Japan Film Festival Online 2022 - Awake, Time of Eve

 

In the West, narratives about AI tend to have certain connotations built into them, in that these AIs tend to be malevolent, or they grow beyond their programming to annihilate humanity (whether with malice or not, that's beside the point.) In the context of AI defeating humans in sports, Western films and documentaries are lowkey horror stories about the relentless march of computers in the race to best the best human minds (such as 2017's AlphaGo) or conspiratorial films looking at the "human element" involved in the use of such machines (such as 2003's Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine.)

All that said while Atsuhiro Yamada's Awake, also based on a true story, seems similar to Game Over, it's actually a coming of age story about two people who view the game of Shogi (basically Japanese chess) in markedly different ways. For Eiichi Yokota (Ryo Yoshizawa), the game is something to be mastered; the purity of a perfect move that can beat even the best human masters is his ultimate goal. For Riku Asakawa (Ryuya Wakaba), it's simply winning and facing strong opponents. They've been on each others' minds for a while now (Eiichi more than Ryuya) and this leads to an inevitable showdown as Ryuya faces off against Awake, a computer program designed by Eiichi.

What follows is a relatively low key state of affairs as Eiichi and Riku train and deal with their own personal and sports-related problems to prepare for the final showdown. It's not as energetic as other sports movies, even Japanese sports movies - closer to Fumihiko Sori's 2002 film Ping Pong (though not as good). The AI here is more of a tool (and in a way, an avatar for Eiichi himself, as Eiichi's own character flaws are reflected in his creation). Ultimately, like most films of its kind, the journey is far more important than the destination.

Unlike their humanity-eradicating siblings in media both domestic and otherwise, the A.I. in Yasuhiro Yoshiura's Time of Eve are benevolent and benign, only wanting to live their lives in peace. They follow Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, and are fully devoted to their masters, even if they are treated with indifference or even malice. To allow them to operate without restrictions and prejudice, cafes were created so that they can express themselves and interact with others. After growing suspicious of his family's android servant, high schooler Rikuo comes across one of these cafes: Time of Eve.

Yoshiura has a knack for attentive worldbuilding, tending to sprinkle little details about the world that rewards the repeat watcher. Not only that, he also inserts many small references to the science fiction works that inspired the work itself.

The movie is stitched from a series of original net animation videos, and despite attempts to make the movie flow better by adding new scenes, its stitched-together nature shows. The film feels more like a series of vignettes about the people Rikuo meets inside the cafe and their relationships with fellow androids and other people, and Rikuo's own relationship with his android Sammy. The vignettes are generally good, but the film egregiously fails to let its characters have a genuine moment by inserting comedy in some of its most serious scenes.

The film doesn't have a true dramatic arc; it ends with a lot of questions unanswered. Ultimately the whole affair feels like a slice of life more than anything else, and while that approach isn't bad per se, there are some elements to the storytelling that Yoshiura has done better in his other, subsequent works.

Japan Film Festival Online 2022 - Patema Inverted, Happy Flight

 

Here are some more reviews of films from the ongoing Japanese Film Festival Online:

Beginning as a four episode ONA (Original Net Animation),  Yasuhiro Yoshiura's Patema Inverted is high-concept science fiction anime  film with a lush and vast world and spectacular worldbuilding. Princess Patema is an adventurous girl who lives in an underground city. One day she falls from one of the city's endless pits and finds herself upside down, about to fall into the sky (it makes sense once you see it). Thankfully a boy, Age, manages to catch her and hide her from the authorities of his dystopian government. According to that government, people like Patema are sinners and must be eliminated to preserve societal harmony.

What follows is a fun, almost Ghibli-esque adventure as Patema and Age learn the truth of their world. It's all fun and interesting stuff, but what sets Patema Inverted apart from its Ghibli counterparts are the characters. The film tries its darndest to pair the two protagonists with each other, but they barely interact before one is kidnapped. If anything, Age has more interactions with another underground dweller, Porto, than Patema herself. Perhaps the film would have been better served in a longer, serialized format, but the filmmakers had to make do with what they had. That said, many filmmakers (including Yoshiura himself, in his later works) have done so much more with less.

