Tag: 2025

The Final Piece (盤上の向日葵, Naoto Kumazawa, 2025)

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When a body is discovered buried with a priceless set of shogi tiles, it unearths old truths in life of an aspiring player in Naoto Kumazawa’s sprawling mystery, The Final Piece (盤上の向日葵, Banjo no Himawari). In Japanese films about shogi, the game is often a maddening obsession that is forever out of reach. Hopefuls begin learning as children, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, but there’s age cut off to turn pro and if you don’t make the grade by 26, you’re permanently relegated to the ranks of the amateur. 

Junior policeman Sano (Mahiro Takasugi) was one such child and in some ways solving the crime is his final match. The thing is, he loves the game and admires Kamijo’s (Kentaro Sakaguchi) playing style along with the aspirational quality of his rise from nowhere not having trained at the shogi school and turning pro at the last minute to win a prestigious newcomer tournament. He’s hoping Kamijo will win his game against prodigious player Mibu (Ukon Onoe) with whom Kamijo’s fortunes are forever compared. Which is all to say, Sano really doesn’t want Kamijo to be the killer and is wary of accusing him prematurely knowing that to do so means he’ll be kicked out of professional shogi circles whether he turns out to be guilty or not.

Nevertheless, the more they dig into Kamijo’s past, a sad story begins to emerge that strongly contrasts with his present persona, a slightly cocky young man with a silly beard and smarmy manner. While Mibu seems to have been indulged and given every opportunity to hone his skills, Kamijo was a poor boy whose father had drink and gambling problems and was physically abusive towards him. His mother took her own life, leaving Kamijo to fend for himself with a paper round while his father occasionally threw coins at him and railed against anyone who questioned his parenting style. Good intentions can have negative consequences, the landlady at his father’s favourite bar remarks recalling how he went out and beat Kamijo for embarrassing him after another man told him he should be nicer to his son.

Toxic parental influence is the wall Kamijo’s trying to break in shogi. Aside from the man raising him, Kamijo finds another, more positive, paternal figure in a retired school teacher (Fumiyo Kohinata) who notices his interest in shogi and trains him in the game while he and his wife also give him clean clothes and a place to find refuge. But Kamijo can’t quite break free of his father’s hold much as he tries to force himself to be more like the school teacher. As an impoverished student he meets another man, the cool as ice yakuza-adjacent shogi gambler Tomyo (Ken Watanabe), who insists he’s going to show him the “real” shogi, but in reality is little different from his father if more supportive of his talent.

Kamijo finds himself torn between these three men in looking for his true self. Though he may tell himself he wants to be like the schoolteacher being good and helping people in need, he’s pulled towards the dark side by Tomyo and a desperate need for shogi which tries to suppress by living a nice, quiet life on a sunflower farm that reminds him of the happier parts of his childhood. There’s a cruel irony in the fact that the police case threatens to ruin to his shogi success at the moment of its fruition, even if it accompanies Kamijo’s own acceptance of his internal darkness and the way it interacts with his addiction to the game. 

Tomyo’s own obsession may have ruined his life as he looks back over the town where he spent his happiest months with a woman he presumably lost because of his gambling and need for shogi glory even though he never turned professional and remained a forever marginalised presence as a gambler in shogi society. Unlocking the secrets of his past seems to give Kamijo permission to accept Tomyo’s paternal influence and along with it the darker side of shogi, but there’s something a little uncomfortable in the implication that he was always doomed on account of his “bad blood” aside from the toxic influences of his some of his father figures from the man who raised him and exploits him for money well into adulthood, and the ice cool gangster who taught him all the best moves the devil has to play along with a newfound desire for life that may soon be snuffed out.

The Final Piece screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

LUPIN THE IIIRD: The Movie – The Immortal Bloodline (LUPIN THE IIIRD THE MOVIE 不死身の血族, Takeshi Koike, 2025)

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Lupin and the gang find themselves in a race against time after being lured to a mysterious private island in Takeshi Koike’s latest instalment in the classic franchise, LUPIN THE IIIRD: The Movie – The Immortal Bloodline (LUPIN THE IIIRD THE MOVIE 不死身の血族, Fujimi no Ketsuzoku). A sequel to a series of specials, the film opens with a lengthy recap explaining that each member of Lupin’s team has been targeted for assassination and seen off their adversaries using their own particular skills. Now Lupin’s home has been destroyed taking most of his loot with it, so he too is in hot pursuit looking for answers about who might be trying to kill them and why, along with some treasure, of course.

