Last year I went to Japan to relax (with a little semi-work related stuff on the side) and I decided to take a moment and watch a Japanese movie in theaters. Long story short, I ended up watching two. Japanese movies in Japan don't have subtitles, because, why would they need them, right? (I've heard some groups holding subtitled screenings, but they are exceptions to the rule.) English movies are usually presented with subtitles, though some theaters or releases have dubbed screenings. In any case I watched these two films without subtitles to test my own comprehension skills. (It turned out pretty well.)
In contrast to cinema houses here in the Philippines, where they are invariably attached to malls, Japanese Cinemas mostly operate by themselves, with several cinema chains around the country. During this trip I spent my time in two cinemas: the Humax Cinema in Ikebukuro and Cinema City in Tachikawa City.
Humax Cinema is located along Sunshine street in Ikebukuro. They share a building with other stores, such as a karaoke place and a used book store. The Cinemas are located on the 6th floor upwards. It's a relatively small cinema house, similar in capacity to the cinematheques in Hong Kong. Their largest cinemas can probably hold 100 or so people.
The seats are comfy and large and the sound is great, equivalent to a premium cinema here. It goes without saying that the picture and projection quality is top notch compared to Philippine cinemas.
Tachikawa City is farther off from the center of Tokyo. It's an interesting place in and of itself, so sightseeing isn't a bad idea. The main thing you might notice in the city aside from its futuristic design is the presence of the Tachikawa monorail which connects the city with other nearby places.
Cinema City is composed of larger, separate buildings. The cafe at the ground floor of the building I went into was closed, but a concession stand is present at the higher floors.
The cinema itself is just as large as the cinemas in Ikebukuro, though the seats are a tad smaller. They are still extremely comfortable, comparable to a premium cinema in the Philippines.
So you go to the ticket counter and do the ticket buying thing (choose a scheduled screening, choose a seat, etc.) If you know basic Japanese it's far easier, though I guess you can get through it if you point and speak broken English.
This particular screening (it was Wednesday) cost 1800 yen (~800 PHP). I'm guessing tax was involved somehow. That's really pricey considering our own ticket prices. As a base price, regular non holiday days cost 1000 yen, while Saturdays cost 1300 yen. There are also discounts for children under 6 months or senior citizens.
Tickets are given to a person near the theater entrance, where they punch a hole on the ticket or tear something off. There are usually a few trailers before the actual movie starts. The Japanese for the most part stay all the way all to the very end of the credits; many stand up only until the entire thing is over. It's also very silent as almost no one talks during the movie.
Local releases can last long in cinemas, with some movies lasting months to even a year in theaters. So what exactly did I watch? Here are some reviews.
* * *
It goes without saying that Chihayafuru is one of my all time favorite manga/anime. Part sports drama, part romance, part slice of life, it's one of the most emotionally charged, touching anime I've ever seen. The sport in question is Hyakunin Isshu Karuta, a Japanese card game with both recreational and competitive elements. It boils down to memorization: someone recites the first half of one of a number of poems (there are 100 in total) then the player has to select the card with the corresponding second half before his/her opponent can. Of course, the manga/anime is so much more than that, giving us relateable characters and seriously affecting drama.
The first part of the live action adaptation adapts most of the furst half of the first season of the anime, while the second part covers the second half. The direction is sound and although the adaptation moves around or omits or changes certain characters, it keeps most of the dramatic arcs intact...
That is, except for one crucial arc of the anime and manga. The live action Chihayafuru skims over most of the flashback story that establishes the deep friendship between protagonists Chihaya, Arata and Taichi. In the anime it's seriously tearjerking stuff and it helps set up most of the subsequent dramatic arcs of the main story. Here, it's touched upon very lightly, so viewers new to the series might not pick up these relationships as well as they should. It's one of the pitfalls of adapting a lengthy work such as this.
Chihayafuru has always been a series about youth and love and finding beauty in those things, reflected in the hundred-year old poems of the Hyakunin Isshu. Though it's a relatively simple series, it does these simple elements extremely well, Much of that, thankfully, translates into the live action adaptation.
The production is buoyed by a great cast. Suzu Hirose is a great choice as Chihaya, playing cutesy and serious at just the right amounts. Shuhei Nomura (who was in last Eiga Sai's Flying Colors) brings out the pathos as Taichi (I ship Chihaya-Taichi, no lie) with Mackenyu (a.k.a. Sonny Chiba's son) rounding up the trio in his role as Arata, though he's underused for most of the first part. Other notable actors include Mone Kamishiraishi (Your Name, among others) as Kanade and character actor Jun Kunimura (Shin Godzilla) as Harada. Composer Masaru Yokoyama (who worked in the anime adaptation of Your Lie in April) brings a lot of emotional heft in these scenes, especially in a crucial moment in the climax of the second film.
Though Chihayafuru (the movie and the anime) has ended, the manga series is still on going. And there's word of an additional live action movie, Chihayafuru Musubi, set to release next year. My hopes are up for a possible third anime season if the movie proves popular enough.
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