, or just plain Doraemon: Nobita and the New Steel Troops: ~Angel Wings~.
Regular readers here, if you indeed do exist, have probably picked up that I’m not a fan of these squiggly “~” things that Japanese animation companies just love to use when they translate their titles from Japanese to English. I know I whine about it often enough.
But grammatical aesthetics aside, the film looks to be a wonderful piece of robot-army-invading-Earth-mayhem, and in the Doraemon universe this promises to be a hoot rather than anything bone-chilling like Michael Bay‘s disgraceful work on Transformers.
So what’s the franchise fuss all about, anyhow?
Doraemon, it turns out, is a blue, dysfunctional mechanical cat from the future (of course) who has no ears but boasts a magical, four-dimensional pouch the envy of any self-prepossessing marsupial.
He’s been sent back in time to sort out Nobita, the good-for-nothing school kid ancestor of the people who built him – but usually instead of accomplishing his task, complete madness breaks out that includes subtle, often ingenious anime references to domestic culture (Mobile Suit Gundam is cheekily alluded to in the new movie) as well as Hollywood classics like West Side Story.
The saga also has some serious psychological eccentricities: for starters, aside from regular panic attacks, our motorized feline suffers from an ongoing musophobia that stems back to the future – to a time in the 22nd century when his ears were consumed by a robotic mouse.
While the TV show focus on Nobita’s bizarre everyday family life and neighbours, the movies go for a more exotic, adventurous edge, but they’ve been a bit rear-visionist in recent years: Nobita’s Great Adventure into the Underworld (2007) may have been the 27th feature released by distributor TOHO (of Godzilla notoriety, who do on average one Doraemon flick per year), but it was in fact a rebake of the sixth – released way back in 1984.
Besides, exotic locations are nowhere near as appealing as Doraemon and Nobita themselves, their time traveling exploits and outrageous futuristic devices, their essentially whacked-out neighbourhood buddies, and an insane overriding story arc.
These have made Doraemon a smash also in China and South Korea, yet he remains a largely unknown entity in the English-speaking world – a happenstance that I truly believe to be bordering on unforgivable ignorance.
Just look at the evidence – our fave feline was voted “cool” by 19 votes to 10 (three people opted out ‘cos they didn’t know who Doraemon was) in a two-month poll at the highly esteemed Doraemon Is Cool website.
By the way, I am kidding you. Really. It’s not quite as esteemed as all that.
At least The Orb got it right. As much as I rarely champion their music, they did a very cool video clip to their track ‘From a Distance’ (on the Bicycles & Tricycles album, 2004) that tracks the printing up of a Doraemon manga – then embarks in some trippy cut-ups of characters and images from the series.
Writer/director Hayao Miyazaki dabbled with plucky women in his anime previously, most notably with the character of Fujiko Mine in the Lupin III series – see The Castle of Cagilostro (1979) just for starters.
He also had younger heroines like the Pippi Longstockingesque Mimiko in Panda! Go Panda!
But in 1984, in Kaze no Tani no Naushika (風の谷のナウシカ Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind), with Nausicaä herself – the heroine of this sci-fi/post-armageddon action/fantasy tale, and saviour of the world it chronicles – we see the tell-tale signs of female strength that invade later Miyazaki classics like Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (千と千尋の神隠し Spirited Away, 2001).
The story here revolves around a world treading water (rather than on the mend) a thousand years after the apocalyptic war that’s poisoned the environment. Scattered settlements fight to survive, and one of these is the peaceful Valley of the Wind. The people here are ruled over by an ailing king and his willful, charismatic daughter Nausicaä – and all soon find themselves in a struggle not only with menacing giant insects but against militias from rival kingdoms and the threat of a return to the destructive old ways.
Amidst the action, intrigue, prophecies and surreal toxic jungle set-pieces are another couple of Miyazaki’s favourite themes: an appreciation of and support for the natural world around us, fantastic flying machines, and a huge, destructive robot.
