Lost In Translation Lost In Translation
Sep
16
2005

TIFF Report: The Great Yokai War Review

Posted by Todd Brown at 10:59am.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Asia, Toronto Film Festival 2005.

yokaistill.jpg

Ah, Miike. Always unpredictable, (almost) always entertaining. A new Miike film is an event these days and his big budget kids film The Great Yokai War is no exception. It’s a film that we’ve been following around here for quite a while now and judging by the packed house at last night’s Midnight Madness screening we weren’t the only ones anticipating this one. The verdict? It’s not quite the all around success that last years Zebraman was but it’s still an awful lot of fun.

The film revolves around the titular yokai and a young boy named Tadashi. The yokai are major figures of Japanese folklore, spirits that inhabit virtually everything. Some are friendly, some are not, but they are all around us. The villainous Kato, who was once human but has become a demon, is incensed at the way humans use and discard everyday items - in effect using and discarding the yokai who live within those items with no regard for the yokai’s feelings - and is determined to bring retribution. With the help of the beautiful and menacing Agi - played by the fantastic Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill and Battle Royale fame - Kato rounds up as many of the yokai as he can and forcibly joins them to discarded pieces of machinery, a process that transforms them into hideous killing machines that he plans to unleash on humanity.

Who can stop Kato’s abuse of the yokai and prevent the destruction of humanity? That task falls to Tadashi. A young bo of ten or eleven Tadashi has moved into rural Japan with his mother following his parents’ divorce, with his sister and father staying behind in Tokyo. He is a quiet, sensitive boy, teased ruthlessly by his classmates and frequently mistaken for his dead uncle by his eccentric grandfather. When Tadashi is selected the Kirin Rider at the local village festival he becomes, by default, humanity’s chosen savior and must travel up the Goblin Mountain to the Great Goblin’s cave and retrieve the magical sword that will help him to defend the land.

Miike’s unstoppable energy and bizarre sense of humor are on full display here. The yokai themselves - classic characters such as the kappa and tanuki to the hysterically funny wall yokai which is nothing more than a wall with arms and legs sticking out to the yokai who does nothing but wash and count his beans - are visual gold in Miike’s capable hands. Necks extend wildly, a rice paper wall grows eyes in every panel, an umbrella hops around dangling it’s enormous tongue ... you can never be certain what’s around the next corner. He breaks out all the tricks in the book, from high gloss CG to low tech sock puppets and hits absolutely all stops in between. The film is loaded with his bizarre bursts of humor - Tadashi’s grandfather is good for a handful of baffling non-sequitors - and he has a pair of absolutely brilliant villains in Kato and Agi.

Where the film stumbles somewhat is in its young lead. Not that the actor playing Tadashi is weak - he seems quite good, actually - but Miike gives him very little to do. The basic range goes like this: look surpised and yell, look scared and yell, look angry and yell. And sometimes cry because peopel are mean to you. That’s a lot of yelling from the central character and it becomes a bit one-note after a while. As always Miike is to be congratulated for sneaking a surprising amount of subtext into the film - Tadashi dealing with his family’s break up and what it means to grow up are major threads - but he unfortunately undercuts himself by leaving Tadashi rather two dimensional for long stretches of film. A fun film and wildly entertaining for the most part but it doesn’t quite reach the stature of truly top flight Miike.

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Reader Comments

  1. logboy 09/16/2005 @ 12:39pm

    how visually rich is the film and hows its style in comparison to the visuals of other miike movies? from the english-language trailers that turned up recently, it looks strangely colorful and quite detailed rather than stripped down as miike often is. i would also be interested to see how loose or tight the narrative structure is - like ‘the way to fight’ or something a lot looser like ‘rainy dog’ often feels? what ever happens, i am still fascinated to see it sometime in the future ... always worth a watch, takashi miike.

    oh, and it seems there is a sequel in the works according to one comment posted on the site in the recent past. if its miike again, i dont know. and its good to hear you mention the umbrella with tongue drooping out - see him in Pom Poko too : yokai seem to be age-old designs…

    good review.

  2. Todd Brown 09/16/2005 @ 1:07pm

    The visuals are very rich and very detailed. A really interesting mix of high and low tech effects, and very densely packed with images. It’s really definitely Miike, but I can’t really think of anything else he’s done that’s visually comparable ... it’s by far the highest budget he’s had to work with and all the extra money went on the screen. Narrative’s tight, moves quickly, good tempo throughout. The only complaint I have is that the kid was just too screamy ... it wasn’t a huge distraction but enough of one to knock the film just slightly out of the real top tier of Miike stuff ...

