All those albums I've missed

More to come soon...? Or not.

March 24, 2010

Salyu, "MAIDEN VOYAGE" (Toy's Factory, 2010)


Salyu has been quite impressive as of late. Since the release of her best album "Merkmal" in 2008, she has been churning out quality single after quality single, and all of them come together to shine in this new album. This new album, co-produced by Salyu herself and famed producer Kobayashi Takeshi 小林武史, continues to be marked by obscure and eclectic pop sounds, combined with Salyu's intentionally overly pronounced and overly emphatic vocals. If there is a change from her past songs, it may be perhaps that she tones down the eccentricity of past albums: many songs on this album have catchy pop melodies designed specifically to capture a more mainstream market. In the case of Salyu, that might not actually be a bad thing. Hopefully this album will allow her music to reach a much broader audience.

April 20, 2010

Tokunaga Hideaki 徳永英明, "VOCALIST 4" (Universal Sigma, 2010)


I've always been a fan of the VOCALIST series. There's nothing like having Tokunaga Hideaki belt out the "I'm just a woman" from Kobayashi Akiko's 小林明子 "Koi ni ochite -Fall in Love- 恋におちて －Fall in Love－" on VOCALIST 3 to make you feel like you've arrived in magical fantasy land. This project, which has since culminated in this album, purported to be the last in the series, is conceived as one in which Tokunaga Hideaki covers many famous songs by female singers. The series has been incredibly successful in Japan, and it's hard not to see why, as Tokunaga's adult contemporary-influenced ballad vocals blend incredibly well with the light classical arrangements provided by Sakamoto Masayuki, who registers on my radar for being the current producer of Onitsuka Chihiro 鬼束ちひろ. Perhaps because of this connection, Tokunaga covers Onitsuka's "gekkou 月光" on this album. The album feels rather completionist; it is as if with the knowledge that this is the last album in the series, there is an impetus to get the remaining famous ballad songs recorded. As such, this album contains covers of some songs that, looking back, come as a surprise that they haven't been covered yet. Such songs include the top song, Teresa Teng's テレサ・テン "toki no nagare ni mi wo makase 時の流れに身をまかせ," Matsuda Seiko's 松田聖子 "akai SUIITOPII 赤いスイートピー" and Utada Hikaru's 宇多田ヒカル "First Love." Covers of Matsutouya Yumi 松任谷由実, Nakajima Miyuki 中島みゆき, DREAMS COME TRUE and others round out the album. Not a bad album to check, although admittedly this album is probably not the definitive album of the series for me (VOCALIST 3 would be). If you haven't tried the VOCALIST series, I'd give this album a listen and see if it takes.

April 28, 2010

Onitsuka Chihiro 鬼束ちひろ, ""ONE OF PILLARS" ~BEST OF CHIHIRO ONITSUKA 2000-2010~" (UNIVERSAL SIGMA, 2010)


A pleasant and surprising best album outing from Onitsuka Chihiro. What makes this album interesting is that it is a rather broad best, pulling songs from Onitsuka's Toshiba EMI days, complete with arrangements by Haketa Takefumi 羽毛田武史. This album is particularly interesting to examine in order to view the subtle changes in Onitsuka's songwriting style, as well as the differences in production style as the album traces her work with initial producer Haketa Takefumi to Kobayashi Takeshi to currently Sakamoto Masayuki. The album is not comprehensive, and so there is always the usual quibbling over which songs are and are not included, but overall it's a rather good and well-balanced selection, and the unproduced song, "wakusei no mori 惑星の森" is good B-side quality work. Worth your valuable money if you haven't bought an Onitsuka album yet.

Periodic album review: Shimizu Shota

My apologies for the last week of postings. I'm still trying to figure out how scheduled posting works, and did not notice that the posting did not show up as scheduled. Even more odd is that the original entries are now missing. Ah, well. On to this week's (late) posting.

Shimizu Shota 清水翔太, "Journey" (Sony Music Entertainment/MASTERSIX FOUNDATION, 2010)

"Journey" is the second album by singer/songwriter Shimizu Shota, who made his major solo debut in 2008. A big deal was made about Shimizu when he made his debut because he had performed at the amateur night of New York's Apollo Theater and received a good deal of praise for his performance. This is according to Japanese media, who also praised Shimizu with accolades such as "a one-in-a-million talent" and "the most sensational singer in Japan."

