Mastodawn

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 2, 2024

#Japan #Film Festival Online 2024 will be Weds 5th-19th June (starts & ends noon JST so effectively the 18th for UK).
It's a great opportunity to see Japanese films which can be hard to find.
I'm going to watch as many as I can and post brief thoughts under #JFF2024 with the aim of helping those with busy lives choose one or two. Happy to have conversations as well.
Please follow the hashtag if you're interested.
Available here:
https://watch.jff.jpf.go.jp/page/jffonline2024/
#JDrama #JFilm

JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE 2024 ｜JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE 2024

JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE 2024 is now closed. Thank you for your participation! We hope to see you soon with new streaming projects.

JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE 2024

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 5, 2024

The Lines That Define Me -
Lighter than I expected and an often gorgeous film about finding your own lines in art and traditional forms, the ones that express your own emotions and the life in them

The lines of this film shift from delicate to joyful to bold to struggle to fulfilling. In that, it embodies the ethos of its story.

https://mydramalist.com/724317-sen-wa-boku-o-kaku

#JFF2024 (films available online until 18th-19th June (depending on time zone)
#JFilm #JDrama #AsianDrama

The Lines that Define Me

Sousuke Aoyama is a college student who suffers painfully from the loss of his parents in a traffic accident. He meets Kozan Shinoda, a suibokuga (India-ink...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 5, 2024

We Made a Beautiful Bouquet
quietly exquisite

(better review down thread. i finally found adequate words but they were more than 500 chars)

https://mydramalist.com/52031-hanataba-mitaina-koi-o-shita

#JFF2024 #JFilm #JDrama #AsianFilm

We Made a Beautiful Bouquet

A love story spanning 5 years between a man and a woman. A 22-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman both miss the last train at Meidaimae Station in Tokyo...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 6, 2024

Single8
Another youth film focused on creativity, a visual art and finding your own voice. High school students work together, with the help of a uni film student and a history teacher, pushing themselves, their skills and ingenuity to make a short science fiction film with meaning.
It's left me with a big smile 💖

https://mydramalist.com/744379-single8

#JFF2024 #JFilm #JDrama #AsianFilm #Film

Single8

A coming-of-age film depicts the love and friendship of high school students in the 1970s who are passionate about filmmaking. (Source: Japanese = Natalie.mu...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 6, 2024

The Lone Ume Tree

About acceptance of difference and problems caused by those quick to judge. Cho-san has both learning disabilities and autism, needs his routines and works in a supported facility. He also has a great mum and difficult neighbours.

https://mydramalist.com/702449-ume-kiranu-baka

#JFF2024 #JFilm #JDrama #AsianFilm #Film

The Lone Ume Tree

Tamako is a popular fortune teller who lives with her adult son, Tadao, due to his intellectual disability and autism. While he does spend time at a workshop...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 7, 2024

Father of the Milky Way Railroad

Beautiful, poetic melodrama depicting a romanticised and idealised life of an idealistic young man who, after his death, became one of Japan's most loved poets and writers.
Now to read some of his writings while this is still fresh in my mind.

https://mydramalist.com/738627-ginga-tetsudo-no-chichi

#JFF2024 #JFilm #JDrama #Poetry #Film

Father of the Milky Way Railroad

Miyazawa Masajiro owns and runs a pawn shop for generations. His first son is Miyazawa Kenji and his daughter is Miyazawa Toshi. Kenji is supposed to...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 8, 2024

The Invitation

One of the four prize-winning short horror films in #JFF2024

Glad I watched it during the afternoon :) Got a jump scare from the sound, I was using headphones and it was Right There 😂
The ending brought it together and made it extra creepy.

https://mydramalist.com/770973-the-invitation

#Horror #JapaneseFilm #ShortFilm

The Invitation

One young female and one middle-aged male police officers head to a house after a neighbor reported a stench coming out of it. Once inside, they encounter...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈

We're Broke, My Lord!

Fast-paced, silly with a good heart and only a bit of the laughing-at not -with side of Japanese comedy I don't get on with.

There are far better films in #JFF2024 but this was alright for a change of pace. My favourite part though was cast members dancing happily during the end credits.

https://mydramalist.com/745193-daimyo-tosan

Daimyo Tosan

Koshiro lives in Tanjousan Bun in Echigo. Koshiro lives peacefully as a commoner and surrounded by people that love him, including his father Sakubee....

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 9, 2024

Anime Supremacy

I'm not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, I feel like there must be a lot I didn't understand. But then I'm not sure it was really in there.
Didn't get on with the first hour at all. Business pressure + ratings competition = could not care less. The whys which eventually emerged from the FL were poignant, but scant and cliched. Endings of the anime were moving.
Acting was excellent.
Interested in others' thoughts.

#JFF2024 #Film #JapaneseFilm

https://mydramalist.com/715499-haken-anime

Anime Supremacy!

Set within the highly competitive animation industry. People in that field work hard to receive the title of "haken," which is given to the most popular...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 10, 2024

We Made a Beautiful Bouquet
(finally found adequate words)
I'm careful in what I watch by way of het romance and initially We Made a Beautiful Bouquet wasn't high up my list for this year's JFF Online. I liked what @ronsboy67 wrote about it so I gave it a go.
It doesn't do the things I dislike about most het relationship story lines. The FL isn't cutesy or ditsy. Shared enthusiasms are central to the dynamic between the two characters and the framing is also balanced between their POVs
1/2

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 10, 2024

2/2
It's one of the most equal relationships I've seen. There's something else I want to compliment it on but that would be a spoiler.

