Tag: Yua Shinkawa

What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? (老後の資金がありません！, Tetsu Maeda, 2021)

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A minor controversy erupted in Japan in 2019 when then finance minister Taso Aso issued a statement recommending that couples should have 20 million yen (£104,620 total at the time of writing) saved for their retirement on top of the state pension in order to live a comfortable life in old age. All things considered, 20 million yen actually sounds like quite a low sum for two people who might live another 30 years post-employment. Nevertheless, Atsuko (Yuki Amami) and her husband Akira (Yutaka Matsushige) are now in their mid-50s and don’t have anywhere near that amount in savings. They’re still paying off their mortgage and though their children are grown-up, neither of them seem to be completely independent financially and both still live at home. 

Tetsu Maeda’s familial comedy What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? (老後の資金がありません！, Rogo no shikin ga arimasen!) explores the plight of the sandwich generation which finds itself having to support elderly relatives while themselves approaching retirement and still needing to support their children who otherwise can’t move forward with their lives. Seeing an accusatory ad which seems to remind her personally that even 20 million yen isn’t really enough when you take into consideration the potential costs of medical treatment or a place in a retirement home, Atsuko has a sudden moment of panic over their precarious financial situation. The apparently sudden death of Akira’s 90-year-old father acts as a sharp wake up call especially as Akira’s apparently very wealthy but also selfish and materialistic sister Shizuko (Mayumi Wakamura) bamboozles him into paying for the entirety of the funeral while pointing out that they’ve been footing most of the bill for the parents’ upkeep over the last few years.

There was probably a better time to discuss the financial arrangements than with their father on his deathbed in the next room, but in any case Shizuko doesn’t pay attention to Atsuko’s attempt to point out they’ve been chipping in too. Akira’s mother Yoshino (Mitsuko Kusabue) also reminds them that their family was once of some standing and a lot of people will be attending the funeral so they need to make sure everything is done properly. The funeral arranger is very good at her job and quickly guilts Atsuko into spending large sums of money on pointless funeral pomp to avoid causing offence only to go to waste when hardly anyone comes because, as she later realises, all of the couple’s friends have already passed away, are bedridden, or too ill to travel. 

Yoshino is however in good health. When Shizuko suddenly demands even more money for her upkeep, Atsuko suggests Yoshino come live with them but it appears that she has very expensive tastes that don’t quite gel with their ordinary, lower-middle class lifestyle. Having lived a fairly privileged life and never needing to manage her finances, Yoshino has no idea of the relative value of money and is given to pointless extravagance that threatens to reduce Atsuko’s dwindling savings even more while in a moment of cosmic irony both she and Akira are let go from their jobs. Now they’re in middle age, finding new ones is almost impossible while their daughter suddenly drops the bombshell that she’s pregnant and is marrying her incredibly polite punk rocker boyfriend whose parents run a successful potsticker restaurant and are set on an elaborate wedding.

The film seems to suggest that Atsuko and Akira can’t really win. They aren’t extravagant people and it just wasn’t possible for them to have saved more than they did nor is it possible for them to save more in the future. Instead it seems to imply that what they should do is change their focus and the image they had of themselves in their old age. One of the new colleagues that Akira meets in a construction job has moved into a commune that’s part of the radical new housing solution invented by his old friend Tenma (Sho Aiwaka). Rather than building up a savings pot, the couple decide to reduce their expenses by moving into a share house and living as part of a community in which people can support each other by providing child care and growing their own veg. Yoshino too comes to an appreciation of the value of community and the new exciting life that she’s experienced since moving in with Atsuko. It may all seem a little too utopian, but there is something refreshing in the suggestion that what’s needed isn’t more money but simply a greater willingness to share, not only one’s physical resources but the emotional ones too in a society in which everyone is ready to help each other rather than competing to fill their own pots as quickly as possible. 

