Yôkai daisensô/The Great Yokai War (2005)
This is the first film by Takashi Miike that I've seen. While I've been intrigued by what sounded like a pretty crazy sense of humor, he has mostly worked a horrific, grotesque vein that doesn't interest me whatsoever. (sneerpout's description of Audition was enough to send me scrabbling under my bed to hide amongst the dust bunnies for weeks.) But this movie was described as HR Pufnstuf on acid, which sounded like exactly my kind of thing. The friend who described it thus burned a DVD-R from what was, knowing him, probably a bootleg, so the image isn't the greatest, but I enjoyed the movie so much that I'll be getting it on commercial DVD. Probably from Hong Kong, considering how the modern film market seems to work.
Which is to say that The Great Yokai War hasn't gotten a US release, although it has played at festivals. It's possible that it will be called The Big Spook War if it does get released here. It is putatively a remake of a 1968 Daiei film of the same Japanese name, which is called Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare in the US. The Daiei film was the second movie in a trilogy, and after watching Miike's film the first time, I got the older film on DVD as well. While the movies share some yokai characters and a general story of the yokai fighting against an evial villain, the details are completely different.
Apparently both the original trilogy and Miike's movie are heavily influenced by manga artist Shigeru Mizuki. I also got a heavy impression of Miyazaki, and it turns out that Spirited Away features yokai as well. Yokai are variously called spirits, demons, or goblins. They are a category of supernatural creatures that are generally considered dangerous to humans. The movies are horrific to a certain degree, but they also play up the goofy side of these beings. One that is featured in both versions is an umbrella with one leg, two arms, and a big tongue. Both also have a kappa, which is a turtle-like water imp, and both also have a creature that looks like a beautiful woman that can send its head out on a long snakelike neck. The yokai come from Japanese folklore, and you can find old prints of them on the web. I particularly like this one of the Kappa.
Miike's movie is in many ways a standard story of the little boy from a troubled family who is tapped by mysterious forces to save the world with a big magic sword. However, then there's the "on acid" part. There's a lot of fairly creepy atmosphere that would make me think twice about showing this to my youngest nephew. There are gruesome bits (although not bad by my hypersensitive standards), scary bits (ditto), and strange hints of sexuality with the two hot babes in the movie (one a villainess with a monstrous beehive do, one a river yokai with pointy elfin ears). The forces of evil are melding yokai with discarded machinery (in an overt environmentalist statement) and transforming them into murderous robots in a process that is genuinely disturbing. But while it hits all of the genre formulas with utmost and even moving sincerity, it also mocks them at the same time. The torture of a cute little furry yokai pal, complete with bright yellow goo for blood, is hysterically funny, even as it plays out its standard role in the plot. There is also a use of a mushroom cloud explosion that is so ballsy, especially coming in a Japanese movie, that it about knocked me out of my chair. The climactic battle between good and evil is played as a goofy send-up of outdoor musical festivals, with moshing and crowd surfing -- more like a battle between the evil and the stoned.
Of course, movies are mainly about the visuals for me, and the visual imagination in this movie is wild. The 1968 movie climaxes in a riot of what seems like hundreds of different yokai, and Miike ups the ante by creating the impression of millions of them. The sheer variety of yokai designs is mind-boggling and eye-thrilling. One reason I want to see this in a better version is because he also seems to be doing very interesting stuff with CGI. (The movie was apparently financed as a high-budget response to Western CGI-fests like the Harry Potter movies.) It isn't used just to animate yokai, but also in almost impressionist ways to create evolving, layered smears of vibrant color as special lighting effects. The production design is a heady, postmodern mishmash of styles and references, and the camera moves are straight out of the cartoons. In a lot of ways, this is CGI anime, but with lots of physical props and makeup and costumes too.
It's a visual feast, a zany cartoon with bleeding puppets, and a long strange trip through the underworld of the imagination. As much as I enjoyed big budget Hollywood cartoons like Batman Begins and Hellboy last year, dis is da bomb. Anybody have a copy of Miike's Zebraman that I can borrow?
Which is to say that The Great Yokai War hasn't gotten a US release, although it has played at festivals. It's possible that it will be called The Big Spook War if it does get released here. It is putatively a remake of a 1968 Daiei film of the same Japanese name, which is called Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare in the US. The Daiei film was the second movie in a trilogy, and after watching Miike's film the first time, I got the older film on DVD as well. While the movies share some yokai characters and a general story of the yokai fighting against an evial villain, the details are completely different.
Apparently both the original trilogy and Miike's movie are heavily influenced by manga artist Shigeru Mizuki. I also got a heavy impression of Miyazaki, and it turns out that Spirited Away features yokai as well. Yokai are variously called spirits, demons, or goblins. They are a category of supernatural creatures that are generally considered dangerous to humans. The movies are horrific to a certain degree, but they also play up the goofy side of these beings. One that is featured in both versions is an umbrella with one leg, two arms, and a big tongue. Both also have a kappa, which is a turtle-like water imp, and both also have a creature that looks like a beautiful woman that can send its head out on a long snakelike neck. The yokai come from Japanese folklore, and you can find old prints of them on the web. I particularly like this one of the Kappa.
Miike's movie is in many ways a standard story of the little boy from a troubled family who is tapped by mysterious forces to save the world with a big magic sword. However, then there's the "on acid" part. There's a lot of fairly creepy atmosphere that would make me think twice about showing this to my youngest nephew. There are gruesome bits (although not bad by my hypersensitive standards), scary bits (ditto), and strange hints of sexuality with the two hot babes in the movie (one a villainess with a monstrous beehive do, one a river yokai with pointy elfin ears). The forces of evil are melding yokai with discarded machinery (in an overt environmentalist statement) and transforming them into murderous robots in a process that is genuinely disturbing. But while it hits all of the genre formulas with utmost and even moving sincerity, it also mocks them at the same time. The torture of a cute little furry yokai pal, complete with bright yellow goo for blood, is hysterically funny, even as it plays out its standard role in the plot. There is also a use of a mushroom cloud explosion that is so ballsy, especially coming in a Japanese movie, that it about knocked me out of my chair. The climactic battle between good and evil is played as a goofy send-up of outdoor musical festivals, with moshing and crowd surfing -- more like a battle between the evil and the stoned.
Of course, movies are mainly about the visuals for me, and the visual imagination in this movie is wild. The 1968 movie climaxes in a riot of what seems like hundreds of different yokai, and Miike ups the ante by creating the impression of millions of them. The sheer variety of yokai designs is mind-boggling and eye-thrilling. One reason I want to see this in a better version is because he also seems to be doing very interesting stuff with CGI. (The movie was apparently financed as a high-budget response to Western CGI-fests like the Harry Potter movies.) It isn't used just to animate yokai, but also in almost impressionist ways to create evolving, layered smears of vibrant color as special lighting effects. The production design is a heady, postmodern mishmash of styles and references, and the camera moves are straight out of the cartoons. In a lot of ways, this is CGI anime, but with lots of physical props and makeup and costumes too.
It's a visual feast, a zany cartoon with bleeding puppets, and a long strange trip through the underworld of the imagination. As much as I enjoyed big budget Hollywood cartoons like Batman Begins and Hellboy last year, dis is da bomb. Anybody have a copy of Miike's Zebraman that I can borrow?