ashita no joe 明日のジョー [movie]

restraining myself with the screenshots here might be asking the impossible

For some reason I always sort of forget just how stunningly beautiful Yamapi is. Until I come to my senses after losing consciousness following a random picture of bit of TV footage escaping out from the depths onto my screen and punching me in the face with a great big *this guy cant be human* realisation (this happens time and time again)

I am aware that, as he is the most sort after idol in Japan right now, it is becoming almost uncool to like him – now come on, what the f*ck? Don’t get all anti-fan on me now people. That is just stupid. No amount of that is really going to counter the immense insurmountable greatness that is that crazy little cracker we call Yamapigeon. *ahem* I mean Yamapi. No, actually I so mean Yamapigeon.

 

 Ok, so I’m not going to spend this whole thing ranting about Yamapi’s godlike genius because if you have more than half a brain cell it should be f*cking obvious. I will rant about the movie though, as that it what I am supposedly here to do.

Well, maybe I’m going to rant a bit more about Yamapigeon – I just never know how much of a fan girl mood I’m in until I get going. Usually the screen shots set me off. I’ll try to restrain.

Ashita no Joe has been awaited with much hope, expectation, and excitement. A really popular manga, this movie was talked about constantly all over the internet while it was being filmed due to the anticipation of fans of the manga, the film makers, and the main stars alike.

 

These guys worked f*cking hard on this film. It paid off in buckets of brilliance and a resulted in a beautiful movie.

 

 

Joe (Yamapi) lives in a poor town with little to his name but his character and ability to fight. He is a bit of a street rat and winds up in jail after a brawl. In a haphazard way he begins to learn to box and while in prison he meets Rikishi (Iseya Yuseke), a pro boxer, who becomes his rival and motivation. For Rikishi also, the influence of his new challenger is a destined important meeting which begins and ultimately ends a chapter of life for the both of them.

It’s pretty sad, I warn you that. But it is as moving and purposeful as it was intended to be. It is also a quietly funny, pretty film, and although it looks to be bleak and hard it is actually easier on the eyes and heart than you might think.

Yes, it definitely helps that Yamapi has so much charisma that it is hard to fit it all on screen – sometimes when he plays more subdued roles like this I half expect him to just explode with some random oddness, just to get it out of his system, that would usually be too precious to cut out if it weren’t for the more sombre nature of the movie. He is, as ever, his natural self; easy to watch, easy to believe.

 

 

Ashita no Joe is over two hours long but it doesn’t feel like a drag – the only reason we kept checking the time on the video was that we couldn’t work out what was going to happen as there was so much time left for things to go wrong. Well, yeah, they do kinda go wrong and we should just not ask. But never mind. The tears are very much there but not constant.

I’m glad we like Rikishi’s character, and I’m also glad of the choice of actor. Actually, no-one bugged me in this whole movie. Lots of familiar faces and not a moment of ----- umm, I just have to stop and tangent for a moment. Someone totally drove passed my window blaring whitney houston’s version of I will always love you, like, fully loud and it completely threw me off course.

God, where the hell was I? Oh yeah, Ashita no Joe. Worth watching. Don’t listen to people being tw*ts about it. If you want I can lay it all out fan girl style: Yamapi covered in blood a lot, getting pummelled, beating the sh*t out of other people, running about all over the show with that brilliant little arrogant smirk of his, cropped trousers (^_^) and that f*cking adorable train driver hat – god, has it got it’s own name in the credits? Cos it should.


Yamapi trained like a mental for this role so give him the damn time to see this film. There is a reason he is so popular. He wasn’t even born – he just popped out into existence made out of pure genius so don’t bugger about umming and ahhing whether or not you like Ashita no Joe, you do. It is just a f*cking movie. And a good one. So get over it.

I don’t really want to do a long review of this one as I feel it is turning into crazy ranting time, it deserves to be watched so go do that. And look at all these lovely pictures. Yamapigeon, prettiest bird in the whole coup.

a quick note to yamapigeon, i heard this movie was so hard that it has kinda put you off acting. if you stop acting i will track you down and beat you with a big fat stick. ...made of really bad stuff. ...that smells. ...and stains your clothes. ...and makes a really annoying sound when it hits you.    you have been warned.

damn it i wish i ruled the world.

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Welcome to the quiet room クワエットルームにようこそ [movie]

Touching your bum makes me feel calm. How about you?

Not really. My legs ache.

Cast:

Asuka - uchida yuki

Tetsu – kudo kankuro 

Miki - aoi yu

Nurse Eguchi – ryo

Komono – tsumabuki satoshi

Nishino – otake shinobu

Sae – Takahashi Mai 

Nurse Yamagishi – Hiraiwa Kami 

I had only seen Uchida Yuki in kami no shizuku and maybe one other thing with a similarly reserved and elegant role, so when I first got this film I didn’t realise it was her for a while. When I finally sat down to watch it I was exited to see how she would play a wayward comedy writer, committed into a psychiatric ward for a suicide attempt, knowing that her character was to be not only troubled but also very textured and quite off the wall.