The Apollo Theater also hosted a Wada Akiko concert in 2008, and seems to have some sort of presence in Japanese media consciousness and popular culture as a place where incredible talent manifests and claims the stage. This is why it is important you know that Wada Akiko also performed there.


At any rate, this second album is both pleasant and disappointing at the same time. "Journey" is a very well-executed album, which comes across as polished but not over-produced. In particular, this is accomplished by focusing on sharper bass beats rather than the duller, muted beats that are the hallmark of work of a singer like Aoyama Thelma. The manipulation of the beats, as well as other instrumental arrangements, causes the sound to feel fresh and bright. Shimizu's voice is also always on the mark, emoting and elaborating without resorting to gimmicks to sell the songs on the album.

One pet peeve that I had with this album was the return of the programmed high-pitched synthesizer in the background that seems to be the hallmark of sound coming out of MASTERSIX FOUNDATION as of late. This sound seems to have first popped up, at least for Shimizu, in "Love Forever," the 2009 duet that he did with Kato Miliyah, another MASTERSIX FOUNDATION singer. The synthesizer seems to have been rather abused since, showing up in several Kato Miliyah tracks, and even here in at least four of the tracks of the album ("Journey" (T1), "FOREVER LOVE" (T2), "kimi ga itara 君がいたら" (T7) and "DAYS" (T11)). Since in theory Shimizu Shota writes these tracks, perhaps it is the fault of the arranger in an attempt to create some type of MASTERSIX house style. At any rate, it works well in all the songs (perhaps justifying its use), but ends up feeling a bit like the Wilhelm Scream: you pick up on the unique quality of the sound the moment you hear it, and its obvious presence detracts from enjoyment of the track just a little bit.

While "Journey" is a solid album overall, it also feels a bit formulaic: there does not seem to be much development from Shimizu's earlier album, 2008's "Umbrella." To me, this points out the limits of what Shimizu is able to do, despite being a dependable and solid singer. Much of the "problem" with Shimizu's music is that it is distinctively limited by the R&B formula: every song is a subtle monotony of melody which can't easily be replicated in other genres without having that flat nature become overemphasized. Shimizu's nasal voice, at the same time, does not lend itself very well to music outside the R&B genre (his solid but unremarkable performance of his debut song "HOME" within "22'50"" in Oda Kazumasa's "Kurisumasu no yakusoku 2009 クリスマスの約束2009" concert is an example of the limitations of both singer and song). As a result, it is rather telling that "Journey" stays within that tried and true R&B sound, with the one really deviant track, the funk-influenced "Let's Groove," relegated to a bonus track with somewhat good reason. "Journey" is a very solid album by a very solid singer, and is worth your money if you want to hear well-produced and well-executed Japanese R&B pop music. However, it also drives the point home that it's best if Shimizu's future experimentation with sound remains in the vein of "Journey," in mainly superficial manipulations of the instrumental palette of the song without changing the fundamental structure. Whether this is a limitation of the singer or a hallmark trait that separates him as a "musician/artist" from an average "pop singer" will, for now, remain a question at large.

Periodic album review: Kamiki Aya

Kamiki Aya 上木彩矢, "AYA KAMIKI Greatest Best" (GIZA, 2010)
Kamiki Aya 上木彩矢, "INDIVIDUAL EMOTION," (Avex, 2010)

Now that I actually have the physical products in my hands, it seems like Kamiki Aya's transition from GIZA to Avex has been incredibly smooth. As I mentioned in my previous post, I believe that this is because her managing agency has always been and remains BOX CORPORATION, who must have been the primary orchestrators of the transition. The albums in question, "AYA KAMIKI Greatest Best" (GIZA, 2010) and "INDIVIDUAL EMOTION," (Avex, 2010) reflect this smooth transition: there is a cross-promotion for consumers who purchase both albums, the same fonts are used for the promotional labels on the plastic shrink-wrap, and, most notably, the insides themselves are surprisingly judicious. The first press of "INDIVIDUAL EMOTION" comes with a second disc, "AYA KAMIKI fan best," which contains fan-selected songs from Kamiki's GIZA period. It's definitely the first time, as far as I can recall, that I've seen songs written by GIZA's stable of in-house songwriters, most notably Ohno Aika, on an Avex album, and Kamiki certainly thanks a lot of GIZA people in the liner notes. I suppose the point is that I am amazed at Avex's generosity in all this; it will be interesting to see how this contract plays out in the future.


