Tag: Azuki Terada

Break Free (オドレ！ヤクザ, Yu Nakamoto, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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The yakuza as an institution has long been on the decline in Japan, if not on the brink of extinction, thanks to the various anti-organised crime laws that have come into play over the last few decades. The laws are so stringent that members of the yakuza are unable to open bank accounts, rent property, or even take out a mobile phone contract, making their daily lives almost impossible. Meanwhile, dwindling manpower and changing times have meant that the yakuza cannot make a living from its traditional lines of business and has to look for other ways to earn its keep.

It’s this very problem that’s plaguing the heroes of Yu Nakamoto’s warmhearted comedy Break Free (オドレ！ヤクザ, Odore! Yakuza!) who are all doing various other unsatisfying jobs such as working as takeaway delivery drivers, shopping mall mascots, or running low level romance scams online which seems like a more innocent nod to the reality that the actual yakuza’s main new line of business is scamming the elderly and vulnerable. Then again, most of them are really a little young to have joined the yakuza in its heyday and the film really takes place within the context of more recent straight-to-video yakuza movies. Though it makes frequent nods to the darker side of yakuza life, often for comic effect such as the silhouette of Kunio’s (Akio Fujii) colleague Yama (Shigeo Osako) beating a guy with a baseball bat appearing behind him as he shoots a dance video, our heroes are mainly good guys and hapless fools whose problem is that they can’t let go of their old lives nor can they adapt to the modern society.

The inability to get a legitimate phone is perhaps one reason why 38-year-old Kunio is completely unaware of social media and apps like “TikTak” that are dominated by dance videos. Another thing that yakuza really can’t do any more is harm a member of the public, which is why one slimy guy in a suit thinks it’s a good idea to try and show off to his girlfriend by taunting a yakuza knowing he can’t do anything to him. But Kunio unexpectedly fights back through the medium of improvisational street dance and goes viral for his pains. The clan begin to spot a new, less problematic line of business, but the plan is once again complicated by the fact that yakuza are technically banned from having accounts on those kinds of services as well appearing on television. Kunio, while still a yakuza, has to cosplay as one by pretending that the yakuza thing is just a gimmick to give his dance videos more of an edge. 

Deciding to hone his skills, he ends up in a dance class surrounded by little kids and run by a woman who used to be a backup dancer, but decided she liked teaching more and opened a school. In a way, this echoes Kunio’s journey. Marie’s decision to quit being a backup dancer wasn’t a moment of defeat but its opposite as she actively chose the kind of life she thought would suit her better. Kunio’s friend has already left the yakuza because he wanted to get married but didn’t want his girlfriend to become a gangster’s wife. He is still subject to some of the restrictions placed on yakuza so his life isn’t easy, but he makes a good living with his yakiniku restaurant and is very happy in his marriage. 

The pun of the English-language title refers to Kunio’s efforts to “break free” of the moribund yakuza world through the power of break dancing which not only reconnects him with the unfulfilled desires of his late brother but offers him a path to discovering his true self as he realises that in dance he’s finally found something he actually wants to do. Thanks to an unexpectedly supportive new community around him from Marie at the dance school to a pint-sized aspiring idol and veteran influencer Ririko, Kunio begins to see new possibilities for the future, but the yakuza proves harder to escape than one might first expect. Whether he can ever really “break free” remains to be seen, but even while otherwise imprisoned, dance can be liberating. Trading heavily on the incongruities of its concept, the film is nevertheless warmhearted and sympathetic of its gangster heroes who find themselves cast adrift in a world that no longer has much place for them.

Break Free screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Parades (パレード, Michihito Fujii, 2024)

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Living a life without regrets is easier said than done. The protagonists of Michihito Fujii’s The Parades (パレード, Parade) each have unfinished business that prevents them moving on from this world, but what they discover is an unexpected sense of solidarity among similarly lost souls as they try to lay themselves to rest. After all, all they can do now is observe and reflect while helping others like them with their own lingering doubts and regrets.

Drawing inspiration from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Fujii first introduces us to Minako (Masami Nagasawa). A 35-year-old single mother, she wakes up on a beach and frantically looks for her seven-year-old son Ryo (Haru Iwakawa) little realising that the reason no one seems to be able to hear or react to her is because she’s already dead. Picked up by fellow ghost Akira (Kentaro Sakaguchi), she’s taken to a disused fairground that doubles as a hub for wandering souls. Though it takes her a while to accept her new situation, she gradually bonds with others at the camp each of whom have their own unfinished business which isn’t all that different from her own in that they mostly want to be sure the people they left behind will be alright.

The film takes its name from the monthly processions in which wandering souls meet by lantern light to look for their missing people together. This sense of solidarity and empathy seems to echo the best of humanity along with a melancholy longing. There appears to be little rancour in this afterlife, a yakuza who was killed in a gang war simply feels sorry for his father and so guilty about the girlfriend he left behind that he’s been afraid to face her for the last seven years, and a high school girl who took her own life because of bullying first thinks her unfinished business is vengeance on the bullies but later accepts is actually a desire to apologise to her best friend who then had to take the brunt of the bullies’ cruelty on her own.

What the film seems to say is that we should have more of this fellow feeling in life. Former film producer Michael (Lily Franky) constantly references his days as a student protestor remarking that they might not have amounted to very much but at least they had unity. His regret is less his failed revolution than a moment of emotional cowardice that saw the woman he loved marry someone else instead. Constant references to the end of Casablanca echo their plight as if Maiko (Yuina Kuroshima / Hana Kino) married Sasaki (Ayumu Nakajima / Hiroshi Tachi) for the good of the revolution though she really loved Michael who unlike Rick just walked out on it because in the end he wasn’t brave enough to risk the consequences of its success or failure. 

The world building may not always be consistent and the rules of this universe appear unclear. It seems that in general the ghosts don’t linger long. Even the heavenly liaison Tanaka (Tetsushi Tanaka) appears to have been dead not longer than 40 years with Michael seemingly the only other long-stayer with the others’ deaths fairly recent. In general they are only really waiting for themselves or others, wanting to make sure that their loved ones will be alright in their absence even though there’s nothing more they can do for them now other than observe. Though they can walk through this world and interact with physical objects, their presence is otherwise invisible unless the person they wish to contact happens to be in an altered state. To this extent, the resolution may seem like a bit of a cop-out but does lend an additional poignancy and imply that these lessons learned in limbo can still be taken into the mortal realm creating additional empathy and solidarity among the living so that they may be able to live their lives freely and fully perhaps not entirely without regrets but at least with fewer of those that would prevent them from moving on when their time comes. But even if they find themselves trapped in limbo, they’ll hopefully find others like themselves and a gentle sense of hopefulness about what’s to come even as they prepare to leave this world.

Trailer (English subtitles)