Most Japanese people you meet will know this movie, they’ve all seen it as kids (and often as adults), and many cite it when they talk about favourite anime movies in their lives.
It’s rated in the personal Top 5 for anime director Kenji Kamiyama (Eden of the East), and Tokyo DJ/producer Jin Hiyama rates Nausicaä as his second-favourite anime movie of all time. “It’s the combination and comparison of this grotesque world with her beautiful mind and her honesty,” he raves.
It also has one of the best, most memorable soundtracks ever composed by the prolific Joe Hisaishi (Hana-bi). I've lost count of how many times I've heard little kids and their parents humming the iconic theme music.
Still, there are some important things to keep in mind when it comes to Nausicaä.
For starters the earlier manga series (also by Miyazaki) is a far more comprehensive and telling journey.
“You must read the manga,” urges musician Lili Hirakawa. “While the movie is great, it doesn’t tell you nearly enough about this world."
Additionally, this ground-breaking movie originally entered the West back in the ‘80s via a badly dubbed and horrendously edited version on VHS called Warriors of the Wind – an excruciating cut that makes little sense and a bitter learning curve for both Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, who've since insisted on a “no edits” overseas licensing clause.
The edits, however, have nothing on the cover.
That art (left) from the video cassette didn't even feature principle character Nausicaä at all - save for that lame ring-in in the top right-hand corner. Instead the foreground is dominated by a trio of males characters I'm pretty certain aren't in the film at any point, not even closeted away driving the tanks.
Fortunately an uncut and re-dubbed DVD version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, with (even better) the original Japanese dub and good English subtitles, became available around the world in 2005, although I picked up my copy earlier on from Studio Ghibli here in Japan.
And the verdict on the ‘real’ version, in spite of the disclaimers? Quite simply brilliant - just avoid that VHS predecessor at all costs.
One of my books when I was a kid was Stan Lee’s 1977 tome, The Superhero Women - which included a short tale of his, illustrated by John Romita, that previously appeared in Savage Tales #1 (1971).
‘The Fury of the Femizons’ featured a gynecocentric warrior society.
Yep, you read right: gynecocentric. Ahhh, the el cheapo thrills of an online thesaurus; for those without one, "gynocentrism" roughly acquaints to matriarchal and it's my new vocab discovery of the day - possibly good for use bamboozling posh and/or pretentious people at glad-bag dinner parties. Or not.
Anyway, in this particular society women call the shots while the men-folk are there merely to sit pretty and display a peck or two.
A similar theme was used in the 1977 second season of Space: 1999 in the episode ‘Devil’s Planet’, in which Commander Koenig crashes his Eagle on a planetary penal colony, where he finds himself the prisoner of the voluptuous Elizia and her equally S&M-inclined female prison guards.
The notion even shaped up an ongoing skit (‘The Worm That Turned’, 1980) in the British comedy The Two Ronnies... in which Mars Bars were hilariously rebranded Pa’s Bars.
Of course, Women’s Lib in the 1970s helped to shake up the conventional male/female wisdom personified in the ‘50s and Mad Men, and these days women do happen to run huge corporations and direct Oscar-winning films.
In Japan, however, things can be a little different.
Women’s Lib never actually took root here and at times the traditional Japanese family image resembles something like Leave It To Beaver – dad out earning a buck (as well as often drinking and carousing at yakitori bars at night) while mum's stuck in the kitchen and raising the kids; alternatively you can see many of them treating themselves at cake shops in Jiyugaoka with their erstwhile maternal mates.
While there have been matriarchal societies in the past in which women held sway over the men folk – even in fiercely patriarchal Japan – the last attempt here was probably the Empress Jingu in the 3rd century, though the historical veracity of her reign is these days contested anyway.
Not so surprising, really, when the Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that “aided by a pair of divine jewels that allowed her to control the tides, she is said to have begun her bloodless conquest of Korea in 200, the year in which her husband died.” The divine jewels sound like fun.
More recently succession to emperor has been regulated by the Japanese Diet (Parliament) and the current law excludes women from the the process.