That being said, it is also interesting to see how "INDIVIDUAL EMOTION" itself acts to juxtapose GIZA's songwriters with those of Avex, as some of the usual suspects, such as tasuku and Hara Kazuhiro, make appearances in the album. Ironically, the album leans on Kamiki's first release with Avex, "W-B-X 〜W-Boiled Extreme〜," the theme song to the new Kamen Rider (which, admittedly, is a posh deal and a good way to promote her out of the gate), which was written by people who are more associated with, well, writing the theme songs for the tokusatsu franchises than writing music for "established" musicians. In terms of the music, as you might expect from a move to Avex, the music seems to lose just a slight touch of the rock style that characterized Kamiki's GIZA period and gains a slight touch of the pop style that is the standard of Avex artists (damn you, Masato "MAX" Matsuura). In particular, there is an overemphasis on synthesizers and a "crystalline" sound on some tracks that is most reminiscent of, for example, Hamasaki Ayumi's music. On the other hand, production value of the music appears to be more lush, with more layers to the sound. Lyrics as usual remain written by Kamiki, though, and to be fair, there was already a gradual movement towards a more poppish style on Kamiki's part that only was rethought offhandedly on her last album, "Are you happy now?" At any rate, "INDIVIDUAL EMOTION" is interesting to check for the industrial back story, but as an album itself, it feels more like trading six of one for half a dozen of another. Perhaps time, then, will tell if Kamiki is able to carve a more distinctive niche for herself among the many other Avex artists who rely on their in-house music production staff.


On the other hand, Kamiki's transition from rock to pop and (slightly) back is the focus of her GIZA best album, "AYA KAMIKI Greatest Best." It moves in roughly chronological order from her rock beginnings (her second single, "piero ピエロ," was a cover of a B'z song, albeit released first), towards a more pop-influenced sound that centered around her second album, then back to a rock sound (presumably after someone realized what a mistake it was), with some songs from Kamiki's "indies" days thrown in. Highly recommended, as all best albums should be, for someone who is interested in learning more about an artist in a short period of time, but nothing really new to write home about for someone who owns Kamiki's other albums.

I should also note that my previous mention of MISIA was slightly erroneous: while Rhythmedia Tribe was created at Avex in 2002, the 2007 move back to BMG JAPAN was not just of MISIA, but the entire Rhythmedia Tribe label. Rhythmedia Tribe is the label of Rhythmedia, the managing agency for MISIA, and she is the only artist under that label now, the label having shed all its previous artists by around 2008. I had gotten mixed up because while at Avex Rhythmedia Tribe had its own label numbering scheme (RXCD), whereas upon moving back to BMG JAPAN returned the sub-label to the larger numbering scheme there (BVCx), and Rhythmedia Tribe is less overtly a presence in MISIA promotion than it was during its Avex days.

On Kamiki Aya, Avex and GIZA

Apologies for skipping a week (technically two, but I told you about one of them first!).  I've been waiting for some CDs to arrive, but the shipment has gotten messed up.  For now, some scattered, incoherent musings.

Among those CDs are the two new Kamiki Aya albums: one an original album from her new record company, Avex, and one a best album from her old company, Being/GIZA.  I've been thinking a lot about this move between record companies recently.  What makes this move so significant? Her original record label was Being/GIZA.  Although Being/GIZA has acquired a sort of reputation for producing genuine artists as opposed Avex (in particular through the emphasis on GIZA and its indie label background), essentially both are pop factories: pretty faces singing songs not written by them, despite ventures into lyric writing.  Does this movement mean that Avex made a good offer (probably)? It's fascinating to think about (and certainly Avex's higher production values and marketing costs are clearly seen on the inside and outside of Kamiki's new album, particularly in contrast with the best album put out by Being/GIZA at the same time.  Furthermore, since Kamiki only switched to Avex as a record label and not as her artist management, it will be interesting to see how Avex markets her.  Will she be forever doomed to obscurity like the artists on the SONIC GROOVE sub-label, all graduates of Okinawa Actors' School? Or will it turn out that she was just signed for a promotional boost for the company, much like MISIA was notably signed in order to help kick off Avex's Rhythmusic sub-label, and quickly moved back to BMG JAPAN immediately after her contract was up.  Whatever the reason, and despite Kamiki Aya's somewhat marginal status compared to B'z, Kuraki Mai or other artists at Being/GIZA, this is definitely a move that sends a strong message to Being/GIZA, whose emphasis on their image as a producer of real musicians has often been used to preclude or explain things like negligible artist promotion or low quality product.

