ryuganji: film news from japan

If you haven’t already, take a squiz at Philip Brasor’s Japan Times article on the 40th anniversary of the anime version of Mizuki Shigeru’s classic manga “Gegege no Kitaro”, which was adapted into a largely forgettable yet commercially lucrative film last year. Its sequel “Gegege no Kitaro: Sennen no Noroi Uta” (something like ‘Song with the Thousand-Year Curse’) opens on July 12th and most likely won’t do its source material justice either, but at least this series of stills of the new supporting cast showcases some impressive creature makeup. Click on the numbers to flick through the pics.

2: Wentz Eiji as Kitaro and Kitano Kii as Kaede
3: Oizumi Yo as Nezumi Otoko and Tanaka Rena as Neko Musume
4: Hazama Kanpei as Konaki Jiji, Kitano Kii, Muroi Shigeru as Sunakake Baba
5: Oizumi, Kitano, Wentz
6: Terashima Shinobu as Nure Onna
7: So Ji-sub as Yasha
8: Sasano Takashi as Ido Sennin
9: Sano Shiro as Jakotsu Baba
10: Ogata Ken as Nurarihyon
11: Kamiji Yusuke as Satori
12: Brother Tom and Hoshino Aki as Mr. and Mrs. Takekiri Tanuki
13: Komoto Junichi as Biwa Bokuboku

The wildly varying quality of the new additions is fairly representative of the various commercial entanglements driving ‘blockbuster’ filmmaking in Japan. On one hand you have established actors like Terashima Shinobu (”Vibrator”), Hagiwara Masato (”Cure”), Sano Shiro (”United Red Army”) and Ogata Ken (”Vengeance is Mine”); then you’ve got up-and-coming idol Kitano Kii whose main claim to fame is starring in a popular commercial for bug bite lotion, a South Korean star trying to break into the Japanese market in So Ji-sub, and a host of familiar faces from TV variety shows such as singer Brother Tom, flavor-of-the-month “idiot” quiz show contestant Kamiji Yusuke, one half of the Jicho Kacho comedy duo Komoto Junichi, and impossibly buxom ageing lad mag model Hoshino Aki.

The sequel sees Kitaro and high school girl Kaede team up to solve a mystery: young women are disappearing on rainy nights after hearing the familiar refrain of the Kagome song, leaving behind only scatterings of silver scales. They discover that it’s the work of an evil spirit revived after 1,000 years, and the only way to stop it is by gathering a number of ancient musical instruments. But at the heart of the conundrum is a tragic tale of forbidden love between yokai and human…