Teenage girl rebels against family and finds a job at a maid cafe-that’s one way to describe the 2021 Japanese film Ito.Game Pass is great, and in the very short space of time since I got my Xbox Series X and have been involved, has completely justified my jumping to Xbox after four day-one PlayStation generations before it! Actually, it was the main justification for it! However, this isn’t some sordid tale of a young woman fallen from grace. Instead, it’s an exploration of Japan’s cultural traditions, and outer prefectures that you don’t often see in cinema. Ito’s title comes from its protagonist, a girl named Ito Soma. She’s really good at a variety of music called Tsugaru-shamisen that’s a centerpiece of local culture in her native Aomori prefecture (in the north of Japan). However, Ito has significant anxiety about playing in public, and feels ashamed by her regional Aomori dialect. Pining for self-transformation, she ends up getting a job at a maid cafe (a wholesome one) and learning about life from the people she meets there. Though Ito might feature some highly specific Japanese traditions, it managed to gain a decent amount of festival distribution in New York, Hawaii, and more. Japanese title: きまじめ楽隊のぼんやり戦争 | Director: Akira Ikeda | Starring: Kou Maehara, Hiroki Konno, Hiroki Nakajima | Genre: Drama, Experimental, Comedy, War The film also won the Audience Award at 2021’s Osaka Asian FIlm Festival in Japan. Movies critiquing militarism are part and parcel of Japanese cinema, given the nation’s pacifist legacies in the wake of WWII. The Blue Danube continues this tradition in its own absurdist, artistic way. This 2021 Japanese film examines war through the perspective of two towns on opposite sides of a river. Every day, these towns wake up and start shooting at each other-though nobody really knows why. When a bugler named Tsuyuki is assigned to play in a marching band, he begins to play the Blue Danube Waltz by the riverbank whilst wondering what people in the other town are like. The Blue Danube proceeds almost like a series of episodic sketches. It’s reminiscent of a Samuel Beckett play-full of boredom and bleakness, yet somehow still able to find humor amidst it all. It’s no wonder the film did decently on the festival circuit, screening at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Japan Cuts, among others. Japanese title: 花束みたいな恋をした | Director: Nobuhiro Doi | Starring: Masaki Suda, Kasumi Arimura | Genre: Romance If you’re someone who enjoys independent, experimental films, The Blue Danube is worth a watch. Masaki Suda and Kasumi Arimura are two of Japan’s most popular actors they unite for the 2021 romance film We Made a Beautiful Bouquet. Suda and Arimura respectively play a man named Mugi and a woman named Kinu. One day, the two meet after missing the last train home. However, the movie starts five years after that encounter, and establishes that their relationship will not last. What makes this film interesting, then, is its exploration about the ephemerality of love and happiness, and how that fleeting nature imbues relationships with meaning.įurthermore, We Made a Beautiful Bouquet offers a realistic, modern take on the challenges of romance. The film dives into the character’s financial issues and professional obligations, offering a welcome respite from the sudden cancer diagnoses or memory loss-inducing car accidents that often plague East Asian melodramas.
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