Tangentially, it is interesting to note that calling both Avex and GIZA pop factories at the same time separates them from being idol factories, which ironically Zetima has subsumed for itself by the "domination" of the Morning Musume franchise.  In an incredibly Raymond Williams-esque turn, their appearance on the music scene in the 90s has realigned the way that idols are thought of in the music industry, so that, except perhaps for their "rivals" of AKB48, even the most idol of idols in today's music world can be given slightly more credence as "pop musicians."

Periodic album review

I've been stuck on an Ambient/Dream Pop kick out of which I've just been starting to dig myself.  Somehow, rearranging the sentence to avoid the ending preposition made it sound like one of the more awkward sentences I've written in my life (next to this one).  Moving on...

Hirahara Ayaka 平原綾香, "my Classics!" (DREAMUSIC, 2009)

Another CD I'm just getting around to.  Hirahara Ayaka, who comes from a family of classical and studio musicians, rearranges classical music with pop beats and lyrics mostly written by her.  In particular, I like Hirahara Ayaka because her voice is unique: it's both nasally and husky in a way that does not grate on the ear, but instead provides an unexpectedly pleasant musical experience.  I think this is because her voice has a very soft quality to it, and this, combined with her inherent musicality, makes her voice a pleasure to listen to.  At the same time, the fragile nature of her voice limits the types of songs she can sing successfully, and in particular Hirahara floundered for quite a bit with her first few albums before settling on ballad to midtempo numbers with soft beats, often bolstered by strings and other classical instruments in order to cultivate an almost orchestral pop sound that is inherently orchestral in nature, not bound in a focus on the piano that appears to be the foundation of other pop artists of this nature.  At any rate, "my Classics!" is a very strong album that plays to Hirahara's strengths, particularly the classical background of both her persona and her music.  While on the one hand, this may signal a resignation to the popular expectations of her by "covering" classical songs, on the other this gimmick actually serves to make the album much more coherent as a whole than Hirahara's past albums.  The only sore track is the final one, "Jupiter," where it is clear the song has not been altered from its appearance as Hirahara's first single, down to the painful opening line.  It might even be argued that "Jupiter" is much more pop than the other songs on the album, both indicating Hirahara's development as an artist and the poor editorial decision of sticking the song on because it is a classical song as well.  On the other hand, the arrangements for the preceding single for the album, "Nocturne/Campanula no koi ノクターン／カンパニュラの恋," fit into the framework of the album quite well, and in fact improve upon the listening experience of the songs from their original single appearance.  Other worthwhile tracks are the opener, "pavane~naki oujo no tame no pavaanu pavane～亡き王女のためのパヴァーヌ" (T1) and "Moldau" (T6).  A very strong album worth a listen.

Periodic album review

This week's albums are...

→Pia-no-jaC←, "EAT A CLASSIC 2" (Boundy, 2009)

A continuation of the pop duo's "EAT A CLASSIC" series, involving arrangements of classical music in line with the group's piano and cajone-based jazz-influenced pop.  I think this album is significantly stronger than the original "EAT A CLASSIC," and it also shows the group venturing into new experiments with sound.  Since it appears that the group's goal is to figure out how to create a plethora of sounds through a minimum of instruments, it makes sense that the classical works chosen here are all ordinarily vivid orchestral pieces.   Whether by altering the piano or the cajone to make new sounds or by emphasizing precisely the absence of sound and the limitations of those instruments to capture the broad sounds of the original, Pia-no-jaC appears to have produced another album both insightful and entrancing.

Periodic album review

Not only reviewing this week, but also testing scheduled posting features!

Lusine, "A Certain Distance" (Ghostly International, 2009)

I had heard the song "Operation Costs" elsewhere, so thought that it would be a worthwhile purchase.  I notice that recently I have been deviating towards ambient electronic music as of late.  "A Certain Distance" is a good album, but somehow it has failed to leave a strong impression with me.  The sounds are vibrant and clear, but for me the album fails to cohere as a whole in a way I had expected it to.  Uncertain.

Periodic album review

What's the poison for the last few weeks? Let's see...

The xx, "xx" (Young Turks Records, 2009)

The first album by The xx, an English indie rock band.  I was recommended the album by a friend.  It is quite impressive.  At once ethereal, at once exciting.  At once calm, at once frenetic.  It is a pensive album that appears to play into the legacy created for it by dream pop, while at the same time moving it both closer to mainstream and, paradoxically, also in a new, inspiring direction.  Worth your valuable dollars.

