A lot of Filipinos might be familiar with the tokusatsu series Ultraman, where a giant space alien karate chops other space aliens for the sake of mankind. However, Ultraman is actually the second Ultra TV series ever produced; the first series is a strange kaiju/Outer Limits/Twilight Zone hybrid called Ultra Q. Running for just about six months in the mid 1960's, the series was groundbreaking in the way it did special effects, blending cinematic techniques with TV, as well as pulpy, radically different storytelling, especially compared to the Jidaigeki dramas of the time.
Tsuburaya productions showed several episodes of Ultra Q, restored and enhanced to 4K definition, in one of the festival sections. Each episode is followed by a documentary discussing the impact of Ultra Q and anecdotes about the production of the series. The interviews are varied and interesting: it appears that most of the staff of Ultra Q were young people in their 20s or 30s, and most had come from the movie industry.
As for the episodes themselves, I managed to catch episode 19 of the series, Challenge from the Year 2020. It's a strange, body snatchers-flavored episode that is equal parts silly and awesome. It also features a neat monster whose design is top notch even among other kaiju of the era. Audience members were given a pamphlet promoting a DVD set of the whole series restored to super high definition; one hopes English subtitles are part of the offering.
The 2019 film Miyamoto (also known as Miyamoto kara, kimi e) is actually the sequel to a TV mini-series of the same name, which is itself a manga adaptation of a Hideki Arai 1990's manga. This was a fact that I didn't know going into this film, but aside from a few side characters and background information on the protagonists, one can get by with just this film.
Miyamoto the movie flits between past and present - beginning with the titular character (Sosuke Ikematsu) bloody and missing a few teeth, and bringing his girlfriend Yasuko (Yu Aoi) to his parents with the intention to marry. There's more: Yasuko is pregnant. But there's more to this than meets the eye: flashbacks gradually show the sequence of events that lead to this event, and things are far more darker than it seems.
If you've heard of Hideki Arai somewhere before in this blog, you're right: Ara's other well-known work is Itoshi no Irene, whose movie adaptation released a few years ago (the two movies even share the same production companies.) Like Itoshi no Irene, Miyamoto brings with it the same problems as its sister manga: dated views of masculinity and poor, even cruel treatment of its female characters. It's sure to polarize audiences, especially non-Japanese audiences who are unfamiliar with the source material. Interestingly, the film subverts the trope of the white knight doing everything for the girl he loves: in one revelatory moment, Miyamoto states that everything he does in the film is for his own selfish desire for justice.
It's bound to make more than a few people uneasy, and as with most of Arai's works, unease is the main tool of Miyamoto. The film is shrill, violent, messy, even gory. The protagonists are good people deep inside, but they are heavily flawed, emotionally messed up individuals. These are exceptional performances, especially Yu Aoi who really breaks out of her comfort zone for some intense emotional and physical scenes.
Strangely enough, Miyamoto ends in a hopeful note, still done in the loud and screamy tone that it has sustained for the past two hours (neighborhood associations in real life would've thrown a fit by this time for all the noise). It's a hard pill to swallow, but there's something interesting in there for those who can stomach it.
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