What he discovers, however, is that the island is a kind of graveyard for the unwanted. The place is full of mindless men in masks, the hitmen who didn’t make it reduced to animalistic predation. Disused military equipment scatters the landscape as if in reminder of mankind’s folly. But Lupin (voiced by Kanichi Kurita) is here because according to apparent mastermind Muom (Kataoka Ainosuke VI), he’s trash too and doesn’t belong in the new world Muom is trying to create by making the earth immortal. The air on the island is toxic to people like Lupin and unless he and his friends find a way off it within the next 24 hours, they’re destined to become zombie-like masked men too or else fade away into oblivion leaving not even a legacy behind them. 

The war is then against a notion of obsolescence or the idea that a person can become somehow unnecessary. The gang were followed to the island by Zenigata (Koichi Yamadera) who is still trying to catch Lupin but ends up becoming trapped too. Lupin is obviously very necessary to Zenigata as without him he doesn’t really have a reason to exist. That’s one reason he ends up ironically teaming up with him, protecting Fujiko Mine (Miyuki Sawashiro) and breaking his own code to shoot some bad guys in an attempt to keep Lupin alive to face justice. 

But as it turns out, Interpol might not be the best place to turn for back up as there’s some sort of blackout code on all things related to the island which is marked on no maps. Zenigata’s contact describes it as “sacred” and rather than sending the helicopter he asked for, explains everyone who sets foot on it will have to die because they know too much. As weird as Muom’s plans to make the earth immortal sound, it appears it’s locked into something bigger. All of which is quite good for Lupin who starts to realise there might not be much treasure here after all, but he’s found something more precious in a lead on even greater riches just waiting to be plundered.

This might be his way out of the purgatorial space of the island, the “hell for those burdened by karma” as Goemon (Daisuke Namikawa) describes it, in kicking back against Muom’s plans by identifying his nature and, quite literally, heading straight to the heart of the matter while reclaiming his identity as the gentleman thief from those who think he’s an unwelcome presence. Returning to the lair, he burns the history of himself and declares that life is a fiction to be enjoyed while immortality is a worthless gift that robs existence of its meaning. Separated on the island, the team must face their personal traumas alone before reuniting to try and figure out how to defeat their seemingly immortal captor and fight their way off the island before being consumed by its toxic gases.

The last in Koike’s Lupin cycle, the film is, in some ways, intended as a prequel to Mystery of Mamo, the very first Lupin anime released in 1978. As such it continues the style Koike has established in the series so far complete with kinetic action sequences and retro jazz score. Though this may seem like the end of the line for the gentleman thief, it is really just another beginning in returning the franchise to its point of origin. Lupin is, in a sense, reborn to steal back everything that was taken from him, with Zenigata hot on his heels and the world set to rights again, saved by his very particular brand of chaos.

LUPIN THE IIIRD: The Movie – The Immortal Bloodline opens in UK cinemas 21st February courtesy of Anime Limited.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © MP / T

Nemurubaka: Hypnic Jerks (ネムルバカ, Yugo Sakamoto, 2025)

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Is it better to have a goal and know what you want, or is it easier to be just kind of muddling along? The heroines of Yugo Sakamoto’s oddly titled slacker comedy Nemurabaka: Hypnic Jerks (ネムルバカ) are coming at this from opposite sides. Ruka (Yuna Taira) is a rock band and her dream is to make it as a musician, though she isn’t really sure she has what it takes, while Yumi (Shiori Kubo), though in some ways the more sensible of the pair, has no idea what she’s doing with her life.

The fact that Yumi addresses Ruka only as “sempai” bears out the ways in which she feels slightly inferior to her, and, in fact, to everyone. As she says to Ruka, it’s like everyone else has a foot on the ladder, but she can’t even see where the ladder is let alone climb it. Ruka offers to split her pay for polishing up some ornaments for a friend who works as a maid at a posh person’s house as long as she does half of it, adding that now at least Yumi’s on the bottom rung while simultaneously trying to make her an equal. While Yumi idolises Ruka, Ruka seems to be jealous of Yumi’s carefree nature and relative lack of impetus. 

Then again, the way she seems to quickly shut down anyone making romantic overtures towards Yumi along with her habit of gazing at her while she’s asleep may suggest another kind of desire. The gazing turns out to have a practical dimension, at least, that somewhat dissolves the disparity as it’s Yumi who has facilitated Ruka’s art and, to an extent, all her songs appear to be about her. This may be what she means when she tells Yumi that she’s very important to her to try and quell her feelings of low self-worth and inferiority. Nevertheless, this notion of being somehow lesser is only reinforced by the intrusion of a guy, Taguchi (Keito Tsuna), who pretends to have romantic interest in Yumi but is in reality after Ruka who exploits him for free food and the use of his car. 

