Summer of Demon (1981)

directed by Yukio Ninagawa

Japan

96 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I've mentioned on here before that I'm really into Yotsuya Kaidan and am always looking for screen adaptations of it that I haven't seen. Unfortunately I will never be able to watch them all due to the sheer amount of Japanese films from the early 20th century that were destroyed during WWII (if I had a stereotypical lamp genie, the first thing I'd do after getting it to grant me infinite wishes would be to ask it for a copy of Shōzō Makino's adaptation) but there are a good many of them that survive, and they still continue to be made.

One of the things that caught my eye about Summer of Demon was that it had comedic elements. (There are definitely comedy versions of Yotsuya Kaidan out there, but not a ton of them.) The other thing that made me want to see it was Renji Ishibashi in the role of Naosuke. I feel like Naosuke's role is the real wild card of any Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation: some films play him up as diabolically, remorselessly evil; some make him out to be almost a goofball; some have him just be a shady grifter, looking for money and not much else. More on Naosuke's role in this specific adaptation in a moment.

Another thing I think I mentioned in one of my Yotsuya Kaidan reviews is that there is a spectrum of Iemon Nastiness™ that fluctuates throughout these films. Some of the most compelling are ones like Keisuke Kinoshita's version, where Iemon very clearly did love Oiwa at some point and is more of a bystander in a process that he is horrified by than a murderous, adulterous husband. The Iemon of Summer of Demon is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I would say he leans further and further into cruelty the more you think about him, though: he's not concerned with Oiwa's safety and well-being as a person and as his wife, just whether or not he's able to possess her for himself. To this end, he kills her father early on in the film to get him to stop asking Iemon to give her back. What's interesting is that Iemon actually seems to see everything coming: he says that he's concerned about people "interfering" with their life, and outright declares that he has to protect Oiwa, to protect their family, but protecting her, to him, is less about her protection and more about his strength and his ability to protect as a man.

And surprisingly, while he is a murderer and a general scumbag, Iemon is not the one to kill Oiwa. He's fine with it when he learns that the father of his new bride has started slowly poisoning Oiwa, and continues to make sure she takes the poison, but when Oiwa dies, it's an accident. I think a lot of Iemon's torment comes, therefore, from knowing that his hand was not on the sword that killed her; he could have stepped in to stop the process of her death, but didn't.

One of my favorite scenes in this is when Iemon, Oiwa, and Oume all go to watch a play together that appears to actually be a version of Yotsuya Kaidan. This exemplifies how oblivious the characters are to the cycle that they're caught up in. If you want to get deeper into symbolism, the figure in the play who is suffering what Oiwa would later suffer is scarred over her left eye, while Oiwa's illness affects her right eye - the play is a mirror that no one recognizes themselves in.

Back to Naosuke - I don't think I can recall having seen a version of Yotsuya Kaidan in which Naosuke and Iemon are contrasted this much as characters. Iemon is uncomfortable in the shabby, poor life of a ronin, but Naosuke actively wants that life. Naosuke doesn't care that he isn't a samurai anymore: he's done with that, would rather hang out at brothels and marry a pretty girl no matter her status. Iemon jumps at the chance to regain some standing by marrying a noblewoman who is obsessed with him - never mind that he already had a wife. Both of them kill someone in the first act of the film, and their reactions could not be more different: Iemon retains some of his samurai mindset in that he goes about the killing of Oiwa's father with a modicum of formality, but Naosuke kills a guy practically just for kicks and then laughs hysterically about it - and it's not even the guy he meant to kill. Iemon is amoral and conscience-haunted; Naosuke is amoral and having a great time, thank you very much.

Ishibashi steals the show in every scene he's in, by the way; Kenichi Hagiwara - former lead singer of The Tempters - as Iemon is good, but I didn't feel like he brought much depth to the role.

The cinematography is surprisingly gorgeous even when watched as a poor-quality webrip. There is one scene where Iemon's retinue of ne'er-do-wells are all running around a brothel as viewed from above, and then it cuts to an aerial shot of a group of women holding umbrellas - the jagged, squareish hallways of the brothel immediately giving way to the perfect circles of the umbrellas - and honestly, that was so, so visually satisfying. I personally prefer my jidaigeki dark as hell, so the comedy elements in this felt a little jarring, but it's balanced out by the fact that this is a really well-made film in all respects. Yukio Ninagawa is apparently mostly known for his Japanese-language adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, which makes a lot of sense.