Florence and the Machine, "Lungs" (Island, 2009)

Another British indies album.  This is Indie pop at its best.  Florence Welch has an amazing voice, and it is well-complemented by these catchy tracks which feel unexpectedly exciting.  Putting aside the tracks that have garnered them mainstream success, I enjoy in particular their second single, "Dog Days Are Over" (T1) and "Cosmic Love" (T9).  I'm curious as to where they will go after this.  Worth your valuable dollars.

DAISHI DANCE, "Spectacle." (URBAN SOUND PROJECT, 2009)

This is DAISHI DANCE's first album in two years, after doing the famous "the Ghibli set" album and a string of remixes, particularly for Nakashima Mika, whose collaboration track "Memory" is probably the cornerstone of this album (also having been featured in a prominent commercial for the Kanebo cosmetic line "KATE" this year.).  The album continues DAISHI DANCE's trademark piano-based house style, this time mixing it with more famous vocals such as COLDFEET and Kinbara Chieko, as well as instrumental collaborations with the shamisen players the Yoshida brothers.  It's a very solid album, but it doesn't seem quite to match the "punch" that their last original album, 2007's "MELODIES MELODIES," had.  Still, some of the tracks are quite standout, and it's nice to see DAISHI DANCE experimenting with how to integrate their unique sound in new ways.

Periodic album review

Gareth Gates, “What My Heart Wants to Say” (SonyBMG, 2002)

After letting this one sit on my shelf since it was released, I finally got around to listening to it this week in procrastinating bliss. Gates is the runner-up in the first round of Pop Idol, the British show that produced Will Young, as well as its more renowned American spin-off American Idol and the trend of the musical reality show. Overall, the album is well-balanced and very much intended for Gates’ voice. “Unchained Melody” and “What My Heart Wants to Say” are the stand-out tracks of the album, but listening to it in light of all the Idol winners and runner-ups that have released CDs since then, the album really shows how time has altered the franchise. The album is mainly songs that would be sung by a singer on the show, rehashes of “classic” songs with classy band accompaniments. Good, neither outstanding nor disappointing.

Aoyama Thelma 青山テルマ, “Emotions” (Universal Music LLC, 2009)

Thelma’s first album, “Diary,” was surprisingly balanced and well-crafted for someone who was in danger of being a one-hit wonder with the hit number “Soba ni iru ne,” an answer song to the earlier “Koko ni iru yo” featuring SoulJa (who has not fared as well in the music world). This second album continues to hone the R&B sound created in the first album, and without a stand-out song to draw attention from the album as a whole, the pieces appear to fit together even better than before. The only “bad” song on the album is “WANNA COME AGAIN,” inspired by m-flo’s “come again,” which is a jarring disruption from the mellow beats of the album, but which stands well on its own. Worth your valuable dollars.

Juryoku Piero

I've been spending the summer in Japan. As a result, I've gotten the chance to catch up with films that I've wanted to see, both in theaters and on DVD. I hope to discuss some of these films that I have been seeing and offer my vague, disembodied thoughts on them.

In my previous entry, I discussed MW and the ways that it attempts to use the spectacle to distract the audience from the morally flawed self-righteousness of one of its protagonist. In that entry, I discussed the film Juryoku Piero (Gravity's Clowns) as a similar film that dealt with that same type of morality. In fact, while Juryoku Piero does operate within the context of a similarly flawed ethical system, at the same time it operates on a much more personal level than MW. Whether this makes the questions regarding the actions of the film's characters any more or less relevant is for the audience to decide.


Juryoku Piero stars Okada Masaki (Tennen kokekko (A Gentle Breeze in the Village, 2008), Harufuuei (Halfway, 2008)) and Kase Ryo (Soredemo boku wa yattenai (But I Just Didn't Do It, 2007), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)) as two brothers whose mother was raped, raised the child borne out of that rape and tragically died in a car accident. The child of their mother's rape is Okada Masaki's character, Haru, who is the younger brother to Kase Ryo's character, Izumi. Izumi grows up and becomes a college student studying biology; Haru becomes a graffiti remover. A series of arson cases break out in their hometown, all connected to graffiti art that appears to signal the arson. As the two investigate this series of arson cases, a disturbing pattern emerges that connects the two to the man who raped their mother.