Exposed, Taguchi calls Yumi “low-tier” and “a simpleton”, but inexplicably still expects Ruka to date him despite having just confessed to using her friend and then insulting her as part of a botched apology. Part of the problem is that Taguchi is a spoiled rich kid who doesn’t understand how the world works. He has a useless GPS device installed in his car featuring a maid-style character who deliberately gives rubbish directions because men like him generally prefer women to be stupid and cute even though he’s set his sights on Ruka who is moody and rebellious. While the girls are humming and hawing over a new rice cooker and going hungry at the end of the day, he’s obsessing over getting a new outfit for his GPS mascot. His comparatively more sensible friend who sort of mirrors Yumi indulges in superhero fantasy and is jealous of Ruka because of her certainty about her path in life even if Ruka is anything but certain in her ability to follow it.

It’s that sense of uncertainty that, in a way, convinces her to accept an offer of a record contract despite the fact they only want her and not her bandmates while she’ll also have to move out of the flat she shares with Yumi to go to Tokyo. She admits that she’d like to live this aimless life with her for longer, but is frightened of becoming stuck and never able to progress to anything else. But the price of that is she ends up making soulless idol pop for the commercialised music industry despite having been signed for a punk anthem about youthful despair. Yumi may be the “sleeping idiot” of the title in a more literal sense, but perhaps Ruka isn’t really fully awake either but allowing others to lead her towards what she should want but perhaps really doesn’t. In any case, unlike similarly themed films, this one doesn’t really lean into the idea that an aimless life is fine itself but encourages Yumi and the others to try and find a sense of purpose as she becomes a “sempai” herself, if also maintaining the courage to walk away from a compromised vision of success that isn’t at all what they wanted.

Nemurubaka: Hypnic Jerks screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Images: © Masakazu Ishiguro, Tokuma Shoten_Nemurubaka Film Production Committee

Petals and Memories (花まんま, Tetsu Maeda, 2025)

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In many Japanese family dramas, there is an inherent sense of impending tragedy born of the notion that one family must necessarily be broken for another to be formed. Cultural sensibilities might insist that someone can only be part of one family at any time and any attempt to play a part in another is an act of betrayal. But reality is not so clean-cut and just because a woman gets married, it doesn’t really mean that she becomes a stranger to the people who raised her nor that they must completely sever ties with her even as they wish her well as she transitions to a new stage of life.

This is though what older brother Toshiki (Ryohei Suzuki) fears in Tetsu Maeda’s supernaturally tinged familial drama Petals and Memories (花まんま, Hanamanma). Adapted from a short story by Minato Shukawa, the story has an old-fashioned quality in which it could easily have been set back in the Showa era were it not for the fact that Kiyomi, the spirit that his sister Fumiko (Kasumi Arimura) claims to carry, was killed in the climatic year of 1995 which saw both the Kobe earthquake and sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. In any case, Toshiki has a distinctly Showa-era vision of masculinity and remains incredibly protective of his sister even if Fumiko has moved up in the world with her job in a university and engagement to a young professor who has the ability to converse with crows.

After their truck driver father was killed in an accident and their mother passed away in Toshiki’s teens, he’s essentially been forced into a parental position. Toshiki left school early and got a job in the factory where he still works in order to fulfil his father’s dreams of sending Fumiko to university. As such, he occasionally paints himself as a martyr and is keen to remind people how difficult it was for his mother to raise them on her own and that he’s sacrificed his future to provide for Fumiko. Her upcoming marriage is then to him a minor betrayal even if it’s also, culturally speaking, the fulfilment of his parents’ hopes for their daughter and thereby the end of his obligation.

The problem with that is Toshiki himself doesn’t have much of an identity outside of “big brother,” and is unable to see Fumiko as anything other than his little sister. When she tells him that she has memories of a previous life, he rejects them and says that he can’t bear to see his sister as “someone else”, repeatedly reasserting that she’s the daughter of his parents rather than those of Kiyomi. But Fumiko is also fiancée to Taro (Oji Suzuka) and friend to Komako (First Summer Uika). As she tries to counter him, more than anything she is simply herself which is something else Toshiki rejects in his categorisation of her only as his sister. Nevertheless, when she tells him that interacting with Kiyomi’s grieving father Mr Shigeto taught her what it was like to have a father seeing that she has no memory of her own is insensitive given that Toshiki has essentially been a father to her for most of her life. 

