Yôkai daisensô

Miike makes a children's adventure film, not unlike The Neverending Story. It's actually one of my least favorite of the director's films. Even the worst Miike is better than a good many films, though, and The Great Yokai War has a lot in it that's worth recommending. It's at least as loud and obnoxious as most American kiddie flicks. I might think kids themselves would find a lot to like in it (the DVD includes an English dub), but, like all of Miike's films, it can tend to move very slowly. That means you've got kind of a weird unevenness, where sometimes there's a loud action sequence and the next scene will drag on forever as characters converse. The story itself isn't very good, either, and Miike's perpetual flaw of incoherency rears its ugly head. Most of what I liked came from the technical side of things. This has to be Miike's most expensive movie, and it looks fantastic. "Yokai" are Japanese spirits, and they come in all different, fantastical forms, and the costume designers, special effects crew, and everyone else involved in the designs just did an outstanding job. I've seen the 1968 film this one is supposedly based on (Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare), and the cheesy rubber-suit monsters you can find there have been transformed into more believable entities using state-of-the-art makeup and special effects. I especially liked the look of one of the bad guys (or girls, in this case), Agi, who sports dark eye shadow, a tight, white outfit, a white beehive hairdo and a whip. She's played, incidentally, by Chiaki Kuriyama, whom you might remember as Lucy Liu's teenage henchgirl in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. The hero of the film is played by Ryunosuke Kamiki, who provided voices for Miyazaki's Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.

Wow! So much fun! Probably a bit much for normal American kids, and really it's a stretch to call this a kid's film, this movie reminded me a quite a bit of Time Bandits - very Terry Gilliam all the way through. While the overall narrative is pretty much straight forward, Miike still throws in A LOT of surreal and Bunuel-esquire moments. The whole first act violently juxtaposes from scene to scene the normal family life of the main kid/hero, with the spirit world and the evil than is ensuing therein. And while the ending does have a bit of an ambiguous aspect that are common of Miike's work, the layers of meaning and metaphor, particularly the anti-war / anti-revenge message of human folly, is pretty damn poignant. As manic and imaginatively fun as other great Miike films, only instead of over the top torture and gore, he gives us an endless amount of monsters and yokai from Japanese folk-lore creatively conceived via CG and puppetry wrapped into an imaginative multi-faceted adventure. F'n rad, and one of Miike's best!

Where was this film when I was a kid? After his parents split up Tadashi moves with his mom to live his his grandfather. Tadashi's sister stays with their dad and they talk frequently on the phone. Grandfather is only "here" every third day. Moms never really home. The kids always are picking on the poor kid. During a village festival Tadashi is chosen the "kirin rider" or spiritual champion of the peace and justice. Little does he suspect that soon he will have to actually step into role of hero as the forces of darkness join up with the rage of things discarded in a plot to destroy mankind and the spiritual world.

Okay that was the easy part. Now comes the hard part, trying to explain the film.

This is a great kids film. No this is a great film,flawed, (very flawed?) but a great film none the less. It unfolds like all of those great books you loved as a kid and is just as dense at times as Tadashi struggles to find the strength to become a hero. Watching it I felt I was reading a great book, and thought how huge this would have been if it was a book. I loved that the film does not follow a normal path. Things often happen out of happenstance or through miscommunication, one character gets sucked into events simply because his foot falls asleep. There are twists and turns and moments that seem like non sequiters and are all the more charming for it (which is typical Miike) Certainly its a Takashi Miike film. That Japanese master of film is clearly in charge of a film that often touching, scary and funny all at the same time. No one except Miike seems to understand that you can have many emotions at the same time, or that you can suddenly have twists as things get dark one second and then funny the next. I admire the fact that Miike has made a film that is bleak and hopeful, that doesn't shy away from being scary, I mean really scary, especially for kids. This is the same dark territory that should be in the Harry Potter movies but rarely is. This a dark Grimms tale with humor. My first reaction upon seeing the opening image was that I couldn't believe anyone would begin a kids film with a picture of the end of the world, then I realized who was making the movie. Hats off to Miike for making a movie that knows kids can handle the frightening images.

