Tajuu jinkaku tantei saiko - Amamiya Kazuhiko no kikan

If you are a fan of Boys over flowers, you will love this.

No! I'm kidding.

How to describe this.

Gruesome, funny (although not very often, but I did laugh out loud at least once) bizarre, disturbing, wacked out.

I got the entire of series 1 of this and i thought it was GREAT like a lot of Miike films it doesn't seem to make much sense until you see the end of it and also like other Miike films he has a weird habit of randomly blurring parts out. The story of MPD psycho does pan out quite considerably after the first DVD and does get very involved and interesting, i sat and watched the entire first series back to back and totally enjoyed it. Miike does tend to make films seem somewhat obscure in the way they are written and directed but thats what i find makes him so great, you spend ages trying to work out whats going on and then you're like "Oh of course it is!" and it just seems so obvious the same applies to MPD despite what other people have said i thought it was excellent

I'm going to do something unusual here. I just watched the first two episodes (out of six) of MPD Psycho, and I'm going to review what I've seen--the beginning of the story, basically. Once I can watch the whole miniseries, I'll supplant this review with a new one.

I would have never watched just the first two episodes, but I always try to know as little as possible about a film before I watch it. I expected that MPD Psycho would just be another Takashi Miike movie. I didn't realize that I was wrong until the first episode ended at 58 minutes. I thought, "That's it? There was no ending and that was so short!" Well, of course there was no ending and it was short. I'd only watched episode one of a six part miniseries. Even when episode two followed the credits (I'm glad I always watch to the end of the credits), I still didn't realize the disc wasn't complete. I would have never watched the first two episodes if I had known that the rest of the miniseries not only wasn't on the DVD, but won't even be released for another few months, at least. Why do DVD distributors do this? I would have gladly paid more to receive the whole thing at once. Doing it this way just annoys me and makes me want to avoid Ventura DVDs. Admittedly, it's my fault for not paying more attention to the marketing, which was somewhat upfront about the incompleteness, but as I mentioned, I prefer watching films knowing absolutely nothing about them beforehand, if possible.

Anyway, on to the episodes I watched. As others have noted, MPD Psycho seems to be Miike's "Twin Peaks" (1990), peppered with plenty of bows to Japanese genre conventions (the phone as a source of horror, regular rain, freaky young women, etc.). To a large extent, it's a police procedural, as was "Twin Peaks", and it's full of Lynchian intentional crypticness. Coming from a director who naturally tends to be cryptic, and where that is the expected norm for the genre in his culture, MPD Psycho, with its intentional stab at Lynchian weirdness, is extremely dense. In other words, you're not likely to be able to figure out what the heck the story is about by just watching the first two episodes.

It has something to do with a former detective, Yôsuke Kobayashi (Naoki Hosaka), who quit the force after a particularly hairy case. Kobayashi was after a serial killer who targeted pregnant women. At the beginning of the first episode we see Kobayashi crack when he encounters the serial killer, who had just done a number on his wife. Enter the "MPD" of the title--Multiple Personality Disorder. Kobayashi is now living in a small town, with a new wife, who oddly has the same name as his former wife and who looks a bit similar. There's a new serial killer on the loose who turns women into potted plants--he cuts off the top of their skulls, exposing their brain, and puts a flower in the middle, often burying them up to their heads below the ground. The pregnant woman killer also seems to be starting up again, even though Kobayashi killed him (they think it might be a copycat, although elements of the crimes that were never publicized are duplicated). Plus there's some bizarre stuff about possession via telephones or the Internet, chimerical women in some kind of "waiting room", they keep going back to this odd Ferris wheel, there's a bit of animation, a number of people have a bar code tattooed on the bottom of their eyeballs, and so on. I can only guess that much of it will make a bit more sense by the end of episode six, but knowing Miike, episode six might end with as many unanswered questions as episode 2 does.