In clinging to his identity as a big brother, Toshiki may really be attempting to stave off his own fear of orphanhood as a man with no other family, but what he’s forced to reckon with is that his sister is “someone else” after all and not merely an extension of himself. In coming to terms with Kiyomi’s presence and extending compassion to her bereaved family rather than reacting in fear that they were trying to take his sister away from him, Toshiki begins to realise both that he didn’t actually raise Fumiko all alone but benefitted from the extended family of a community and that in her marriage his world is actually expanding rather than contracting. As the old adage goes, he’s not losing a sister so much as gaining a brother. In the “hanamanma” flower bento of the Japanese title, it becomes clear that Kiyomi’s love for her family transcended death and that she is not really lost to them even this most final parting but remains with them in spirit and memory. 

Petals and Memories screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Blue Boy Trial (ブルーボーイ事件, Kashou Iizuka, 2025)

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The police of mid-1960s Japan have a problem. They’re desperately trying to clean up the streets. But they keep running into transgender sex workers whom they can’t arrest because the working of the anti-prostitution laws explicitly targets women only, and in legal terms the people they’re picking up are regarded as male, so they have to release them. Knowing they can’t touch the women, a resentful police officer decides to go after the doctor who treated them instead.

Inspired by a real-life incident, Blue Boy Trial (ブルーボーイ事件, Blue Boy Trial) examines the social and legal repercussions of the actions taken against Dr Akagi (Takashi Yamanaka) after he was charged with supplying drugs illegally and breaking the anti-eugenics legislation by performing sterilisations while treating transgender people. Though Akagi agrees to plead guilty to the drugs charge, he refuses to move on eugenics, insisting that the surgery he performs is a legitimate medical practice that has nothing to do with any eugenicist ideology. The lawyer appointed for him, Kano (Ryo Nishikido), has an uphill battle ahead but hopes he can convince the judges by putting some of the women Akagi helped on the witness stand, to show that the treatment he gave them was medically necessary.

But part of the problem is necessarily that many of these women work in the sex industry. They aren’t respected, and their testimony won’t be either. That’s why Kano is keen to get Sachi on board seeing as she lives what the court will consider a conventional, “respectable” life like any other woman’s. Nevertheless, his request is insensitive and he appears not realise what exactly what he’s asking. If Sachi (Miyu Nakagawa) takes the stand she will be outing herself and putting the life she’s managed to build on the line. One of the other women Kano asks to testify takes her own life after being described as “mentally ill” in court and accosted by a drunk man outside it. When a picture of Sachi and her partner Akihiko (Ko Maehara) is featured in a newspaper report, she’s fired from her job in a cafe with her manager (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) accusing her of “fraud” for having responded to a job ad that clearly stated it was for “women only”.

Even Kano, to begin with, repeatedly refers to the women as “he” and uses slur words to describe them. Focussed more on winning the case, he pursues avenues that are offensive such as characterising the surgery as treatment for a mental health condition, asking why they “decided” to become women, and probing them on intimate details such as their sexual experiences as “men”.  Aside from prejudice towards the LGBTQ+ community, these attitudes also hint at the latent misogyny in the wider society which is still defined by traditional gender roles. Tokita (Junpei Yasui), the conservative prosecutor, makes a fairly nonsensical point about all the men who died in the war, accusing the women of being “selfish” and unpatriotic in giving up their manhood while panicked that transgender people threaten the very fabric of society as if he were worried that every man secretly wants to be a woman. In her emotional testimony, Sachi rejects his insistence on a socially defined gender binary and states that conforming to what he defines as a woman would also be inauthentic. What Akagi’s surgery helped her become was only her true self.

To that extent, Sachi’s partner Akihiko (Ko Maehara) is also unmanned by virtue of his disability. He too experienced prejudice and could not beat “small-town life”, much like Sachi in having been excluded by his otherness. He knows all about Sachi and has accepted her, presenting her with a ring though they cannot be legally married, but even in the big city they cannot find the freedom to live happy quiet lives. Sachi’s friend Ahko (Sexy Izumi) agreed to testify to claim the right to live well for the younger generation, so they could be free to live their lives without having to hide. The fact that Akagi is found guilty may not be surprising given the nature of the law as it was, though it did in a round about way legitimise the idea of confirmatory surgery as a legitimate medical procedure by suggesting guildelines to be followed in order for it to take place legally. Nevertheless, the first fully legal surgery did not take place until 30 years later, while those like Sachi continued to face prejudice and were forced to live their lives without the ability to be fully themselves. Even so, Sachi at least seems to have found her own happiness and fulfilment despite the social hostility that haunts her existence.