Which brings us to the new Japanese movie The Lady Shogun and Her Men, titled more simply Ōoku (大奥) over here and released in cinemas last month.
If you look up Ōoku on Wikipedia you get this explanation: "The Ōoku refers to the harem of Edo Castle, the section where the women connected to the reigning Shōgun resided."
Directed by TV veteran Fuminori Kaneko, the film stars Kou Shibasaki (Battle Royale) as an alternate-reality 18th century shogun, and Arashi member Kazunari Ninomiya (Letters From Iwo Jima) as one of her gigolo-concubines, in a world decimated by an imagined disease that’s killed off most of the male population.
Think something a bit left-of-centre in shock/schlock value for local audiences.
It’s based on a more feminist, punchy manga by Yoshinaga Fumi (Ooku: The Inner Chambers) which had the smarts enough to win the 2009 James Tiptree Jr. Award for science fiction which expands or explores one's understanding of gender.
Yet this celluloid romp borders visually on an over-the-top J-Pop videoclip and while the script has all the hallmarks of a Japanese TV soapie (director Kaneko’s usual stomping ground), there are moments of fun and Shibasaki’s presence adds a deeper flavour.
For some of us, however, it feels like we’ve been here before – and honestly I think Ronnies Barker and Corbett did it better.
I have two disclaimers I need to unravel hereabouts in order to set the record straight about me and Aux 88. The first one is that I'm a huge fan of the Detroit duo, and have been for well over a decade.
Also known as Tommy Hamilton (aka Tom Tom) and Keith Tucker, they've released through respected labels like 430 West, Submerge, Metroplex, Direct Beat and Studio !K7.
Too many of their releases are absolute classics, like Aux Quadrant on Direct Beat, which hasn't left my record crate in about 15 years; I also really dig the self-titled Aux 88 album they put out through Soundscape over here in Japan five years ago - it's hot.
So it should come as no surprise that I've been keeping an eye on the Black Tokyo project they're finally releasing through Puzzlebox this week on November 22nd... along with nifty associated furniture.
Fortunately I haven't been anywhere near disappointed; this is superb stuff.
While the name of the album itself is a wee bit misleading - after all this has been engineered and produced by two Americans from Detroit rather than persons Japanese residing anywhere near Tokyo - they get away with this by calling themselves Arashi Hoshino and Shin Muramatsudo here; also on board for the ride are bona fide local musicians Akiko Murakat and Erika Tsuchiya, and the opening track 'Intro (Japenesse)' has a nice monologue in nihongo over lush strings.
There are also track title references to Japan like Kyoto Station, Winter in Japan, Tokyo Telacom, Tokyo Drive and, yes, Black Tokyo.
Musically speaking the album brings together that classic Detroit techno sound along with the more riotous electro sensibilities and basslines that Aux 88 are famous for.
The title track references classic Detroit by the likes of Derrick May and Carl Craig, wrapped around vocal riffs Kraftwerk would be proud to claim, while Tokyo Drive is a crisp, bouyant reconsideration of classic electro and Electronic Cinema continues this theme with some floating/spacious vocal work-outs.
Then Stance (Interlude) again takes up the baton of lush strings from the opening number.
But for me it's the second and eleventh tracks, Groove Theory and Dragon Fly, that stand out here as something subversive and definitely ones to drop on a late night, up-for-it floor in order to mess with some headz.
I'm also a little biased, which brings me slap-bang into that second disclaimer I alluded to above.
When I recently rather cheekily bounced the idea off them about doing a remix for one of my Little Nobody tracks, Hamilton and Tucker promptly agreed.
Even more jaw-dropping was Tucker's extra added bonus comment that "the original mix sounds hot.” (Zounds!)
That mix - called The Condimental Op - is being released along with the Aux 88 rejig and another one by Chicago pioneer K. Alexi Shelby (Transmat/Trax/Warp) on old skool vinyl at the end of November 2010 through IF? Records, via British distributor Prime Direct.