Ultraman: Rising (2024)

directed by Shannon Tindle

USA

121 minutes

4.5 stars out of 5

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I Ken feel it.

I've been extremely excited about this ever since it was announced. The clear passion that Tindle and his creative team have for the source material gave me a lot of confidence that this was going to be a project that treated the Ultra series with the respect it deserves. I've just finished watching the film, so I'm going to get some initial thoughts about it down and then come back and edit it, and hopefully out of that mess will come a semi-coherent review.

It's hard to make broad statements about a franchise that's been going for almost 60 years, changed hands numerous times, evolved, grown, branched out, and incorporated the efforts of a huge number of people, each with their own vision. It's hard to say "this is what Ultraman is about" with thousands of episodes and dozens of individual series as well as spin-off movies. But I think if you ask anybody who has seen a good amount of any given Ultra series, they will all be able to give the same answer: it's about protecting the people you love. It's about letting love and care be your strength. Ultraman: Rising nails that 100%. To the point where it's almost hard to enjoy it as a fun, rollicking kaiju movie because you're too busy absorbing the surprisingly nuanced statements about parenthood, responsibility, and redemption that it makes.

However, it is fun. Buckets. The animation style is gorgeously fluid, and the attention to anatomic detail - though stylized - makes it feel like all the characters, human and not, are made out of tangible stuff, not just modeled on computers. I was really wowed during the fight at the end when Ultraman shouts at Dr. Onda and you can see his chest expand as he speaks. A lot of work was put into making Ultraman expressive and I think the way that's achieved here is really unique: the animators decided to give him mobile pupils, which provided him with just enough expression to feel dynamic without compromising his iconic look.

Ultraman's redesign in general is really interesting. I'm a huge stickler about Ultra suits. I have very strong opinions about what I do and don't like. I was on the fence about our man when I saw him in promo images and .gifs from this film, but in motion he just works - for a lot of reasons, especially the detail in his body language and expression mentioned above. I saw a lot of fans skeptical that his goofy-ass proportions could look good on screen, but I think we should remember that Ultraman had goofy-ass proportions in 1966 too. In fact, I would be surprised if the distinctive awkwardly padded chest and shoulders of the original suit did not inspire Ultraman: Rising's Ultraman design at least a little.

Emi is also animated remarkably well. You can tell the animators had to have spent a lot of time around babies and toddlers, because although she's a kaiju, her body language is completely accurate to how a real human baby moves around and acts. I particularly love how well they captured the way a baby's mood can turn on a dime: we're happy, we're laughing, we're smiling, and then... oh... oh no...

There's just something really thrilling about the whole idea of this thing to me, as somebody who has absorbed the Showa-era Ultra series into my heart and soul. Seeing something that is modern and accessible to total newcomers but still pays so, so much homage to the original series. If you read kana there are a ton of easter eggs in the background of every shot. Not just from Ultraman '66, but a few from Ultraseven as well. Ken's soft drink brand, the fact that his uniform number is "7", there's a billboard at one point that says "Kiriyama", some shots of Alien Metron... I also wonder if Ken's dad having a leg injury that put him out of commission as an Ultra is an intentional nod to Seven, but that might be going off into the weeds a bit. The Japanese dub also managed to get Hiroko Sakurai (Akiko Fuji from the 1966 Ultraman) in a small voice role. I want to mention that Emi does the jumping shie dance and at one point has Mothra's roar, but that may not necessarily have specifically been intended as a Mothra reference, since her roar was used for many, many Ultra series kaiju as well. So, you know, these folks have definitely watched more tokusatsu than just Ultraman.

If I had any qualms about this at all, it's the style of humor. It's not terrible. But... hmmm. Maybe I just don't watch a lot of modern children's movies.

