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Thursday, November 07, 2019

Dispatches from Tokyo International Film Festival 2019: Human Lost

Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human is considered one of the most highly regarded Japanese novels. For the 110th year of Dazai's birth, Polygon Pictures (the studio behind Blame! and the Godzilla trilogy) makes Human Lost, a sci-fi flavored retelling of the original novel. This is not the first time that the novel has been adapted; the film has been adapted in film more than once, as part of an anime series, and even into several manga.

There's considerable worldbuilding behind the film: in the near future, disease has virtually been made extinct thanks to a society-wide health care system. This has led to some unforseen side effects, and the divide between rich and poor has only widened thanks to the corporatization of the system.

Despite the sheer volume and quality of care taken in crafting the film's dystopian world, the film does not do anything with it and the proceedings come across as pretty standard. Its hero, named after Dazai's novel's own protagonist, is as run of the mill as they come, a 'chosen one' fated to change the world forever. It's not exactly detrimental to the experience, but one hopes the story matched the ambition of the film's worldbuilding.

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