It is a very colourful film with a disjointed timeline and unique pace with some hallucinatory scenes and flashbacks.

Asuka is admitted to a secure psych ward with a place of isolation they call the quiet room. She wakes up to find herself bound to a bed with restraints, with an oxygen mask and on a drip. We follow her memories as she tries to trace them back to the incident that led her to the hospital but there are missing fragments uncovered much later in the film. Most of our time is spent with Asuka in the present (in the main ward) with the other patients, battling demons she was not even aware she had.

Most of the characters we meet are quirky, obviously you expect the psych ward to host a few interesting personalities but also Asuka’s circle of friends is full of idiotic comedy writers, she surrounds herself with idiots – as she puts it.

A few other really good familiar faces cropped up in this movie.

Ryo (Alive, code blue, casshern, zeni geba, suppli),
Tsumabuki Satoshi (IWGP, long love letter, sabu, waterboys, orange days),

Takahashi Mai  (Boku to Kanojo no XXX, sky high2),

Hiraiwa Kami  (Love my life, otakus in love)

And a liked Aoi yu’s character Miki a lot. She is one of the friends Asuka makes in the ward. I was kind of shocked to see Takahashi Mai, she plays a girl with an eating disorder, who has very rich parents who pay for her to have her own room and Lolita dresses. Having just watched the very stupid Boku To Kimi No XXX where she plays a wimpy boy who is trapped in the body of the tomboyish girl he loves, I was happy to come across her again. And man did she look beautiful. God she’s cute.

Visually, it is an interesting film, but also I think it has a really good gentle unfurling of the story – if that makes sense. It does leap backwards and forwards as she regains the odd piece of her memory from the week before her overdose, and we have the story pieced together along with her progression through her stay in hospital.

Well I thought Uchida Yuki was great, I loved to see her dressed with colourful tights and short hair, being scatty and unkempt. It is a far cry from her role in kami no shizuku for sure and I think it shows her off as an actor really well. She’s damn cute as well.

It isn’t a huge tear jerker, it isn’t very difficult to watch and it is surreal and funny in places (where it is supposed to be) but it does convey enough sadness and loneliness necessary to accurately describe the situation even in amongst the odd humour and twitchingly peculiar characters.

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Taiyou no uta タイヨウのうた [movie]

Nice touch with the sunflowers. Where are my tissues?

Unmistakable voice, even though I didn’t recognise her face at first, as soon as she sang I realised it was Yui. I knew it was going to be a sad film from the premise but I actually think it was a cheerful movie for the most part. Very pretty and sweet, just a little heartbreaking too.

 

If anyone’s voice could sound like the sunshine it would be Yui, she sounds like spring. To play a girl trapped in eternal night is more lonely than if it were some sombre serious person with a sad voice – Yui’s innocent smile and completely childlike presence is almost otherworldly and adds to the context of her character who can never leave the house during the daytime or properly feel the sunrise.

 

 Yui plays Kaoru, a girl who is allergic to sunlight and is slowly developing a serious nervous disorder that will ultimately paralyse and kill her. She goes out into the streets at night to play her guitar and sing, and can only see a short amount of the daytime from her bedroom window through tinted blinds.

Kaoru watches Fuji, (Tsukamoto Takashi) from her window every morning as he waits with his surf board for his friends. Eventually she sees him in the street one night, chases after him and blurts out a bizarre ramble of things about her self after pushing on to the railway tracks in the road. She mentions that she doesn’t have a boyfriend about 16 thousand times in her speech and her complete lack of shame for that moment shows how innocent and sheltered she is.

It is hard not to warm to her, especially after hearing her sing and it doesn’t take Fuji long to fall for her as she sings the song she had written with him in mind.

 

As she starts to become more disabled by her illness Fuji works hard to help her regain her strength and sing again, and watching her stay strong gives him the strength to become a better person as well.

It is so sad, there is no cure for this disease and very little treatment once the brain starts going into crazy nervous dysfunction mode, and deterioration passed this point is quite fast. From the outset it is obvious it will be quite upsetting but I think there is more to this movie than just a weepy story.

For a start, Yui sings a lot in this film, which can never be a bad thing. I love to watch her sing – she pulls these strained faces that don’t tell in her voice at all. There is something endlessly endearing about the expressions she pulls as she pours her heart out into her music. And of course, her voice is lovely. She has a very calm young voice that is absolutely impossible to miss.

I first heard Yui on the Bleach anime soundtrack – I think it was the first one; it was very near the beginning of the series a few years ago anyway. The songs featured in this movie are on my short stories.

Also in this film is Kishitani Goro who was the dad in samurai high school – loved him in that. He has a really nice character in this movie, he plays Kaoru’s father who tries anything he can to give her a good quality of life, including orchestrating a dinner with Fuji when Kaoru is too depressed to see him, in spite of how angry she might get at first.

It is a very sweet film but the sunflowers got me. You’ll know what I mean when you get to the end. I liked the movie even just as an excuse to listen to Yui sing for a while. She is actually the definition of adorable.

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