All in all, it's an excellent film. Solid writing and acting so natural I managed to forget I was watching a film during some of it. Oh right, this isn't happening. If someone said, "I'm willing to watch one het love story this year" this is one of two I'd suggest.

https://mydramalist.com/52031-hanataba-mitaina-koi-o-shita

#JFF2024 #JapaneseFilm #Film

We Made a Beautiful Bouquet

A love story spanning 5 years between a man and a woman. A 22-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman both miss the last train at Meidaimae Station in Tokyo...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 10, 2024

School Meals Time Graduation

Physical comedy in the vein of Jerry Lewis or Jim Carey with a very straight face which morphs into something which runs Serious Film tropes over a tongue in cheek situation with an underlying serious message about not taking things so seriously. Plus food. It is Japan after all.

https://mydramalist.com/719159-school-meals-time-graduation

#JFF2024 #JapaneseFilm #ComedyFilm

School Meals Time Graduation

A middle school teacher who loves school lunches competes with his student on who can make their school meals taste even better. A unique food comedy...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 11, 2024

BL Metamorphosis

A completely delightful story of a friendship between an elderly woman and a high school girl who bond over their shared love of BL manga.

(Not available in UK w/o a VPN. Check JFF page linked at top of thread re your location. Also on bilibili.)

https://mydramalist.com/715495-the-edge-of-metamorphosis

#JFF2024 #JFilm #BL @BlandGLdramas

BL Metamorphosis

A story about the friendship between a 17-year-old high school girl and a 75-year-old lady who met through BL manga. (Source: MyDramaList) ~~ Adapted...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 11, 2024

The Zen Diary

Food, nature, living with the seasons and environment, and a 60 year old man dealing with grief and his fear of his own death. Also, the shallowness of relative 'privilege'. Overall, contemplative and contented.

https://mydramalist.com/710895-twelve-months-to-eat-soil

#JFF2024 #JFilm

The Zen Diary

Writer Tsutomu lives alone at a mountain cabin in Nagano. He collects fruits and mushrooms from the mountain. He also raises vegetables in a field. Everyday,...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 12, 2024

i am what i am

Aroace woman coping in a world where that's not understood. Striking was two characters in particular who, rather than listening to her when she told them, insisted on redefining her into their world views.
It's an often lonely film, although she's rarely alone. Or at least it felt that way to me.
She did have a supportive friend.

https://mydramalist.com/737619-freckles

#JFF2024 #JFilm #AroAce

I Am What I Am

Since Kasumi became old enough to understand things, she didn't know what love was and she doesn't have any feelings of romance or attraction. Although...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 13, 2024

KIBA: The Fangs of Fiction

Well made but I don't get on with business settings and the artificial constructions of the corporate world. Kudos for a resourceful female protagonist fighting for her values and her character's message of choosing what standards to update and what to discard as society changes.

https://mydramalist.com/28410-damashie-no-kiba

#JFF2024 #JFilm

Kiba: The Fangs of Fiction

An attractive and witty editor fights to keep his magazine alive despite corporate plans to stop publication. (Source: MyDramaList)

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 14, 2024

My Broken Mariko

Intense, difficult but light amongst the dark, and very very good.

Tied for my best film of the festival.

See link for content warnings.

https://mydramalist.com/719435-my-broken-mariko

#JFF2024 #JFilm

My Broken Mariko

Shiino Tomoyo has stood by her friend Mariko through years of abuse, abandonment, and depression. However horrific her circumstances, their friendship...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 14, 2024

Jungle Emperor Leo

From the 1960s school of What were they on? animation. It's an experience. It's very violent. It's also racist and sexist. Theme is working together to confront enemies.
There are better uses of your time during the festival.

No synopsis on MDL as it's animation.

#JFF2024 #manga #animation

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 16, 2024

Twenty-Four Eyes

Melodrama that's also very real - anti-war and proto-feminist - from the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema, over-flowing with both love and sorrow.

This is available in a few places outside #JFF2024. Worth seeking out.

https://mydramalist.com/13367-twenty-four-eyes

Twenty-Four Eyes

The movie follows the career of a schoolteacher named Hisako Oishi in Shodoshima during the rise and fall of Japanese ultra-nationalism in the beginning...

Jill Jun 12, 2024

@emmaaum gah, I gotta get my shit together and set up a VPN connection so I can watch this...

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 12, 2024

@JillsJoy i got a month of Mozilla's. £8 and change for 5 films just in the festival. US$10 i think.
the listing for this one says it's available in the US though

kalloway Jun 11, 2024

There were a lot of little injokes in this, and due to the format didn't have a lot of breathing room for actual explanations of anime production.

The acting was definitely the highlight, the rest was pretty good but I honestly didn't think much of either of the fictional anime series. (The end sting was what I was waiting for, though, and that made me grin.)

It looks like I can borrow the novel this was based on from the library system, so I may do that.

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 11, 2024

@kalloway Unexplained in-jokes makes sense. I'm used to figuring out where cultural jokes I don't understand are but this one did move at a clip.
Thanks for that info, I appreciate it :)

The film (acting and music) did a lot of the work in making the endings of the animes moving. Took me until today to figure out how to word that in a 500 char friendly way :)

kalloway Jun 11, 2024

The line after the suckerpunch ('Not even my father hit me!') is from First Gundam, there was something from Evangelion later on... The actual fictional series - a magical girl series (mildly deconstructed) and a ambiguous mecha series are pretty common tropes. Good fare for their apparent time slots, though.

(The novel makes it sound like it shares the lead role more between the three women and I would have liked more with the animator, so going to put it on the list for the future.)

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 11, 2024

@kalloway I recognised Evangelion but it's been over 20 years

Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈Jun 11, 2024

From the end credits of Daimyo Tosan #JFF2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtqsNFUV-Vs

映画『大名倒産』ダンスシーン映像｜大ヒット上映中！！

YouTube