Blue Boy Trial screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © 2025 “Blue Boy Trial” Film Partners

A Bad Summer (悪い夏, Hideo Jojo, 2025)

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A well-meaning social worker finds himself dragged into an exploitative yakuza scam after trying to expose a colleague’s misconduct in Hideo Jojo’s adaptation of the novel by Somei Tamehito, A Bad Summer (悪い夏, Warui Natsu). Sasaki’s (Takumi Kitamura) colleagues are beginning to doubt he has what it takes for the job primarily because he is “too nice” and has trouble dealing with those who, to his superiors at least, are obviously misusing the system to claim benefits they aren’t entitled to. According to his hard-nosed colleague Miyata (Marika Ito), social welfare exists for those who find themselves “unavoidably” thrown into dire living conditions, which necessarily implies a degree of moral judgement on her part, while Sasaki is it seems keener to give people the benefit of the doubt and wants to try to help them even if it turns out they have been defrauding him.

“We must survive as bulwarks against moral decay,” Miyata intones, somewhat ironically, while pointing out that people who misuse the system make everything more difficult for “honest” clients. Sasaki later asks what exactly her morality is, but all she says is that the rules are the rules and any breach of them should be punished. The real world, however, is rarely so black and white. The truth is that it’s become too difficult to survive in this capitalistic society and a regular job alone no longer pays enough to support a single person let alone a family. 

While Sasaki falls deeper into an abyss of exploitation, a widowed single mother struggles to find a job while caring for her son that will keep them fed and a roof over their head. A woman at the factory where she eventually finds employment tells her about the welfare system, but she says she feels bad about taking other people’s money. That she later succumbs to shoplifting out of desperation suggests it was more the shame, humiliation, and stigma that kept her from applying. When she does eventually ask for help, she finds Sasaki in a downward spiral shouting at her for being an irresponsible mother and emphasising that benefits are only for those who’ve exhausted all other options, which she of course has, but is still made to feel like criminal just for reaching out. Though she is a prime example of the people they exist to help, Sasaki turns his back on her with potentially tragic consequences.

Other people had suggested to the widow that she simply remarry, laying bare to the extent to which women are still expected to remain economically dependent on men even in the 21st century. Another single mother, 22-year-old Aimi (Yumi Kawai), was convinced to apply for benefits by her friend Rika (Yumena Yanai), a bar hostess in a similar situation, but is sexually exploited by her case worker Takano (Katsuya Maiguma) who threatens to expose that she’s been working more ours than permitted meaning her benefits would stop. It’s also Rika who convinces her to get her yakuza boyfriend Ryu (Masataka Kubota) involved to sort out Takano, but he has another clever plan to use Takano as part of a popular yakuza scam in which they round up homeless people who may not know the benefits system exists and get them to apply so they can take most of their money while housing them in shelters they own. The plan is foiled when Miyata claims to have received a tip-off about Tanako exploiting his clients and enlists Sasaki to help investigate.

Sasaki seems genuinely interested in Aimi’s welfare along with that of her five-year-old daughter Misora which makes him the target of a side scam being run by Yamada (Pistol Takehara), one of his own clients who’s been fraudulently claiming on the grounds of an old back injury. The tragic thing is that Aimi, who seems to have had a disordered childhood herself, positively responds to the compassionate care offered by Sasaki who drifts into a relationship with her that is romantic and borderline inappropriate, though he is not her social worker and hasn’t done anything wrong. Aimi begins to see a more settled, ordinary life for herself which is eventually disrupted by destructive force of yakuza violence as Ryu forces Sasaki to process claims for the homeless people he’s exploiting. 

The wretchedness of his situation begins to destroy Sasaki’s integrity, which was according to Miyata their only real weapon against those who cheat the system. Unable to tell whether Aimi’s feelings for him were ever genuine, something she isn’t entirely sure of either, he sinks into a moral abyss having become all too aware of the chain of exploitation which exists in the contemporary society. The farcical, expressionist conclusion may signify that even when you fight back, nothing really changes and the only people who lose out are the most vulnerable, but there does at least seem to be a better life in sight for Aimi and Misora having escaped at least of the forces which were constraining them.

A Bad Summer screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Love Doesn’t Matter to Me (愛されなくても別に, Aya Igashi, 2025)

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Two young women find solace and solidarity in each other after escaping toxic familial environments in Aya Igashi’s adaptation of the novel by Ayano Takeda, Love Doesn’t Matter to Me (愛されなくても別に, Aisarenakutemo Betsuni). Though some might say that parents always love their children even if that love was not conveyed in the optimal way, the two women struggle with their contradictory impulses in craving the love of a parent who in other ways they know is past forgiveness.