As a work of animated art, the film is wonderful. Yoshiura uses the most of the "inverted" gimmick to disorient viewers both literally and figuratively - the third act twist, in fact, is almost worth the watch for that alone. Unfortunately Yoshiura hasn't been making a lot of stuff since this film and Time of Eve, as he mostly made short films or helped out with big films like one of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, so this is a prime time to check some of his works out.

Air travel brings with it a certain kind of nostalgia nowadays, since most people don't have the urge to go on a trip either because travelers generally don't want to risk it or many places aren't open for tourists. 

Happy Flight, a relatively early film from Shinobu Yaguchi (Waterboys, Survival Family) evokes a time that seems so distant considering the world we live in now: a time when air travel was unconstrained and a regular part of daily life. As many other reviews have no doubt noted, the poster is misleading: this is not a romantic comedy featuring Haruka Ayase and Seiichi Tanabe, but an ensemble piece. In fact, Ayase (perhaps the most high profile actor in this ensemble today) has only a minor arc compared to the arcs of the other characters.

The film follows a group of workers in the air travel industry as they handle a flight from Haneda to Honolulu. And it's not limited to the people inside the aircraft, either: everyone from air traffic controllers on the ground, to check-in staff, to flight planners, to mechanics, to people scaring away birds from the runway - all of them have a story here. Just as people say it takes a village to raise a child, it takes something even bigger to fly a plane.

Though the film only touches lightly on interpersonal relationships (to be fair, I don't think the film has time for that given how many characters it has) it hyperfocuses on the many interconnected parts that guide a plane through the skies. Through that, Yaguchi still manages to tell some interesting stories: Haruka Ayase as the inexperienced but well meaning flight attendant, Shinobu Terajima as a veteran guiding Ayase's character, Ittoku Kishibe as an old pro trying to get used to computerization as air traffic management moves towards the digital age.

With an engrossing third act, Happy Flight is a late 2000s classic and one of the festival's most entertaining films. Give it a try if you have the time.

Japan Film Festival Online 2022 - Oz Land, Sumodo

 

The Japan Film Festival Online is currently ongoing with its 2022 edition, featuring some well-known classics, films from past festivals and new gems waiting to be discovered. Join me as I talk shortly about selected films from this year's edition.

An eternal staple of Japanese film festivals and eigasais past are what I call "ganbatte!" films, where a newbie is introduced to a new job that is completely out of their element, learns the ins and outs of that job and learns to love it.

Oz Land in particular is about Kurumi Namihira (Haru), a hapless hotel employee who gets assigned to an amusement part in the sticks. She isn't particularly versed in amusement park operations so she struggles to get used to the job, but there's something rewarding about making people happy that eventually appeals to her.

The film seems to veer into romcom territory by introducing the character of Ozuka (Hidetoshi Nishijima of Drive My Car fame), who is responsible for most of the park's more interesting ideas. But ultimately the focus is on how Kurumi gets used to the job. 

Unlike other similar films, however, the film doesn't feel as immersive, and the sense of community is very limited, even within the scope of the handful of employees running the park. A crucial pair of pranks that bookend the film would probably be okay in Japan, but would be quite a bad look anywhere else.

Still, it's a pretty fun watch especially for fans of the two leads, who deliver fine performances and is worth the watch if only for that.

Sumo Wrestling is a sport that's not as well known outside Japan as other sports, but this documentary shows, it's a serious discipline that deserves attention. Sumodo follows sumo wrestlers from two different stables as they train and prepare for an eventual clash at Kokugikan Arena.

The training is brutal, even when compared to other martial sports: hours of continuous sparring and training with nary a break in between. It's far from the stereotypes that western media has presented to us, and there's a reason why these men are so massive but rarely have any problems with that weight gain until they stop competing. I do have some reservations with how the wrestlers fight through their injuries to compete - an attitude taht is dangerous for any sport - thankfully it hasn't resulted in any permanent damage to them.

The film also looks at the lives of these wrestlers outside their martial discipline, limited as it may be. There are hints detailing how training has changed over the years, in terms of public perception (training before was harsher on the mental health of the trainees) and it would have been an interesting subject to delve into, but the coverage does not dig too deep into it.

Sports in itself is storytelling, and the intersecting paths of the Sumo wrestlers create some amazing stories, twists and comebacks that one would think would only happen in the imagination of a creative writer. All in all, it's a fun ride.