sh15uya = haruki murakami + kamen rider
Okay. So I'll admit it. I gave in and saw all 13 episodes of the Sh15uya fansub today.
I...I think I'm kind of close to bawling.
At first I thought this would just be another awesomely cheesy modernized tokusatsu show, with the powered jumpsuits and the amusing exaggerated melodrama and the rhythmically choreographed fight scenes. And, well, I was right. But then romance subplots started to sneak in, and it got all crazy allegorical and shit--and by the end there was a genuinely beautiful and compelling story. And not just beautiful and compelling by tokusatsu standards (which, if you grew up watching Power Rangers or Kamen Rider, isn't a hard mark to reach), but some seriously amazing storytelling by any genre standard. Color me impressed--these folk have really raised the bar for how seriously I am willing to take a live-action superhero show. Despite the cheesy low-budget CGI and the bizarre decision to cast a female actress for the male lead, this show manages to succeed in exactly the territory where the Casshern movie failed.
And the magical realism element...oh man. As I've said before, Japanese magical realism is the best kind of magical realism. America? Saddle up--we've got high standards to surpass.
Without giving anything away (because you really don't want to be spoiled for this show), it's also interesting how reminiscent this show is of TWEWY, and not just because both were inspired by real-life Shibuya's myriad subcultures. There's a Neku, a Shiki, a Joshua, a Beat, even a Kitanji and a Mr. Hanekoma...not like those archetypes were original to begin with, but I suppose they speak best to what the average Tokyo screenwriter thinks of when he or she thinks of Shibuya. It's interesting how the same inspiration in the hands of two different creative teams produces two very different stories with a very similar cast of characters.
Not much more I could say about the series without spoiling anything, so I'll close with two observations that should already be obvious to anyone who's seen the show:
1. Ema is fucking badass. (Up yours, Japanese gender tropes!)
2. Mike Musashi, the half-Japanese half-white guy who plays Peace, is the coolest angel of death evar--even when he's speaking nonsense Japanese in a silly American accent. I'm sure he's all scary and Other-ish to Japanese audiences, but to me he's just half-naked Batman.
I...I think I'm kind of close to bawling.
At first I thought this would just be another awesomely cheesy modernized tokusatsu show, with the powered jumpsuits and the amusing exaggerated melodrama and the rhythmically choreographed fight scenes. And, well, I was right. But then romance subplots started to sneak in, and it got all crazy allegorical and shit--and by the end there was a genuinely beautiful and compelling story. And not just beautiful and compelling by tokusatsu standards (which, if you grew up watching Power Rangers or Kamen Rider, isn't a hard mark to reach), but some seriously amazing storytelling by any genre standard. Color me impressed--these folk have really raised the bar for how seriously I am willing to take a live-action superhero show. Despite the cheesy low-budget CGI and the bizarre decision to cast a female actress for the male lead, this show manages to succeed in exactly the territory where the Casshern movie failed.
And the magical realism element...oh man. As I've said before, Japanese magical realism is the best kind of magical realism. America? Saddle up--we've got high standards to surpass.
Without giving anything away (because you really don't want to be spoiled for this show), it's also interesting how reminiscent this show is of TWEWY, and not just because both were inspired by real-life Shibuya's myriad subcultures. There's a Neku, a Shiki, a Joshua, a Beat, even a Kitanji and a Mr. Hanekoma...not like those archetypes were original to begin with, but I suppose they speak best to what the average Tokyo screenwriter thinks of when he or she thinks of Shibuya. It's interesting how the same inspiration in the hands of two different creative teams produces two very different stories with a very similar cast of characters.
Not much more I could say about the series without spoiling anything, so I'll close with two observations that should already be obvious to anyone who's seen the show:
1. Ema is fucking badass. (Up yours, Japanese gender tropes!)
2. Mike Musashi, the half-Japanese half-white guy who plays Peace, is the coolest angel of death evar--even when he's speaking nonsense Japanese in a silly American accent. I'm sure he's all scary and Other-ish to Japanese audiences, but to me he's just half-naked Batman.