Its also operating on more than one level. The mechanical monsters that the bad guys make are forged from mankind's discarded junk. Its the rage of being thrown away that fuels the monsters.One of the Yokai (spirits) talks about the rage sneakers thrown away because they are dirty or too small feels when they are tossed. You also have one of the good guys refusing to join the bad guys because that would be the human thing to do. Its a wild concept, but like other things floating around its what lifts this movie to another level. (there are a good many riffs and references to other movies,TV shows and novels that make me wonder who this film is for since kids may not understand them, though many parents will) And of course there are the monsters. They run the gamut from cheesy to spectacular with stops everywhere in between. Frankly you have to forgive the unevenness of their creation simply because they are has to be hundreds if not thousands of monsters on screen. Its way cool and it works. One of the main characters is a Yokai which I think is best described as a hamster in a tunic and is often played by a stuffed animal, it looks dumb and yet you will be cheering the little bugger and loving every moment he rides on Tadashi's head. (Acceptance is also easier if you've ever seen the old woodcuts of the weird Japanese monsters) I mentioned flaws, and there are a few. The effects are uneven, some of the sudden turns are a bit odd (even if understandable) and a few other minor things which are fading now some two hours after watching the film.. None of them truly hurt the film over all, however most kind of keep you from being completely happy with the movie.

I really loved this movie. I'm pretty sure that if I saw this as a kid it would have been my favorite film of all time. (where's the English dub?).See this movie. Its a great trip. (Besides its a good introduction to the films of Miike minus the blood and graphic sex)

Billed as Takashi Miike's "first family film" - by people who haven't seen Zebraman, presumably. YOKAI DAISENSO takes things even further in the direction of family-friendliness, diluting the darkness and cynicism to create a grand fantasy fairy tale. A young boy is chosen by fate to save the world from monsters and horrors of which they remain largely unaware. The film is evidently bigger budget than anything else Miike has done, with lots of CGI to create fantasy world populated by odd creatures (the YOKAI). Perhaps the lack of extreme content is a consequence of more nervous investors, but I think it's probably just that he wanted to do something different. He's really never been a one-trick pony, but often gets accused of it - perhaps YOKAI is designed to silence those critics. Regardless, it's a great project for Miike to channel his boundless imagination and invention into.

There's a very cartoonish feel to the production, evoking thoughts of Miyazaki in places. The Yokai are based on an old series of comics that were in turned based on Japanese folk tales, which certainly influenced Miyazaki as well (particularly SPIRITED AWAY). It must remembered that Miike has nothing like the budget of a Harry Potter film to work with, so the special effects aren't going to be seamless Hollywood style work - some blue-screening is especially obvious. Some of the special effects are great though, with some very well animated creatures (a mix of CG, stop-motion and puppetry). I think the little sock-puppet that follows the hero around for much of the film was *meant* to look really cheap, and is all the cuter for it :) The young lad who plays the hero of the film does a really good job - it's so hard to find a pre-teen who actually understands the concept of acting, but 9 year old Ryunosuke Kamiki is a genuine talent (I see he did voices in the last 2 Miyazaki films!). Chiaki Kuriyama is delicious as the villainess of the piece, though Mai Takahashi made an even greater impression as the pixie-eared River Princess - yum yum! Those looking for another violent, perverted gangster film aren't going to find what they're looking for in YOKAI, but if you're a fan of Miike because of his imagination and wit, there's plenty to satisfy here. And it has the added bonus that you can happily put it on whatever company you've got :)

This film is a bit reminiscent of the German film, THE NEVERENDING STORY because a child is magically transported to a strange land in order to be a hero. However, due to far superior modern technology, puppets and CGI are used to make an amazingly realistic looking world--one that will blow your socks off due to its realism and scope.

I enjoyed this film, but boy was it a chore at first! Unfortunately, for most Westerners, this film is one you might give up on very quickly or dismiss it since everything in the film seems so odd. However, give it a chance. Don't think or try to understand everything you see--just allow the story to unfold and you will most likely enjoy the film.

In many ways, this is exactly the sort of advice I'd give to adults who watch Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY because it is very similar and features tons of Yokai (Japanese mythical spirits). The big differences between the two is that THE GREAT YOKAI WAR is live-action and SPIRITED AWAY is much more child-friendly. While I do think THE GREAT YOKAI WAR was intended mostly as a kids' movie, in the USA, most parents would not want to show this to younger kids because it's so violent, scary and features some adult behaviors. So who is the audience in the West? Well, older kids and adults who appreciate foreign films with non-Western themes and composition. This is a rather narrow audience, indeed!

While you are watching, look for all the strange little touches. In fact, you could watch the film dozens of times and notice different tiny things each time. A few of the funny references I liked were the comment about Gamera, the scene that came with the comment "KIDS: Don't Try This At Home" as well as the use of Kirin beer to allow a person to actually see the Yokai (hmm,...perhaps that scene should have also contained this warning)!

By the way, director Takashi Miike is a hard one to pin down stylistically, other than to say that none of his stories I've seen have seemed "normal". Some of his films are rather disgusting and disturbing and I hated them (especially AUDITION and ICHI THE KILLER)whereas some of them are magical and among the best films I've ever seen (THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS). One thing for sure, it's hard to watch one of his films and not have a strong reaction one way or the other.