Anyway, this film is almost more interesting for the stuff it doesn't do than the stuff it does. The defense team isn't even remotely depicted as being the good guys. Ultraman's origins are never explored. (Sequel?) Ultraman's roster of abilities is refreshingly limited: it's beam city, baby, and not much else. I'm fascinated with the idea of an inherited Ultraman, and even more fascinated by the idea that the ability to transform didn't leave Ken's dad: does this imply Ken's kids, and their kids, and their kids, will all be Ultras? Was everybody else in Ken's family stretching back from time immemorial also Ultras? There's so many unanswered questions here, and none of them feel like loose ends. This is a movie that sparks the imagination, and that is something I know for certain Eiji Tsuburaya would approve of.

Good Morning (1959)

directed by Yasujirō Ozu

Japan

95 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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It's been a really long time since I've watched an Ozu film. I put this on spur of the moment within an hour of waking up because I found out that Yoshiko Kuga died. (Tonight I'm probably watching Zero Focus or something.) I have osmosed some information about Ozu and his works just from being heavily interested in Showa-era Japanese cinema in general, and I have to say that every time I watch something of his I wonder why I ever watch anything else. The cinematography in his films is unparalleled: the blocking is phenomenal; characters seem nested within boxes of their own making, little comfortable microcosms of modern living that they are continuing to perpetuate through their own actions. Conflict between generations is a huge theme running throughout Ozu's oeuvre, and while Good Morning is on the surface a lighthearted film, there is still that streak of anxiety in it.

Synopses will tell you that Good Morning is about Isamu and Minoru, two boys who enact a strike in response to their parents' refusal to buy them a television. This is true, but it's also true that there is so much else going on in this film. The fascinating thing about it, and what gives it such a unique feel, is that every issue is treated with exactly the same emotional weight. Each character has something going on, and sometimes it's just random background life problems: did my neighbor forget to pay the dues for our women's group? How do I get this salesman to leave me alone? My mother is annoying. My kids are being a pain. But at other times - in fact, not even "at other times", these deeper issues are always encapsulated within the "surface-level" ones - it gets more devastating.

To the adults of the film, Isamu and Minoru are simply being brats because they don't understand the real world and how it works. The boys complain that adults just say the same things all the time: "good morning", "good afternoon", "how are you", and so on. Empty platitudes. The adults counter that, well, that's just the way it is. They don't even realize that there could be any other way to be. By telling these children, who are questioning the social order of things, to accept that things are the way they are because they just are, to be obedient, quiet, and participate in the same meaningless small talk as the adults around them, they are unwittingly trapping them in a cycle and taking away the tools of subversion and dissent that might aid them in escaping it.

The film is set in a complicated arrangement of houses that are in very close proximity to each other. All of the neighbors have their own private thing going on, but the physical closeness of them means one person's business becomes everyone else's. Kuga plays one of these neighbors, a young woman named Setsuko with an admirer who she seems oblivious of. I think the last thing I saw her in was Thus Another Day and her role here could not be more different. She exudes warmth and cheerfulness (and my god, those heels she wears) and, although her character is ultimately another adult who doesn't concern herself overmuch with the two rebellious boys, she does treat them as people.

I think the boy playing Isamu (Masahiko Shimazu, who was fairly prolific as a child actor but did not seem to have any roles past the early 1960s) is the star of the show here. Isamu is basically a little adult - and, for the reasons I've been talking about, he is in many ways more mature and understanding than the real adults. He takes himself, his brother, and their struggle wholly seriously, but also engages in childish behavior; although, again, everything he does, whether meant to be funny or not, is given equal weight. Shimazu's performance is incredibly endearing but also remarkably level-headed for a child that small.

As much as there's a well of intergenerational conflict and anxiety about modernization at the heart of this film, it's also so genuinely sweet and lovely that it almost made me tear up. This is possibly the only movie I've ever seen to have this many fart jokes yet never once feel awkward to watch. And Ozu seems to understand children on a deep level, but he also understands why the things they do make older people nervous.

I am a little bit stuck in a rut of knowing what I like to watch and pursuing only that instead of exploring other genres and styles. This isn't the kind of thing I watch very often these days but it's an incredibly beautiful film and has definitely made me want to get further into Ozu.

Technically has a tokusatsu connection as somebody mentions Gekkō Kamen at one point.