It almost seems like it should be a crime to adapt Isaka Kotaro novels for the screen. It's never that the adaptations are bad, but more that Isaka's writing style is extremely cinematic. He often attempts to describe scenes in painstaking detail, and the events of his novels flow very well, to the point that it is sometimes as if a film is playing out in one's head. That being said, it means that his novels appear to lend themselves very easily to film adaptation, as is particularly apparent based on the increasing number of film adaptations that have been occurring as of late. Even right now, two films, this and Rasshu raifu (Lush Life), another based on an Isaka novel, are both in theaters at the same time. The only thing that the film doesn't adapt from the novel that is noticeable is Isaka's trademark tongue-in-cheek humor, which seems appropriate given the dark tone of the subject matter.


That being said, Juryoku Piero flows quite well, and the pace of the film develops at a very good pace. It might not be a longshot to state that the film, actually, is quite conventional in its method of storytelling. One noticeable thing that stands out, as some reviewers pointed out, is the age difference between Kase Ryo (who is 34) and Okada Masaki (who is 19). Since the brothers are theoretically only two years apart, the real difference in their age seems rather noticeable here. Other than that, the two actors work quite well together, and they are supported by Kohinata Fumiyo as their father (subtly permuting his usual happy-go-lucky character role), as well as Suzuki Kyoka as their mother. Suzuki in particular does a good job with the few scenes that she is given. Despite being somewhat standard in camera technique, the film does its job and does it well, mostly thanks to director Mori Junichi, who also directed Laundry, which I rather enjoyed.


While I doubt this was intended to be the ultimate message of the film, I was disturbed by the message of the film. To spoil the film and make its long story short, Haru ends up killing the man who raped his father. At the same time, this crime, while recognized as wrong within the diegesis of the film, is forgiven because it is "justified," as the rapist was a serial rapist and is overall depicted as scum in the film. Ultimately, the film purports to be about notions of nature or nurture and the influence that genetics has on the way that people develop and mature. This is expressed in the ambiguity that leads to Haru's incidents of violence and his decision to murder the rapist, brought in line with Izumi's own parallel plans to do the same (it is particularly interesting that Haru's plans to kill the rapist involve fire, while Izumi's plans involve water). While the film uses these elements and others to delineate the issues surrounding the debate and effectively juxtapose Haru and Izumi against one another in the process, the film falls flat in the end. Haru is not held responsible for his actions, and instead it appears that his actions are justified in the fact that the rapist committed many crimes and made many people's lives miserable.

To mask this, once again, spectacle is used. Instead of the hollywood-style spectacle that characterizes a film like MW, instead this film relies on a sentimentality of imagery that recalls a certain sensational response bound up in nature. This kind of trope is most apparent in the first and last scenes: the first shot amidst falling cherry blossoms, and the second at the boys' wooden home in a forest-like setting, utilizing slow motion and a piano soundtrack to enhance the sentimentality. This is the charm of the Mori Junichi film, which is his ability to give poignance and meaning to trivial scenes that are often meaningless in real life. However, unlike Laundry, which appears to convey messages of redemption and forgiveness, Juryoku Piero instead sends a dangerous message that, not only should certain crimes never be forgiven and certain criminals never be redeemed, but also that the escape from criminal consequences is a vicious cycle. The rapist may not wish redemption, but the only way for him to be held accountable for his crime and escape its specter is for the rapist to be killed by Haru. In turn, Haru is able to escape accountability for his actions, both in the diegesis and in the exegesis, which escapes the explanation of culpability to the audience by ending the film in slow-motion sentimentality. Thus, the film ends with the onus resting solely on the audience, who end up holding the criminal guilt that has flowed through the film, and who must decide what to take away from the film by receiving that guilt.

MW

Tonight, I got a late night call from a friend who wanted to go see MW. MW, for those who don't know, is a film based on the manga series of the same name (published in 1976-1978) by the famed creator Tezuka Osamu. The film tells the story of two characters: Garai Yutaro, a priest who is played by Yamada Takayuki (Densha Otoko (Train Man, 2005), the Crows ZERO series), and Yuki Michio, a terrorist played by Tamaki Hiroshi, (Nodame Cantabile (2006 TV Drama)). The film traces the relationship between Garai and Yuki, survivors of a military massacre which acted as an attempted cover-up of an incident involving the release of a nerve gas called MW on their home island, Okinomabunejima. The two escape to the main island of Japan, where Garai becomes a priest and Yuki a banker. Yuki uses his status and connections to seek out the instigators of the MW incident and kill them, forcing and eventually blackmailing Garai to help as an unwilling accomplice. The film is directed by Iwamoto Hitoshi, marking his second major film since Ashita ga aru sa THE MOVIE (There's Always Tomorrow The Movie, 2002) and first foray into dramatic film.