It's already being spun, charted and is gathering steam thanks to support from Laurent Garnier, Trevor Rockcliffe, Alan Oldham, Inigo Kennedy, Kirk Degiorgio, Steve Poindexter, Jerome Baker, Lenny Burden, Mike Dehnert, Dan Curtin and Anthony Shakir.
Dave Clarke's also spun the Aux 88 remix on his radio show White Noise - twice.
Melbourne (Australia) in the somewhat vaguely not-too-distant future. An alcoholic film-buff detective who smacks of vituperativity while leaning heavily on chemical dependency. An over-boiled world in climatic and moral decline, a mystery, a geisha, kanji clues, goats aplenty, several murders, the obligatory femme fatale, and an array of sweaty red herrings.
The novel I've been hacking away at for an absolute age (with huge thanks to Kristopher Young, Bob Young, and the crew at Another Sky Press in the US, plus insanely cool cover art by Scott Campbell), in the process helping me to shed 12kg over the past few months - an editing diet... nifty! - is about to be published next month.
If you're at all interested you can keep an eye on things on this sista/bruvva blog thingy: TSMG Updates.
In the meantime, if you haven't caught a glimpse of this flick (below) already, it's time you should - chances are it'll put you in solid with me once you do so, even if I'm ne'er the wiser. ;)
It could be that Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (人狼, 1999) is one of the most underrated anime offerings of all – a situation no one into the more adult leanings of the medium should ascribe to since there’s tons of action and sizable armaments involved.
Kiddie stuff this most certainly is not, and with equally big gun anime production houses Production I.G and Bandai Visual working together here (along with one Mamoru Oshii), there was never any real doubt about the grown-up nature of this material or the quality of the animation.
Down in Australia there’s a very nice edition available through the cool cats at Madman Entertainment.
Add to the guns and action a tall, dark, silent-type protagonist, a mysterious terrorist organization femme fatale, government-condoned death squads, post-modern German WW2 helmets, gasmasks, full-on body armour, and – hidden amidst all this – some overt references to the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale.
Penned by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost In The Shell, Sky Crawlers), as part of his Kerberos saga, the alternate reality late ‘50s story underpins Oshii’s earlier live-action film Stray Dog (1991) – a movie which starred actor Yoshikatsu Fujiki, and who here returns to voice our hero Kazuki Fuse.
Fujiki also starred in Oshii’s more recent live-action movie Assault Girls (2009), and his presence is all the more reason that you should watch the movie in the original Japanese dub (with English subtitles) rather than opting for the easy-listening local lingo.
The depth of talent involved in the production is something guaranteed to rock the socks off any anime admirer.
Kenji Kamiyama (later the director of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) worked as sequence/animation director, the character designs (based on director Hiroyuki Okiura’s originals) were embellished on by Tetsuya Nishio (a key animator on Millennium Actress and FLCL) and the superb music is composed by Hajime Mizoguchi – one of Japan’s leading musicians in the ‘80s, and Yoko Kanno’s ex-hubbie; Kanno herself moonlights as the pianist here.
Many people are still waiting for the director, Okiura, to helm his next movie.
He was just 33 when Jin-Roh was released, yet while he’s also worked on key animation and character designs for Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Blood: The Last Vampire, Patlabor 2, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and Magnetic Rose, the shame is that the man hasn’t offered up another movie in over a decade.
When that does happen I probably won't be the first to report on it – there are rumours afoot – but in the meantime back-tracking to his 1999 singular classic is well worth the ride.
“Jin-Roh is one of the most stunning movies I’ve ever experienced, period,” says independent film-maker Toshiaki Yamashite. “Each time I watch it I walk away with more. It’s a work of genius.”
Amidst all the angst and bullets it’s a typical Oshii-style yarn: mind-boggling and ultimately mind-blowing stuff, with Fuse himself striking a note as anime’s most elusive male lead.
Nope. We're not talking plastic shopping bags - which is what most Japanese think when you mention the word "vinyl", though it's pronounced something like veekneel over here.