First Love of Okon (1958)

directed by Kunio Watanabe

Japan

85 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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I planned on reviewing this as a Pride Month thing, because those movies where Hibari Misora plays a man are, to me, as a trans person and a jidaigeki nerd, honestly exhilarating to watch. Gender euphoria, etc etc. But Misora in drag receives only a very limited amount of screen time in First Love of Okon despite the poster prominently featuring her in a chonmage, which is kind of funny to me; Toei knew what we all wanted to see. I'll still review this anyway, but it'll be a short one.

Misora plays Okon, a kitsune (fox spirit) who lives in the mountains with others of her kind. When humans trap a young kitsune with the intent to cook him up and eat him, Okon transforms into a human man to rescue him. Afterwards, she gets trapped herself, but is saved by a woodcutter named Onokichi. The two of them become friends and eventually fall in love, but the story is bittersweet and wrought with obstacles, as there's a deputy who wants Okon for his concubine and also wants Onokichi's forest for the money.

This is a musical. If you're familiar with the Russian Fantastika genre, this will seem very familiar; while a bit less gaudy, the setpieces are similarly fairytale-like, especially during the more elaborate song and dance sequences. Misora is enchanting to watch as always, and this is definitely her movie, but another reason why you should watch it is for Jun Tazaki, prolific portrayer of extremely stoic, stiff-upper-lipped military generals, playing the goofball deputy. He sings too, and generally runs around being the butt of many jokes, along with his retinue, who all also sing.

Although Misora's male role in this film is restricted to basically only one scene, Okon and two of her kitsune sisters also transform into the deputy and two of his men at least once. The fluid way that this film depicts gender is really interesting: how casual it is for Okon and the other kitsune women to become men, just like they shapeshift into other things. It is all a fantasy, but fantasy was the lens through which these stories could be told in mainstream cinema at the time. I guarantee you there were people watching Misora perform as a man and either realizing things about themselves or feeling like the things about themselves they already knew were maybe not so rare and unusual after all.

I unfortunately had to watch this as a garbage-quality, poorly-cropped VHS rip, but even still, the magic is there. I'm surprised I don't hear about this and others of its ilk talked about more as queer cinema. Women playing male roles (and men playing female roles) in traditional Japanese theater is of course not inherently a queer thing and I'm not trying to map my own Western values onto that concept, but it's also true that there are trans people everywhere who can and assuredly have seen themselves reflected in that.

Some Miscellaneous Thoughts About the Zatoichi TV Series

For the past couple of months, I've been watching an episode of Zatoichi every morning right after I wake up. I genuinely believe that half if not more of the episodes of this series are better than the majority of the Zatoichi movies, although it's not quite fair to compare the two since the films and the series are very different tonally. Yesterday morning I watched my last morning Zatoichi episode and I want to get some of my thoughts out about this incredible series.

This will be long.

It's difficult to talk about the series as a whole because every episode is scripted and/or directed by a different person. Some episodes are long and talky and feel like not very much was accomplished in their 45-minute runtime, but others are exceptionally good. These stand-out episodes aren't really confined to one season, and are spread out pretty evenly throughout the whole of the show, making watching it in order a very rewarding experience. Letting a variety of people handle Ichi is immensely beneficial to his character development - I don't think Zatoichi as a media phenomenon would be as popular and lasting if the version of him presented in The Tale of Zatoichi, or even in the original story, was all we ever saw of him. Ichi has many facets, developed continuously from the early '60s through to the present day.

Every episode contains guest stars, many of them appearing a handful of times - Renji Ishibashi and Shin Kishida both have at least five appearances across the series, and several other notables have two or three episodes - and the directors are some of the biggest names in jidaigeki. The episodes directed by Shintarō Katsu himself are consistently some of the best (and most experimental).

Because the series doesn't adhere to a chronological timeline - episodes seem to take place at various points during Ichi's life - it doesn't make sense to say that Ichi evolves as a character over the course of the show. The bulk of the show does not see him follow a linear path of character development, changing in response to the weight of everything he endured thus far. That being said, though, Ichi does seem markedly different by the fourth and final season. He talks less. He feels more physically guarded, wearing a headscarf and his cloak wrapped tightly around him. It seems like everything is starting to get to him. He struggles with himself, and the show itself struggles with him too.