I have not read the original work by Tezuka Osamu, but I can at least attempt to generally discuss a few points where the film appears to deviate from the manga. For example, MW dispenses with the homosexual relationship that is shared between Yuki and Garai, instead reducing it to suggestive scenes in which innuendo does not exist in the narrative, but is rather suggested by camera work. Apparently, in the manga, this homosexual relationship forms the backbone of the Garai's guilt which Yuki exploits to gain his assitance. Thus, it would appear that the elimination of this element destabilizes the foundation of the film. Speculatively, it is perhaps for this element that MW is so well-known, as such unabashed display of homosexual relationships in manga at this time was unheard of. Furthermore, it is ironic that despite denying such elements in the script of the film, MW still exploits them for marketing purposes. In particular, the promotional campaign for the films utilizes large posters which display Yamada and Tamaki lying close to one another and looking suggestively at the camera.

MW is also well known because it marks a major shift in Tezuka Osamu's oeuvre. Up until MW, Tezuka's work is characterized by its cartoon-like drawing style; during the 70s, the gekiga movement, which emphasized a drawing style that exalted in gritty, dramatic realism, began to displace this cartoonish style as the dominant manga form. In the manga version of MW, Tezuka can be seen as adapting elements of the gekiga style, while at the same time attempting to create his own unique style through the synthesis of elements from both styles of manga. Since Tezuka is perhaps more well-remembered for his earlier works such as Tetsuwan Atomu (Atom Boy, 1952-1981) and Metoroporisu (Metropolis, 1949), with even contemporaneous works like Black Jack (1973-1983) manifesting this earlier style, MW can be perhaps considered a transitional work for Tezuka. Between this status and the aforementioned heavily-censored homosexual relationship, it's rather surprising that it was this work that was chosen, not only to be made into a film, but also, as the opening credits note, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Tezuka's birth (although to be fair, every year is an anniversary of something when you're marketing your product nowadays).

Putting the short excursion into Tezuka Osamu aside, although the film has probably been moving money well enough due to the popularity of the stars behind it and the Tezuka link, it is honestly a mess on many levels. To begin with, the script of the film, co-written by Oishi Tetsuya and Kimura Haruo, is pretty unbalanced. This is actually quite a surprise coming from particularly Oishi, who was also a writer on the two Death Note films (2006), which I felt were both well adapted from the manga and also well balanced. In the case of MW, for obvious reasons the adaptation is not faithful to the original, but beyond that, the film just rushes by in a blur, preventing the audience from getting into the world of the film and the premises that motivate it. The film neglects character development and glosses over answers to simple questions such as why Garai and Yuki feel the way they do about both each other and the incident that brought them together, as well as why the secondary characters that enter the film are drawn to take the actions that they do. Instead, MW instead attempts to fly by with intense action sequences, which are played up to keep the audience's focus in a film driven by a shallow and overall weak script. Approximately the first quarter of the film is spent on a terrorist incident carried out by Yuki in Bangkok, one that intends to establish the character, his relation to Garai and his relation to a cop who is chasing him. This event serves a purpose, but could have been cut into half and still conveyed the relevant information needed to understand what is going on. Because of the weight of this initial event, the rest of the film has to rush to recover its sense of direction. Ultimately, however, rather than serve to feed the rest of the film with its momentum, this first sequence of the film acts instead to deflate the remainder of the film.

Furthermore, the film feels too artificial in its construction. While certainly the sets built were elaborate enough and the special effects were sufficient, a lot of the camera work was poorly done. MW employs a permutation of the shaky camera technique that detracted from films such as the Bourne series and the most recent James Bond film, Quantum of Solace (2008), but beyond that, it augments the camera by using computer graphics to filter and manipulate many shots. This is often used for dramatic effect or to emphasize relevant plot devices for the audience. While this is understandable, at the same time it's not, and actually in fact is precisely the problem with this film. MW takes what is already a poorly defined premise (due to the poor script work) and slams the audience over the head with that premise through overdone film work that obfuscates the story to the point that the entire film reeks of overcompensation. Much like the cover-up of the MW incident on Okinomabunejima, MW's film work attempts to cover up the problems of the film, but ultimately those survivors that make it to the end are forced to consider ways of warning off other potential viewers.