    Oh ... and Colin confirmed that Miike is shooting the new Ultraman film right now ...

  3. Ronin 09/16/2005 @ 1:20pm

    Is Miike shooting a new Ultraman film, or just doing the episodes of ULTRAMAN MAX (the latest Ultraman TV series) that he was slated to do?

  4. Edweird 09/16/2005 @ 1:23pm

    I’m curious to see the comparison to the original Yokai spirit movies. I thought this film was supposed to be a retelling of Spook Warfare, but it’s not.

  5. LT Roberts 09/16/2005 @ 2:13pm

    I was at MM last night as well. I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of all of Miike’s stuff, but this one held some interest for me from the first time I saw it mentioned here on Twitch.

    I have to admit that I felt a little let down by the ending of the film. I did like it, but the beginning started out so much stronger and I felt that the film devolved into cliches by the ending (some, but not all of it. Some of it was just bizarre (’beans as saviour?!’), but I have come to expect that from Miike. The man is nuts, in a glorious way. Who else puts so many blatant sexual allusions in a kid’s film? Makes me wonder if this was truly a kids film… but that aside, the start of the movie through ‘til about the 3/4 mark was great, but I felt that it just sort of slid from there. The ending felt rushed and Tadashi sort of becomes secondary - losing the focus on the supposedly main character to me is a bit of a no-no.

    I didn’t really mind the actor that played Tadashi, but I agree with Todd, Miike left him with little to do and it became rather paper-thin, when there was enough setup at the outset to make him much deeper as a character. I wasn’t a fan of all of the make-up effects either. The low-budget stuff, although having cult-factor, just popped me out of the experience. The stop-motion machines, however, were damn cool. And rather nasty for a supposedly children’s movie! Colin was right about one thing, if this was marketed the same way here, there’d be a lot of North American kiddie’s getting f***d up from this thing. Talk about your grade A nightmares!

    Overall, I liked ‘Yokai’, but didn’t love it. I agree, not top shelf Miike, but worth a watch nonetheless. Wildly imaginative, pretty straightforward story (minus the obtuse ending) and a hearty nod to anime for certain.

  6. Kurt 09/16/2005 @ 4:59pm

    Ditto on Todd’s and LT Roberts words. It was a blast, loaded with creativity, wildly unpredictable (including the well foreshadowed, but not entierly successful ending) but had too many chase scenes and some over-reaching CGI which reminded me of Stephen Sommers (this is never a good thing!!).

    Overall passing grade, but Zebraman had way more soul.

  7. Todd 09/16/2005 @ 6:10pm

    The Ultraman thing is a new feature ... the TV shows are a go as well, but I guess the last theatrical did good enough business for them to do it again ...

  8. logboy 09/17/2005 @ 1:26am

    glad to hear Miike is doing a film for ULTRAMAN as well as a MAX episode. i think the you lad who plays the lead in YOKAI is in his first leading role in a live action movie here? he was one of the lead voices in SPIRITED AWAY too, as i remember it being mentioned when he took the YOKAI role… perhaps it really is japans answer to Harry Potter?…

  9. Todd 09/17/2005 @ 8:19am

    Kid’s definitely skilled and I think we’ll see a lot more of him, it’s just that his part was under-written. As for the Harry Potter thing I think this is a little too odd to really have that sort of impact. I imagine it’ll do well in Japan but it won’t really export outside of the current Miike cult worldwide ...

  10. chick 09/18/2005 @ 6:17am

    I was fidgeting non-stop throughout this movie. I noticed a guy down on the main floor of Ryerson fidget so much that he had to stand off to the side lol for the rest of the movie. I think I would’ve enjoyed this movie more if it was made into an anime. This just didn’t do it for me.

  11. logboy 09/18/2005 @ 9:35am

    you know, i think there is an old yokai anime show - i keep seeing pictures that appear to be one around at japanese sites…

  12. Kurt 09/18/2005 @ 9:11pm

    The film does run overlong by about 15 minutes.

  13. Takashi 03/06/2006 @ 12:13am

    A great movie!! Miike does it again!
    -----

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