The fourth season turns inward and begins to look at itself, to examine Ichi on an existential level. At this point the series feels like it's allowing itself to rest now that it's so well-established, resulting in several episodes that have remarkably spare plots. The swordfighting is more and more like an obligation - often, the insertion of some group or another of shady crims who want Ichi's head for whatever reason is laughably formulaic. Although it does interesting things with the format of the series, the fourth season is not my favorite, as I feel that many of the episodes just do not land; however, it also contains some of the most stunning stand-alone episodes of the series, culminating in an unbelievably avant-garde two-part finale scripted and directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara.

In part one, The Rainbow Journey, Ichi is allowed to experience sensuality for the first time in the entire series. But for him, the joy is taken out of this encounter by a group who essentially turns it into a ransom demand: they get Ichi to admit he slept with a nobleman's concubine, then threaten her family with the exposure of this transgression unless they're given a chest full of money. The experience was completely consensual and wanted by both parties, but Ichi doesn't get to have things like that - not without complications.

In part two, The Dream Journey, the encounter with the concubine continues to haunt Ichi. Most of the episode takes place in a dream sequence. To attempt to unpack the symbolism fully would take me years, so instead I'm going to focus on one element of it. I hope you'll forgive me if it seems like I'm going off into the weeds for a bit here, but I have a confession to make: from very early on in the series I began viewing it with a deep and unshakable headcanon that Ichi is gay. I would - and I will, if you're still listening - argue that the entire series is rife with homoerotic undertones, and it all comes to a head in the final episode.

Ichi can't let go of the only time, as far as we the viewers know, that he's slept with a woman in most of his life. His feelings about it are complex and tortured. This was something he wanted in the moment - but the memory lingers uncomfortably. In his dreams, Ichi sees himself as a normal man: sighted, desiring of women, dressed in fine clothing. He has fantasies of interacting with women in sexual and sensual ways, something that he never did up until this point. These interactions feel less like something he wants and more like something he feels he should want - he has never demonstrated a desire for a sexual relationship with a woman, and in fact, due to his blindness, he is able to interact with women in friendly, commensurate ways that transcend traditional gender roles.

During the dream, Ichi finds himself in an onsen with a group of other men. This is where things start going wrong. One of the men has the remnants of white facepaint and lipstick on, and leers at Ichi sensually before standing up and revealing that he has a woman's breasts. As Ichi watches another man toweling off, he reaches up - touches him - and then it all ends. Ichi is chased by laughing men until he runs out of land and plunges into the sea. He is pursued by ugly, malformed manifestations of maleness: he is confronted by his own desires and, further, his own status in society as a man, and it terrifies him.

Zatoichi as a series is about a man who never gets to have anything he wants. Because of his position as an outsider, Ichi is never able to form lasting relationships. He always has to leave. In his travels through film and television he's rescued many, brought joy to even more, been an enemy to the unrighteous and a savior of justice. But he never gets to hold on to anything. He doesn't get to marry or have children - whether you believe that this is due to his disability and outsider status or due to his own deeply repressed sexuality is up to you. He has no real reason to save money; whatever he earns just goes towards food and lodging; since he doesn't have anyone to support besides himself and he lives on the road, wealth is useless to him.

Ichi is a complicated and fascinating character. To criminals and evildoers all across the land, he's almost a bogeyman; this shadow figure they all fear because they know that to encounter him and be on his bad side means sure death. But he's also really good at skipping rope. He loves children. He's a little afraid of dogs. In one episode he guides a woman through a dense fog bank, warning her to watch her step, and then immediately falls down a hill. There's a minute of silence, the woman he's with isn't sure if he's even alive or not. But then he climbs back up and he's clutching a bunch of flowers he found down there. That's Ichi in a nutshell, I think: falling to - one might even say continuously existing in - the lowest possible depths, and still finding flowers. His life is hard, and he's often deprived of the most basic human pleasures for no real reason other than the childhood illness that left him blind. But he does, throughout all of it, always find flowers.

Some more stand-out episodes: The Winter Sea, Ichi Hears a Lullaby, Spring Arrives for the Eyeless Daruma, Here Comes the Amazing Masseur, The Naked Crybaby Assassin, The Song of a Traveler, The Ghost That Called To Ichi, A Drunken River, Suicide Song of Lovers, A Long Time Ago, The Woman Who Betrayed Cbuji, An Unforgettable Flower, and of course the two-part finale.