That being said, the film was able to deploy some situations quite well, and removed from the context of the larger narrative of the film, the action moments are very well done in terms of interior pacing and set-up.

On another note, the story that MW tells is also interesting to think about because of the way it deals with modern-day Tokyo. Contextualized in relation to Tezuka's original manga, which tells a distinctly postwar story, MW the film attempts to construct a narrative focused on, as the script states, a post-Aum world. However, on a larger scale, it is a film that attempts to deal with a post-postwar moment and a sort of narrative euphoria in disaster, one that might be compared to a pre-9/11 American film moment and one that is purposefully bound in the forgetting of the postwar and atomic disaster, the setting for Tezuka's original MW. That is to say, there is a certain joy in telling the story of Yuki and his misguided self-righteous campaign to expose MW, both literally and figuratively, to the world. This jouissance appears to be bound in the oft-utilized notion of morality as a justification for ironically morally-questionable actions. At the same time, unlike the manga version of MW, as well as other disaster films going back as far as Gojira (Godzilla), this certainty of moral fortitude is not bound in the specter of the postwar and Japan's victimized consciousness. As Garai says in the film, Yuki has just "become a monster," but the monster that he has become is not the result of the atomic consciousness that hit Japan at the end of World War II (although the film blames the American military for the original incident), but rather because of the lack of such a historical context: it is the result of MW itself. As the basis for MW becomes disembodied from the postwar context, it removes a layer of morality that might further justify Yuki's actions. This lack of historical context influences the ethics of the other characters of the film: the cop who chases Yuki is bound by his determination and personal vendetta. Even Garai, the character who in the film (unlike in the manga) is supposed to serve as a type of reluctant moral center, is not empowered enough to handle that position. On the one hand, this is because the character is extremely scaled down in the film; on the other, it is because the context of Christianity and religion in general is completely displaced from its context here (although thankfully, the film does not play it up for campy value, even though it might come close every now and then). Yuki becomes morally right not because of a larger cultural context, but because of images of shock and disaster based on an isolated incident that is not situated within any history and purposefully propagated to the audience by the filmmakers. Yuki becomes "right" through sensational imagery and shock value, and the audience, swayed by that sensationalism, is able to follow Yuki's actions and understand them (even though the film ultimately does not side with him) without questioning their larger ramifications (a similar internal logic works through another summer release in Japan, Juryoku Piero (Gravity's Clown, 2009)). Thus, it can be argued that while Yuki might be driven by trauma, the trauma is personal and not bound up in a national consciousness, as is clear when, in his endgame, he is ready to deploy MW and disperse it throughout Tokyo to harm innocent people, rather than to directly use MW to strike back at his oppressors.

What can also be seen in MW is a new sense of cosmopolitanism in a transnational context. The film, which contains a "subplot" (using the term extremely loosely) involving a dedicated cop chasing after Yuki, can perhaps help contextualize the film within the context of Asian cinema, particularly Hong Kong urban cinema. At the same time, this cosmopolitanism is deployed through the film's use of various settings in decidedly "non-Japanese" locales. In the beginning sequence of the film in Bangkok, the film shows a fully articulated city, which does not only contain the back alleys and dingy areas which characterize previous depictions of Bangkok as other, but also Bangkok as its own urban metropolis. Even the American base in this film is surprisingly high-tech, no longer simply shots of soldiers standing around on fields and airplane hangars that might characterize older films (although they do a bit of that here, too), but instead a military that is well put-together and coordinated in times of crisis through the use of computer technology. It is these images of an all-around cosmopolitanism and technological modernism that makes way for images of what can be termed a new Tokyo. In depicting this new Tokyo, it's interesting to note that MW specifically chooses "new" sites within the metropolis. Rather than focus on urban centers which have been a firmament in the imagining of Tokyo both in Japanese and "Western" films, such as Shibuya and Shinjuku, MW fixates on a newly-gentrified Akihabara. Furthermore, while evoking the financial Marunouchi district at several points in the film, MW chooses to look less at the older sites of the area and instead focuses on the much newer Marunouchi OAZO building, which opened in 2004. In this way, by showing the new sites of Tokyo situated within the context of the equally modernizing presences of both Asia and the West, MW can be thought of as illustrating the new role that Japan plays as a mediator between both parties.