The problem for Hiiro (Sara Minami) is that the roles have become reversed. She is effectively the parent of her irresponsible mother (Aoba Kawai) who treats her like a housekeeper and is intent on exploiting her labour. Hiiro’s mother didn’t want her to go to university and is still charging her rent and board to live at home while Hiiro works several part-time jobs to jobs to support them. She believes that her mother lives beyond her means, but is unaware of the extent to which she’s been financially abusing her by keeping both the child support her absent father had been sending and the student loan she’d taken out as a safety net. Having to work so hard also means that Hiiro is tired all the time and is prevented from taking part in normal university life or social activities which leaves her unable to make friends. At times she resents her mother so much she’s worried she might end up snapping and killing her to be free, but at the same time loves her and therefore puts up with her ill-treatment.

Enaga (Fumika Baba), meanwhile, is ostracised because her father is on the run after killing someone, though the reason she is resentful of her family is a history of sexual abuse and exploitation that have left her feeling worthless. As she later says there’s no point comparing your unhappiness to that of other people, otherwise you just end up making yourself more miserable as if you were trying to win an unhappiness competition. Nevertheless, learning of Enaga’s situation wakes Hiiro up to the possibility that other people are unhappy too and her life may not have been as comparatively bad as she felt it to be in the depths of her isolation. 

Yet what both women seem to crave is the positive maternal relationship they’ve each been denied. Hiiro gets to know another student, Kimura (Miyu Honda), who also has no friends partly owing to a judgemental attitude and poor social skills whom she later discovers to be from a wealthy background despite her being desperate to find a job and working alongside Hiiro at the convenience store. Kimura resents her mother (Shoko Ikezu) for being overly controlling and possessive. She’s come all this way to university to escape her, yet her mother calls every few hours and is angry if she doesn’t answer and makes frequent visits leaving Kimura with no freedom or social output. To Hiiro, Mrs Kimura’s actions seem to come from an obviously loving place and she might have a point that Kimura is naive, having been kept sheltered all life by her own helicopter parenting, which is why she’s been sucked into a cult. Hiiro sees in Mrs Kimura the love and affection she’d have liked from her own mother and is jealous rather than seeing how seeing Kimura feels suffocated and is driven to despair in being unable to escape her mother’s control.

Lady Cosmos (Yoko Kondo), the cult leader in whom Kimura has found salvation, tells each of the girls that they were loved by their imperfect parents and ought to love them back, but they seem to know better. Though she makes some perspicacious comments, Lady Cosmos also tells them exactly what they want to hear and attempts to occupy a more positive material space to be the loving mother they never had. But, of course, not so different from Hiiro’s mother, she’s bleeding Kimura dry by forcing her to pay extortionate amounts for readings and holy water. Ironically she’s still controlling her much like her own mother had, but Kimura thinks she’s found freedom in cult and resents any attempt to undercut Lady Cosmos’ belief system even if she’s at least on one level forcing herself to believe it rather than being a true believer. 

What might be surprising is that the two women effectively break free of the “cult” of family in accepting that their parents aren’t good for them and the decision to cut them out of their lives is valid rather than the breaking of a taboo or an unnatural rejection of the sacred bond between a mother and a child. Instead they effectively remake the image of family for themselves as one of mutual solidarity and unconditional love between two people who aren’t related by blood but have discovered a much deeper bond rooted in shared suffering.

Love Doesn’t Matter to Me screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Strangers in Kyoto (ぶぶ漬けどうどす, Masanori Tominaga, 2025)

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A former capital city, Kyoto is renowned as a historical centre and seat of tradition. But on the other hand, no one wants to live in a museum and while some of these old-fashioned ways of life might seem quaint or comforting, they’re also burdensome and for some an unwelcome imposition. Madoka (Mai Fukagawa), the wife of the 14th heir to a Kyoto fan seller is full of earnest wonder, but she’s also an outsider here and bringing with her own preconceptions and anxieties. 

To begin with, she’s come as a kind of cultural anthropologist directly interviewing local people to gain material for the manga she’s drawing with a friend. When one of the ladies she’s talking to explains that she runs a cafe in a former bathhouse that’s been sensitively adapted so that his traditional space can find new purpose in the modern world, Madoka is visibly disappointed which of course causes offence to her interviewee. Something similar happens when she interviews a woman running a traditional sweet shop who explains that their top-selling items are their halloween specials. They no longer sell anything that would have been on sale when the shop opened a few centuries ago. 