I'm also not really interested in skirting the territory of the derivatives of ethene (CH2=CH2, with one hydrogen atom replaced with some other group), which is the scientific guff talked up on Wikipedia if you google vinyl.
The issue here is that other vinyl, a gramophone or phonograph record (yes, they do still make 'em), the analogue sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove.
Here I'm also plundering directly from Wikipedia (sorry, but it's 4:20 a.m. and my brain isn't functioning enough to be inventive in any way), though I did fix analog so it reads as analogue.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah, the picture above slapped around my senses - old skool vinyl, in particular a little flattened black nugget my label IF? will now be releasing through Prime Direct in the UK at the end of November.
It's one of my Little Nobody tracks, 'The Condimental Op' (I actually nicked this from a chapter title in my upcoming hack novel), with remixes by Detroit’s superb old skool vets Aux 88 (430 West/Submerge/Direct Beat/Studio !K7) and Chicago legend K. Alexi Shelby (Transmat/Studio !K7/Djax-Up-Beats/Trax/Warp/Artform) kind'a all going back to the source: Pure electro/techno, 2010s style. Well, me likes to methinks, anyway.
It's already been spun, charted and is gathering a wee bit of steam thanks to support from Dave Clarke, Laurent Garnier, Shin Nishimura, Trevor Rockcliffe, Alan Oldham, Inigo Kennedy, Kirk Degiorgio, Dan Curtin, Steve Poindexter, Jerome Baker, Mike Dehnert, Ryuji Takeuchi and Anthony Shakir.
This vinyl baby will be available from November 27th (incidentally my mum's birthday!) via Prime, but you can get a sneak preview (in lovely lower-res audio) here:
To be honest it’s quite probable that, if you live outside Japan, you haven’t yet heard of Ryoji Arai or of the animated TV series Sukima no Kuni no Polta (Polta: A Country Between The Worlds).
My hope is that some day everybody will get the chance.
First regarding the TV series: Polta’s initially short run on Japanese national broadcaster NHK in 2006 generated such a hugely positive response from critics and TV viewers alike in this country that it prompted production company Aniplex to generate a new batch the following year; it’s been on repeat in various time slots ever since.
While ostensibly aimed at kids no taller than most people’s kneecaps, Polta is such a gamely surreal romp that it comes across as deliriously upbeat and gloriously quirky all at once – due in no small shrift to the original character designs by Ryoji Arai, a man rightly considered the best kids’ book artist in Japan, and a one-time winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in this field.
“I was really surprised!” Arai says now of that honor, which he won in 2005 for the book Refrain Refrain.
...the rest of this interview/story has just been chucked up on the way cool Forces Of Geek website, on which I'll be doing a monthly column from now on. Just clickHEREwith your mouse thingy to read more - then go explore the that site.
Big thanks to Arai-san for his time, plus Yoko on translation chores.
What other nation in the world annihilates its own capital as much as Japan tends to?
Think of all the times Tokyo's been trashed, caned, victimized and atomized - from the big bang at the beginning of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (1988) to nearly every single Godzilla flick etched out by Japan's workhorse production house Toho Co.
Both the manga and the first anime interpretation of Ghost in the Shell(攻殻機動隊, Kokaku Kidotai) continued this trend, setting the scene some time after World War 5.
The twist here was that Tokyo was a city that had revived itself and embraced a slick, somewhat violent sci-fi futurism. Yet while the manga pages drawn by Masamune Shirow were also quirky, a good chuckle and occasionally hentai (perverted), the first anime movie of Ghost in the Shell, released in 1995, was darker, a tad more cerebral and the most innovative post-cyberpunk anime since Akira.
Some, like me, say it’s even better.
Ostensibly the story of a public security anti-terrorist squad (Section 9) coming to grips with an unknown force who is "ghost-hacking" into cyborgs' brains and souls, Ghost in the Shell drifted into a philosophical treatise on the nature of humanity and its relationship with technology.
