A Fantastic Event at an Abnormal Time

A high school girl's affections are torn between a fellow student and her homeroom teacher in 2017's Daytime Shooting Star (ひるなかの流星). It's a pretty lightweight romantic comedy that very gently flirts with the idea of a high school girl dating one of her teachers, a bit more conservatively than After the Rain. The film is filled with safely cliche beats but the leads are genuinely cute and charming, particularly Mei Nagano as Suzume.

Suzume's a girl from the country who goes to live with her uncle (Ryuta Sato) in Tokyo. She's overwhelmed by the city and faints when she spots a shooting star in the daytime. A scruffy young man catches her who turns out to be a friend of her uncle's--as well as her new homeroom teacher, Shishio (Shohei Miura).

On her first day at school, the nervous but earnest Suzume finds she's also sitting next to a handsome boy named Mamura (Alan Shirahama) who gallantly offers to share his text book with her. But he recoils when she accidentally brushes his hand and cgi gives him a fierce blush. It turns out he's deathly afraid of girls.

Suzume also makes a female frenemy, Yuyuka (Maika Yamamoto), who has a crush on Mamura. In a pretty standard scene, Yuyuka tries to pull a prank on Suzume but, when it looks like she'll be caught in the act, Suzume covers for her, and the two are friends after that. It's amazing how cliches can cross cultural boundaries.

For most of the film, it feels like Suzume's going to end up with Shishio and Yuyuka's going to end up with Mamura. That would be a pretty radical outcome, though, in a country where I just read about the latest four teachers to be arrested for sleeping with students (and I hear about a lot more that don't get caught). It's a sad problem. Girls should be free to innocently fantasise about this stuff without adults who take advantage of their innocence.

I watched this movie because many students recommended it to me in the letters they wrote to me. Now I know why they kept asking me if I like Mei Nagano. She's cute. With her big nose, she kind of looks like Setsuko Hara. For some reason, the kids aren't thrilled when I recommend Mikio Naruse movies from the '50s.

Daytime Shooting Star is available on Netflix in Japan.

The Negative Space of Paradise

Walking in Imai-cho yesterday afternoon, I ran into two of my favourite students from the nearby school. One of them had a little bag marked "chocolat" but when I asked her what kind of chocolates she had she opened the bag to reveal only four volumes of manga. She was reading 約束のネバーランド, known in English as The Promised Neverland. Later that night, I met some elementary school students at a curry shop who also love the series. Yesterday wasn't the first time I'd heard about it, either. Last year, some students in the art club asked me to draw one of the main characters for them. I ended up watching a few episodes of the anime adaptation on Netflix. It's not bad, and pleasingly twisted.

It's about a group of kids who live in what appears to be a very tidy orphanage, only two of them soon discover that kids who get adopted are actually killed and packaged to be devoured by monsters who dwell in the outside world. I really like the second episode where one of the kids points out how little they know based on the limited information they have. They saw one of their friends, who was supposedly adopted, murdered and her body packed into a car operated by monsters with the assistance of an employee at the orphanage. Is this normal or is it just something that happens at this particular orphanage? Are the kids and adults in this orphanage the only humans in a world full of monsters? Is there any point in trying to escape?

It's nice and sinister and I like how it mirrors the anxieties of the kids watching it. Kids who are used to the very monitored and controlled environment of the elementary schools and junior high schools may feel anxieties about the true nature of the outside world their schoolwork barely leaves them time even to think about. What kind of monsters really wait for them and how normal are they?

There's also a live action movie adaptation I'd like to see. But for now I'm watching the anime on Netflix.

Twitter Sonnet #1458

The silver house was really made of tin.
We voyaged up the wooden hill to work.
Adventures wrote themselves to pay the inn.
The knight remains at home and writes his perk.
In growing plants the walls were triple size.
Along the pier the birds could sell a fish.
Giraffes are havens built for extra ties.
Buffets can bury even Banner's dish.
Ceramic foxes bend around the cake.
The lemon frosting crushed the fire weight.
We swam the seas for sickly pilot's sake.
We know a list of what the orca ate.
The bank of motion pictures broke in beams.
A snowy state was kept in movie dreams.

Critical Cats and Promising Birds

This cat continues to mock me. I turned another corner and there he was. What must I do to avoid the censure of his expressive wit, his wicked tongue? I left him some cat treats I've been carrying in my bag but didn't have time to see if he ate them. But why should I care about his approval anyway?!

This is my last week at the junior high school where I've been working. Then it's off to other work for the company that hired me. I didn't anticipate how great this experience would be, how really wonderful these kids are. To-day I did my best to tell one little girl how great her artwork is and I made the dubious choice of encouraging her to make manga. "Too difficult," she said. I told her, "The best work in life is difficult work."

These kids generally seem so much happier than the adults. I hope the machines of life aren't going to crush them a few years down the road.

Displaced Anthems

This is one of my latest doodles from the art club at the Japanese junior high school where I work. I stayed late to-day to help the students clean up. Instead of janitors, in Japanese schools students and staff are expected to clean. On Wednesday, a group of girls in the art club were humming the tune to "The Star-Spangled Banner" so to-day I printed Francis Scott Key's lyrics for them to learn it. They seemed pretty tickled when I sang it for them.

The school where I work is very big so I keep having to make self-introductions to new classrooms even though I'm coming to the end of my fourth week now. One of the questions students often ask me is what anime or manga I like. I change my answer regularly to gauge the popularity of different titles. Everyone's heard of Neon Genesis Evangelion, only two girls had heard of Haruhi Suzumiya, some people knew Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2, not one soul had heard of Cowboy Bebop, not the students or the Japanese teacher. Everyone likes Kimetsu no Yaiba. Though I still wonder if it will be known by students three years from now.