Madoka, who is not from Kyoto, is obsessed with preserving the city’s “true face” and fails to see that these businesses have survived because they’ve been able to adapt to the times when others could not. Repurposing old buildings to house modern businesses is one way of keeping the city alive. Meanwhile, she idolises her mother-in-law’s traditional lifestyle, but is after all experiencing it from the perspective of a guest. It may very well be much nicer to eat rice cooked over an open flame, but she’s not the one who’s got to get up early to stoke the fire or spend hours stirring the pot. She takes her responsibility as the wife of the 14th heir so seriously in part because she doesn’t understand what it entails. Her husband, Mario, meanwhile is keen to remind his mother that he has a life in Tokyo and won’t be returning to take over the shop, at least as long as his father is alive. 

Mario tries to warn Madoka about the complex nature of Kyoto social etiquette, but she fails to understand and makes a series of embarrassing faux pas that gradually destabilise the local equilibrium. In Kyoto, a particular brand of politeness rules in which one’s true feelings are never expressed openly but only through barbed comments that everyone nevertheless understands. So, when someone wants you to know that the party’s over and it’s time you went home, they’ll politely ask if you want any green tea over rice. This level of subtlety is lost on Madoka who comes from a city where size of the community means you have to be explicit.

It never really dawns on her that mother-in-law might have become so fed up with her that it’s easier just to sell the house and end 450 years of tradition than to tell her go home. Then again, it seems like she may be missing some social cues in Tokyo too, while it’s also fairly obvious in any culture that putting her awkward interactions into the manga could end up upsetting those around her. They do, after all, have a point that it’s inappropriate for her to make herself the self-appointed guardian of a place she’s isn’t from and doesn’t live in, disregarding the thoughts and feelings of those who do (not that they really told her what they were). 

Perhaps as she said she’s beginning to understand Kyoto in this regard by fighting back passive aggressively to claim her right to take over the fan shop. She might have a point about the comparatively ugly and utilitarian apartment blocks taking over the city as old buildings are bulldozed to make way for the new, but on the other hand it may not be possible to continue this business as it is and simply bringing in more tourists who’ll just clutter up the place and not buy anything may not be the answer. What the answer is may not be clear, but Madoka at least seems to have found her little niche in the heart of Kyoto, even if it is no longer so polite as to keep its irritation to itself.

Strangers in Kyoto screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©2025 Strangers in Kyoto Film Partners

Streaming (스트리밍, Cho Jang-ho, 2025)

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There’s a kind of collective fantasy that lies at the centre of live-streaming. A bargain between the streamer and the viewer not to break the illusion, but the power dynamics between the two are vague and shifting. The viewers give “stickers” to express their appreciation or try to manipulate the streamer, while the streaming tries to fulfil the viewer’s wishes in the hope of getting more stickers without being too obvious that they’re letting the viewers lead them by the nose.

What Cho Jang-ho’s Streaming (스트리밍) suggests is that the snake is eating its own tail and the desire for streaming success has led the streamers to make ever more questionable decisions and the viewers to demand increasingly extreme action which may cause harm to the streamer or others. There are several points at which we might wonder why Woo Sang (Kang Ha-neul) does not appear to have alerted the police nor do his viewers do so for him. They sit and watch passively while another streamer apparently gets up and takes her own life, some wondering if what’s just happened is for real and they ought to try calling someone or if it’s just another bit.

We might even wonder if any of this is “real” or just a game being played for the benefit of the viewers who each join in with what amounts to a kind of scavenger hunt as Woo Sang tries to track down a missing streamer, Matilda (Ha Seo-yoon), who went missing after he recruited her to help him investigate a series of murders. In his interactions with Matilda, we can see Woo Sang’s own insecurity. He’s clearly brought her on as a glamorous assistant, but she keeps upstaging him and he’s finding it increasingly hard to hide his irritation. When they role play what they think might have happened between the killer and his victim after they snuck out of a nightclub, he takes things too far and shows a dangerous capacity for misogynistic violence. Some of the viewer’s concerns that he may have harmed Matilda in some way in revenge for her taking the lucrative top spot on the streaming charts away from him may be understandable.

But at the same time, Matilda doesn’t quite seem to be on the level either and may, in fact, be using Woo Sang to further boost her popularity and stay number one which would allow her to keep 100% of takings rather than pay the 50% commission to the streaming service. Despite his critiques of other streamers, Woo Sang too is shown to be an amateur detective exploiting the serial killer case for his own gain while somewhat cavalier about Matilda’s safety after using her in his video. In truth, solving the serial killer case might be quite bad for his business because without it Woo Sang wouldn’t have any more material for his show. But then, while shows like this exist, content may also rise to meet them and the film almost implies that true crime gives rise to a kind of bloodlust that simultaneously glorifies the host and the killer who are profiting in terms of notoriety even if the streamer is taking all the money. 