If any one movie was responsible for impacting upon the latent psyches of the Warchowski brothers before they produced The Matrix, this was it.
The movie may have been drafted by manga-ka Shirow and co-scripted by Kazunori Ito, but the director here was one Mamoru Oshii.
While Hayao Miyazaki (of Spirited Away, Ponyo and The Castle of Cagoliostro notoriety) juxtaposes concerns with the environment over a strange blend of whimsy, humour, adversity and triumph of the spirit, Oshii's films are often dark, bleak and caustic with a resounding reliance upon technology; even so there is humour here if you look closely enough.
“I've always liked humorous movies and gags,” Oshii told me in 2006 for an interview in the Daily Yoimiuri after he unveiled the zany Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters.
“But in Japan it seems that the audience prefers serious movies. I'd love to make a big budget comedy movie, but the current Japanese film industry would hardly allow such a project.”
What Oshii and Miyazaki do share is a predilection for tales in which there is no specifically "bad" character – even the perceived villains often struggle for something they think is right.
But whereas in Miyazaki's realm this means good intentions, in Oshii's it's a need to know the unknown, to succeed at any costs, and often inspired by baser qualities. In Ghost in the Shell and its equally powerful sequel Innocence (2004) Oshii is at the height of these subversive, mind-bending powers. They’re as as visually stunning as they are philosophically bewildering. After all, characters in Oshii’s movies have a hankering for citing Jean-Paul Sartre as much as they proffer up obscure references from the Old Testament.
“I think that Innocence will remain a movie understood by a very limited number of people,” Oshii said back in 2004 when I interviewed him about the sequel.
Even so he had the benefit of two superb scores by Kenji Kawai for both movies.
“I haven't thought about using any other composer but Kenji," Oshii confided in a tone that was somewhat reverential.
“I like the Ghost in the Shell movies basically because I like sci-fi animation,” says DJ/producer Ko Kimura. “The story behind Ghost in the Shell is really intriguing and the graphics are gorgeous – if you see it a second or third time, you'll find new facets within the two movies again and again. For its graphics I’d say Innocence is one of the best anime movies made in Japan.”
Renowned fellow Japanese DJs Tatsuya Oe (aka Captain Funk) and Jin Hiyama agree.
“The first Ghost in the Shell may be an old movie, but this is our future, our world. Innocence took it further: we taste life but have no choices,” Hiyama muses. “I think this has always been my own theme too.”
“Ghost in the Shell is the magnum opus of my master Mamoru Oshii,” anime director Kenji Kamiyama quipped in deferential fashion when I asked him for his favourite movies a couple of years back.
“The first Ghost in the Shell movie is the movie that depicted the big bang of that new infrastructure that we now know as the Internet, from an almost prophetic standpoint,” Kamiyama explains, “and for this reason it should be regarded as a monument in the whole sci-fi genre.”
The keys to this particular magic kingdom have been handled by an organization of amalgamated Japanese companies known under the alias of the Oriental Land Company (OLC), which originally contacted the Walt Disney Company in the 1960s with plans for an amusement park, but were knocked back.
The company reapplied a decade later, and this time succeeded in arranging a licensing contract.
Tokyo Disneyland opened to the general public on April 15th, 1983, and has developed into the most frequently-visited theme park in the world – with over 17 million visitors a year.
Now, with over 45 rides covering an area of 115 acres, Tokyo Disneyland continues to experience larger crowds by the day, to the point that there’s barely room to breathe, let alone stroll, and queues of up to three hours are often the norm on weekends and public holidays.
One time we queued for over two hours for one of the older skool, more humdrum rides - Snow White's Adventures.
Tokyo Disneyland is pretty much modeled on L.A. Disneyland, except for one important omission – there’s no Matterhorn - while the Haunted Mansion here is located in Fantasyland and has the same facade as the one in Walt Disney World in Florida.
There are also attractions unique to Japan’s visitors: the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, which features Disney villains, and Pooh's Hunny Hunt - which is a surreal and hilarious spin-out of a ride that just begs to be experienced.