What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

From Today, It’s My Turn!! (今日から俺は!! 劇場版, Yuichi Fukuda, 2020)

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The high school fighting manga has long been a genre mainstay but perhaps hit peak popularity in terms of the big and small screen during the Bubble era with such well known hits as Sukeban Deka and Beb-Bop High School. More recent treatments have frequently bought into the genre’s inherent absurdity such as the contemplative and melancholy Blue Spring, or the anarchic Crows Zero series helmed by Takashi Miike to which Blue Spring’s Toshiaki Toyoda later added a sequel. Which is all to say, that a genre so deliberately puffed up and obsessed with macho posturing is near impossible to parody. Leave it Yuichi Fukuda to try with the retro nostalgia fest From Today, It’s My Turn!! (今日から俺は!! 劇場版, Kyo kara ore wa! Gekijoban), a theatrical sequel to the TV drama series adapted from the manga by Hiroyuki Nishimori. 

Set in the genre’s heyday of the 1980s, the action takes place in a small town in Chiba with an improbably large number of high schools. Nerdy high schooler Satoru (Yuki Izumisawa) floats the idea of transferring somewhere else, fed up with all the delinquents at his school disrupting his studies with their constant violence but then it seems like everywhere else is the same. The big problem is that their two top guys have recently been deposed during a conflict with rival school Nanyo leaving a power vacuum while their school is temporarily merging with Hokunei from the next town over seeing as they’ve already burnt their school building down. 

While many high school fighting manga focus on the hierarchy within one particular institution, From Today, It’s My Turn!! is much more concerned with the battle between rival schools even if some of the more antagonistic fighters are in fact secretly friends. The first fight that breaks out is between bleach blond Mitsuhashi (Kento Kaku) and blue-suited Imai (Taiga Nakano) over a juice carton he bought for Mitsuhashi’s aikido-trained girlfriend Riko (Nana Seino) which Mitsuhashi sees as an affront to his masculinity, though in truth the two guys seem to get along well enough in the long run. Most of this fighting is in essence performative posturing, something made plain by the unexpected cowardice of supposed top guy Mitsuhashi who it turns out frequently runs away when challenged even relying on Riko to get him out of trouble. 

Though there are female gangs and female lone fighters, this is largely a male affair as the women, excepting Satoru’s cousin Ryoko (Maika Yamamoto), are expected to perform their femininity as the boys perform their masculinity through fighting. The supposedly evil head of the girl gang from Seiran High, Kyoko (Kanna Hashimoto), turns into a walking embodiment of kawaii when encountering crush Ito (Kentaro Ito) who begins acting in an equally lovey-dovey fashion, but breaks right back into her delinquent tough girl persona as soon as he’s off the scene. Aikido expert Riko meanwhile is largely reduced to trying to keep Mitsuhashi out of trouble while adopting an air of nice girl refinement. Only Ryoko who determines to take revenge on behalf of the bullied Satoru with the aid of a bamboo sword is allowed to stay firmly within the confines of the sukeban. 

Nevertheless, despite their treatment of each other most of the gang members can’t abide bullying which is why they eventually turn on Hokunei realising that they’re the sort of guys that befriend vulnerable people only to betray them later. Yet like Mitsuhashi, Hokunei boss Yanagi (Yuya Yagira) is also an under-confident coward so insecure in his fighting prowess that he has to cheat by taping throwing knives to the inside of his blazer. Legitimate authority is it seems largely absent, parents either unseen or oblivious while the teachers are unable to offer much in the way of help, wandering round the town with a toy police car and a loudspeaker trying to fool the guys into dispersing. 

Fukuda’s brand of humour is nothing if not idiosyncratic and largely inspired by TV variety show sketch comedy which explains the random nature of many of the gags along with the absurdist manga to the max production design. He further amps up the incongruity by casting prominent actors clearly far too old for high school and then saddling them with ridiculous costumes to the extent that Taiga Nakano looks oddly like Frankenstein’s monster with his too broad shoulders and overly bouffant quiff. While action choreography leaves much to be desired, fans of Fukuda’s previous work will most likely have a ball though others it has to be said may struggle. 

From Today, It’s My Turn!! streamed as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)