“When interest becomes excessive, it turns into an obsession,” Woo Sang tells his viewers somewhat disdainfully of a man who may have become fixated on the public image of “Matilda”, though it might as well apply to himself and his audience of armchair detectives. “Staging means death,” he intones, though there’s no way to know he hasn’t made all this up himself and it wouldn’t really be surprising given the streamers’ obsession with being number one. Some of the viewers maybe be sceptical, but the truth is they’re all playing this game too and it’s all good fun until it’s not, leaving Woo Sang and his audience in way over their heads. Or then again, maybe his old-fashioned battle of wits with a Moriarty-like killer is just that, which would explain Woo Sang’s strange conviction that he will honour the terms of their agreement not to kill Matilda until the deadline expires even though Woo Sang thinks he’s seen through his attempt to throw him off the tracks. A little muddy in its messaging, the film nevertheless makes plain that it’s Woo Sang that has become dangerously obsessed and deluded by the persona he’s crafted for himself into believing that he alone can bring a killer to justice.

Trailer (Korean subtitles only)

Another World (世外, Tommy Kai Chung Ng, 2025)

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The Another World (世外) in title of Tommy Kai Chung Ng’s animated adaptation of Saijo Naka’s novel SENNENKI -Thousand-year Journey of an Oni-, most obviously refers to that beyond our own which belongs to the dead and those who exist outside of time, but it also hints at the other worlds that might be possible if only we could find ways to channel our negative emotions into something more positive rather than allowing ourselves to be consumed by rage and resentment.

As Soul Keeper Gudo (Chung Suet-ying) says, the seeds of evil lie within us all though he does not necessarily believe that they destroy humans, rather that they may also push us to survive. Throughout his wandering adventures, the souls he encounters are angry for reasons that are not irrational but a natural consequence of the world in which they live. Goran is a powerless princess resented by her subjects for being the apparent victim of a curse. She blames herself for her mother’s death in childbirth and is consumed by feelings of worthlessness even before her father the king dies and riddles the court with conspiracy. Coming to believe that he was murdered, her rage blossoms turning her into a cruel despot inflicting crazed violence on her subjects until eventually fleeing the palace. Flower City is reduced to Wheat Village where the farmers are pressed by the occupying force which demands half of their already poor harvest and does not much care if they starve to death despite warnings that they won’t eat either if the peasants are either too weak or too dead to farm the land.

It’s starvation that is really the true evil most particularly when it is caused or exacerbated by human greed and cruelty. Echoing Yuri (Christy Choi Hiu-Tung), a young girl who does not know she is dead and is intent on finding her brother from whom she has been separated, Gudo makes this simple act of sharing food a means of connection and identification. Farmer Keung, meanwhile, believes that he can only free the village by becoming a “Wrath”, a creature of indiscriminate violence that arises when the seeds of evil blossom and threatens to destabilise both this world and the other. Gudo tries to dissuade him, showing him that those who succumb to their rage and anger often end up harming those closest to them no matter how much they say they’ll be different. But Keung’s eventual conviction that their salvation lies solidarity and standing together against the oppressive regime eventually backfires when they’re betrayed by its duplicitous soldiers. Ying too, a young orphan exploited as child labour and forced to work in a factory during the Industrial Revolution, witnesses someone close to her literally consumed by the machinery.

The film does not suggest that this rage is wrong or misplaced, only that giving in to it is a choice that only puts more fear and evil out into the world. Gudo suggests the solution is solidarity after all in that anyone can offer salvation, but it also requires time and faith in one’s self. His various charges must learn to forgive themselves before they can let go, lay down their burdens and prepare for reincarnation. This is really the only way it is possible to endure this impossible world, which is not to say that it cannot be changed or resisted but that the means of resistance is to live in the better world that does not yet exist rather than succumb to violence which will result only in more of the same.

Beautifully animated, the film appears to draw inspiration from the work of Studio Ghibli including a few homages in particular to Castle in the Sky, though relying more on verbal exposition than purely visual storytelling or thematic resonance. Nevertheless, there is something satisfying in the depiction of resentments as a series of knots to be untied leading to a gradual liberation as if symbolising the work to be done. The closing scenes perhaps imply that this world cannot be cured, even if the other one may be, but is not itself without hope, and that whatever else may be human warmth and the desire for the world to be better will endure.

Another World opens in UK cinemas 29th February courtesy of Central City Media.

UK trailer (English subtitles)