And where else will you experience swash-buckling Pirates of the Caribbean rabble-rousing and carousing... in gruff jidaigeki-style Japanese voices?
If all this isn’t enough, right next door is Tokyo Disneyland Resort's second mega-attraction: Tokyo DisneySea, opened in 2001, and boasting its own array of rides, shows, dining, and so on – including Journey To the Center of the Earth, Sinbad's Storybook Voyage in the faux Arabian Coast area, Storm Rider, Ariel's Kingdom, and the Indiana Jones Temple of the Crystal Skull ride.
1984 might’ve been the year that the Macintosh was introduced, Terms of Endearment won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Australia swapped national anthems (finally ditching ‘God Save the Queen’), but it was also the year that a major Japanese magazine conducted a national poll; when the results were in the actor Toshiro Mifune, at age 64, was declared the winner of the ‘Most-Japanese Man’ competition – singled out from all Japanese males, past and present, over the nation’s known history.
This is no minor feat when you fathom that the Japanese trace their recorded history back two millennia.
Mifune was prolific in the acting industry long before attempting English language roles in Steven Spielberg’s 1941 or the TV miniseries Shogun.
His filmography at imdb.com tips the 180 mark, over a hundred of which were produced prior to his turn as Lee Marvin’s violent Man Friday in Hell in the Pacific (1968); the list stretches from his first film in 1947 through to the his death at age 77, fifty years later.
It’s no accident that Akira Kurosawa, the writer/director with whom Mifune did his superior work, orchestrated most of these Japanese films. By the time the rest of the world cottoned on to the actor, he and Kurosawa were estranged, having made their last film together in 1965 after a partnership that lasted almost two decades.
There’s his well-meaning rookie cop, eerily akin to a young Gregory Peck, who loses his gun on public transport in Stray Dog(1949); the brash samurai charlatan in Seven Samurai (1954); his hyperactive, paranoid dynamo in the Macbeth-as-jidaigeki-drama, Throne of Blood (1957); a bespectacled salaryman with the slow-burning vendetta in The Bad Sleep Well (1960); the ailing yakuza gangster in Drunken Angel in 1948.
Over the 98-minute course of Drunken Angel (this is one of Kurosawa’s shorter tales) the actor is by turns brutal and suave; at other moments there’s a scary vitality to his agitated, hollowed out face-of-impending-doom performance – in particular the show-stopping manic turn he makes in a drunken dance hall.
While the film stock may have dated, the style and performance here most certainly hasn’t.
Perhaps the most memorable and famous of Mifune's roles is the blasé, mysterious stranger in Yojimbo (1961) and its sequel Sanjuro the following year – himself the role model for both Clint Eastwood’s and Bruce Willis’ Man with No Name characters in A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing.
The stand-out collaboration is debatable, but if you want to angle things in Mifune’s corner, toward the movie in which he rattles bones most as the sexy beast/enfant terrible of old-school Japanese cinema, you’re going to have to settle on 1958, when the actor was 38 and at the height of his stagecraft.
Star Wars aficionados interested in finding out the source material for Episode IV are duty-bound to investigate a B&W movie made that year by Kurosawa in the widescreen TohoScope format, starring Mifune, and originally released in Japan in December – because The Hidden Fortress has most of the key elements of a plot used 19 years later when the first Star Wars movie was released.
But in truth it’s Toshiro Mifune, above and beyond the superior script and direction, who shines.
Cast in the principle role of General Rokurota Makabe, the actor’s turn here sparked the whole ‘sexy thing’ reference in the somewhat dubious headline for this article – and without doubt contributed to his man’s man award in 1984.
As a samurai, General Makabe is perhaps the scariest, most fearless and honourable man alive – as well as one of the more charismatic and inspiring. He’s got that rousing leader quality, the sort Russell Crowe delivered in Gladiator, Edward James Olmos brandishes on Battlestar Galactica, and King Hal throws about in the pages of Shakespeare’s Henry V.
