yeah its not funky forest but its still pretty weird.
ok, this movie... what can i say.
im putting in some quotes here and there just to try and give you a sense of how random this movie is.
i just dont think i can do it justice.
also, i think a *spoiler alert* is needed. but this movie makes less sense the more you know so it wont ruin anything.
dear god, aside from this guy's face, where to start...
Jube is a highschool delinquent, he moves to a school who's team is about to play an insanely violent team who usually leave all the opposing players in a bloody dismembered mess on the pitch and sail through their victories straight to the cup.
Jube is suffering at the memory of killing his father with a baseball pitch on the beach one day - which we are loving told through the medium of song ballad and purple camera filter. reminded me of the stock videos that accompany japanese karaoke songs.
and thats the story of a boy and baseball#
eventually after some fights, persuasion, and a round of applause from the suddenly appearing entire school, Jube joins the team in the hopes to defeat the violent Gedo zombie-inmate-psychopath-mutant-whateverthefucktheyare baseball team in the coming match.
there is a guy that is played by 3 different actors because he dies so many times - actually pretty much all of the characters die at one or more times throughout and come back again in various states of alive-ness.
this particular pitch that everything is riding on doesnt actually ever really rear its head in the match!
they just beat the crap out of each other for a while, shaolin soccer style, and with a team of re-encarnated robotised half assed cobbled togther left overs of teachers, students, and Jube's mum, we get the final showdown with the big chinned blue skinned cowboy coach of the Gedo team, and i have no idea what the sh*t is going on.
*but Jube-kun, can we win?
*yes! with the deadly bullet pitch we can definitely win! the ball... the deadly bullet that killed my dad...
*you were hiding a pitch like that?
*no i dont actually remember how to do it, but when i was dead ten minutes ago my dead father told me to throw it.
i was surprised how funny this movie was. its weird enough to be totally crackers, but its not so stupid that it just leaves you thinking you just wasted 2 hours. and it is 2 long hours of nonsense. All, we come to find, is really something to do with that old drunk guy in his long johns with his dog watching on the side lines.
and there's always an old drunk guy in his long johns with his dog watching on the side lines isnt there?
*who are you? who stopped my super tornado?
i watched this thinking "man this movie feels familiar" then found out it was a Kitamura Ryuhei film. I watched the whole thing thinking "Jube looks really familiar too" then i realised it was Sakaguchi Taku from alive and versus etc.
man, he was super pretty in this.
*youve been reborn?
*i heard everything while i was dead, its time to get even with Gedo!
*ok, weve both died once, lets do it!
and if you think these quotes might make more sense when you watch the movie, youre wrong. they wont. im more confused now than before i saw it. i read a review before watching, it looked interesting and suitably stupid enough for my want at the time, but it was funnier than i expected it to be. those stupid but subtle nods of earnest agreement, the furrows of worry, Tak had me in fits. and yes, even though it was bonkers, i think the humour in it was more subtle than the outset would have you think.
maybe not.
i cant be arsed to do a cast list, look it up. by the way the title means Koshien Hell, not battlefield baseball, in case you get stuck. looking through the screen shots it actually looks pretty tame, i mean, its no funky forest but its still up there in the top leagues of weird ass japanese movies. its one for a group of people to enjoy. wish i had found this while i was still living back at the flat and the gang could have come over to watch this. damn funny.