To-day one boy approached me to share his love for Evangelion. I'd heard for decades how popular the series was in Japan but it always seemed incredible that this weird story about traumatised kids in giant biomechanical robots enduring grotesque alien nightmares could have the kind of wide range appeal Star Wars has in the U.S. But it seems too.

Star Wars is well known, too. In fact, every day I leave school while the school band practices "The Imperial March". I reflected to-day on how integral that tune was to my youth and now here it is prominent in my life in Japan. It's weird what things persist in life.

Lone Wolf and Star Wars Digression

In 1970, a manga with beautiful, I'd say just about flawless, artwork debuted called Kozure Okami (子連れ狼), released in English speaking markets seventeen years later under the awkward title of Lone Wolf and Cub. It's been adapted several times to film and television but the manga remains the definitive version, I'd say because of the artwork by Goseki Kojima.

As a comic artist myself, it's the kind of thing that makes me want to give up, it makes me feel like a complete amateur. But I have to remember there are always going to be people out there who are absolute masters and we all have to live in their shadows. Still, jealousy compels me to pick out flaws and I would say Kojima's not the best when it comes to drawing naked women who tend to look suspiciously like wooden marionettes with mosquito bites on their chests.

But I feel a little ashamed of myself even saying that because these drawings get the job done and 95% of the rest of the time every panel is breathtaking, some even more than others.

The lead character, a mysterious ronin, often looks identical to Toshiro Mifune and Kojima's gorgeous depictions of windswept fields and shabby streets clearly look like he'd watched Yojimbo more than a dozen times. But he makes the aesthetic his own, bringing Kurosawa's Hollywood Western inspired samurai into the realm of classical Japanese ink art. I've read the first eight chapters so far and each is essentially a stand alone vignette. The stories are much pulpier than Kurosawa, more like Zatoichi or Lady Snowblood than Yojimbo or Hidden Fortress. The Kozure Okami is proficient and indomitable on a more supernatural level than any of Kurosawa's more realistic protagonists, even Sanjuro.

The Japanese title is much nicer than the English one though it means basically the same thing. But in Japanese you can make simpler adjectives from more complicated ideas than you can in English so "Kozure" describes the "Okami", the wolf, as someone who brings a child with him. This leads to some unwieldy dialogue in the English translation in which it seems the ronin is referred to, by himself, as "Lone Wolf and Cub" and other times it seems to encompass the child as it naturally would in English.

I picked up a copy of the first Dark Horse omnibus at a used bookshop after watching The Mandalorian. The cover features art by Frank Miller from an earlier edition from series' first U.S. release, which is decent art, but can hardly compare with Kojima's. Like many people, I thought The Mandalorian must have been influenced by Kozure Okami, and maybe it was, but there are fundamental differences between the two kinds of storytelling that led me to realise in another way what, precisely, is the problem with Star Wars under Disney. The Kozure Okami works as a hired killer and though sometimes he seems to have his own idea of fair play and kills based on his own desires, he also doesn't seem to react when, after he's been taken captive, an innocent bystander is raped and murdered in chapter 8. He shows a willingness to kill, and does so, even when people might not wholly deserve it. Sometimes he just has to do it to survive and he's clearly made his peace with that fact. Not so the Mandalorian for whom life somehow constantly, conveniently arranges itself so his choice is always between absolute good and absolute evil. Under Disney, Star Wars is about good versus evil and under George Lucas it really wasn't. I say this even as I suspect that there may be an interview somewhere where Lucas himself has said, "Star Wars is about good versus evil," but I think it may be better classified as "Light versus Dark". Disney's sequel trilogy doesn't really acknowledge reasons as to why the Dark Side might be more attractive but this is exactly what makes The Empire Strikes Back the best movie of the original trilogy and it's also one of the best qualities of the prequel trilogy. Yoda describes Vader's choice as taking the "quick and easy" path. This may be Yoda's own bias--Vader's path doesn't look that easy, really, except when it comes to making decisions. The "light" side is filled with internal conflict--Han and Leia have trouble sorting out their feelings for each other, Luke wants to prove himself but struggles with his faith in the Force. Meanwhile, Vader just Force chokes anyone who fails him and moves on to the next task.

Rian Johnson's film implied Luke was wrong to see the Jedi only as the sum of their flaws, hinted at and developed in the prequel trilogy, but Last Jedi, despite being the analogue for Empire, has very little discussion about the relative merits of the Dark and Light sides. But the problems with the Jedi were right there in the original trilogy. Obi-Wan's great line, "“Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view," says it all. Obi-Wan was so comfortable with that fact that he had engineered his own perspective to look at Vader and Anakin as two separate people. He didn't hesitate to tell Luke that Vader had killed Anakin in A New Hope. After all, it served his purpose, to drive Luke in the right direction; he was essentially creating propaganda. So it's no big deal for him to describe Vader as simply, "twisted and evil."

It makes sense for Rise of Skywalker to be about the redemption of the Jedi as an order since, arguably, it was Luke's defiance of Jedi orthodoxy that brought him victory in Return of the Jedi--he dared to believe a Sith Lord could be reclaimed. Redeeming Ben Solo was a good step but it would have been even better to introduce complexity to Palpatine's story. Hopefully there's still time for that.

Twitter Sonnet #1330

Proportion sags behind a wall of milk.
The funny nails returned again to stick.
A car was washed in rags of shredded silk.
Demented fog about the land was thick.
A walking lens deserts the glasses frame.
Deserted screens remember showing films.
For any lump of vision takes its name.
Projector light at sea too often dims.
A laser sound intrudes on cable's night.
A shadow marred the matte behind the glass.
In paint and paper plays beguiled sight.
Electric eyes combine in jelly mass.
Discordant pairs disrupt the gentle reeds.
Distracted thoughts'll sow disturbing seeds.