Think effortlessly debonair, man-of-action panache, and gravelly speeches that’d embolden even an inert, pen-pushing sloth like myself to pull myself to my knees, yell a bit, shake a blunt spear about in the air, and cheerfully follow both his magnetic persona and/or twinkling eyes into battle – at least some of the way, before diving for cover.
You just know that Makabe is like Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, and he’ll never actually cop an injury at all. The guy wears serious bravery on his sleeve, and acts like it’s a regular wristwatch.
Most of all, though, while the steely scowl and the gruff baritone are the hallmarks of any encounter with Mifune in the reels of The Hidden Fortress, there’s also a barely repressed machismo that hovers there as he strokes his chin in thought, seemingly not amused or divorced from the events that transpire around him – then throws back his head with riotous laughter, more than a little bit mad.
Each facet is a thrilling moment that keeps your eyes glued on this fascinating, sexy beast of a man and his scene-chewing performance.
Here's just a taste of Mifune & Kurosawa combined.
MIFUNE in 'DRUNKEN ANGEL':
'HIDDEN FORTRESS' SNEAK PREVIEW:
This story is also online at the Aussie online Filmink site, as they're publishing a 4,000-word (hardly) epic ramble I hacked together to coincide with the Akira Kurosawa centennial-since-his-birth in their May 2010 issue.
The last time I saw him (aside from in recurrent TV advertising here in Japan) was in the 2008 reshooting of Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 epic Kakushi toride no san akunin (The Hidden Fortress) – the movie that George Lucas has admitted made such a huge impression on the shooting script for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
As a samurai, General Makabe (in another role played by the late, great Toshiro Mifune) turns out to be perhaps the most fearless and honourable man alive – as well as one of the more charismatic and inspiring. He’s got that rousing leader quality, the sort Russell Crowe delivered in Gladiator, Edward James Olmos brandishes on Battlestar Galactica, and King Hal throws about in the pages of Shakespeare’s Henry V.
It’s also the kind you just didn’t get at all from Orlando Bloom in Kingdom Of Heaven nor Yuji Oda in the 2007 remake of another Kurosawa classic, Tsubaki Sanjuro.
In Star Wars, General Makabe ended up necessarily spliced into the two characters handled by Harrison Ford (as Han Solo) and Alec Guiness (Obi-Wan Kenobi).
And while the original Kurosawa title literally translates as “The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress”, any mention of villainy and/or camouflaged bunkers were eschewed in the title of the lacklustre 2008 incarnation with Hiroshi Abe, which opted instead for The Last Princess.
Possibly they had Leia more in mind. “With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece,” Kurosawa, who also co-wrote the story for The Hidden Fortress, once said.
“With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film.”
In the driving seat this just-passable second time round (or the third, if you want to include Star Wars) was Shinji Higuchi, a man respected for his skills with SFX and story boarding rather than any panache as a director.
Higuchi previously helmed Lorelei (2005) and Japan Sinks the following year; his choice for the role originally played by Mifune and the one that inspired Han Solo?
Former model and regular TV actor Abe – himself a capable individual who unfortunately, in this case, lacked the raw charisma of either Mifune or Ford in their prime.
But as I mentioned I do dig the man's work, in everything from his TV activities to Godzilla 2000 (ゴジラ2000 ミレニアム Gojira ni-sen mireniamu, actually made in 1999).
And his best role to date has been his cynical physics professor, Jiro Uedain, out to debunk things supernatural in the recurring TV series and cinema incarnations of the surreal Trick.
It's witty, pokes fun at a lot of other more dramatic TV programs and movies, has some hilarious recurring and cameo characters, and co-stars the sublime Yukie Nakama... as the hokey failed magician Naoko Yamada.
So the good news is that there's a new Trick movie upcoming in May (the release date is 8th May 2010), starring Abe, Nakama and an array of other suitably oddball characters.
It's called Gekijoban Trick: Reinouryokusha Battle Royale and is directed by Yukihiko Tsutsumi, who did the recent 20th Century Boys movies.