Keeping with what is seeming like a tradition from Miike to me so far, MPD Psycho displays yet another style from him. It has an odd look, largely because it was shot on budget digital video cameras and a number of shots have been processed/manipulated in Photoshop and/or similar software. Although the digital video can give MPD Psycho the look of your average cheap soap opera, the software manipulations are often effective, as Miike tends to use them to make MPD Psycho more surreal. There are also some wonderful, odd angles and set-ups, such as the circling scene inside the Ferris wheel car (despite the camera/tripod shadows), and a Miike incorporates a lot of unusual, highly aesthetic blocking of his actors.

Some have said that the gore and more challenging images have been "covered" by pixelation, but the pixelation varies greatly in structure depending on what's being covered, and not everything pixelated is a controversial image. It seems more like an intentional stylistic device. It's especially effective but bizarre when integrated with the skull/brain flowerpots.

The music that accompanies the "dangerous" telephone calls is sublime and freaky for being so acultural. It sounds like a Beatles-influenced Anglo-Saxon band, like Kula Shaker. The song also provides possible clues to the subtexts of the film in its lyrics--"Sing to the sky, in this strange new world". MPD Psycho, at this point at least, seems to be about (re)birth and death--the life (and reincarnation) cycle as a means of transformation. This is perhaps also the reason for Kobayashi's fluctuating personalities, each undergoing their own (re)births and deaths. Time will tell, when I can finally watch the ending.

There's a good chance my rating will improve in light of the complete MPD Psycho. The miniseries will certainly be worth watching, but unless you do not mind a suspended, complete lack of closure, avoid the DVD release until the whole thing is available.

Worth a look on DVD. This Japanese series melds a Twin Peaks like surrealism, with Manga inspired graphics and story line. Grumpy old detectives try to track down a mysterious being that jumps from person to person through the Japanese underworld, inspiring each one to go on a killing spree. Sounds clichéd, but some fantastic photography melded with oddly juxtaposed CGI and extremely graphic violence take it away from the norm. Pretty incomprehensible to start with, but strangely gripping none the less. In Japanese with English subtitles, which make it even more difficult to follow. First episode is excellent, but later episodes become more formulaic.

Takashi Miike was given the daunting task of translating the MPD Psycho manga onto film, and no other Japanese director could have done it as successfully as he has.

Let me clarify my above statement: the MPD Psycho series is nowhere as good as Audition or Ichi The Killer, but given the material and the constrictions of Japanese television, Miike used his experience to craft a tense, psychological story that hits a nerve with me every time I watch it.

Miike has a knack for exploiting weaknesses in the scripts he's given, and MPD Psycho is no exception. The manga is dense with plots, subplots and characters, and I get the feeling that Miike recognized the fact that translation would be difficult, so he chose a schizophrenic approach to making the series. This approach works for any viewer (like me) that has enough patience to watch the entire series from beginning to end. Watching one episode will get you confused, but watching them all in chronological order is a satisfying experience that eventually unfolds a colorful and chaotic story.

Technically, the series - on first look - suffers from a low budget, but once again Miike exploits this as he has on several of his other films. Colors are saturated and sharply contrast with each other, light and shadow are over-accentuated, and it all give the feel of seeing the world through the eyes a synesthesia-suffering psychopath. The special effects are overdone (neon rain, urine-colored skies), but it all adds to the effect. It's like watching a serial killer music video from the early 1980s.

The plot is probably the hardest thing for people to get around. I had to watch the entire thing from beginning to end several times before I finally understood what the hell was going on; there are so many subplots and twists that the viewer becomes overwhelmed after the first ten minutes. In addition, Miike's use of flashbacks and juxtaposition, while adding to the schizophrenic feeling that underlines the series, makes it hard to follow the storyline without feeling slightly unbalanced at the end of each episode.

There are so many characters introduced by the end of the second episode that you start to lose track of who's who and why they're doing what they're doing. That's why it's a MUST to watch it all chronologically. Some of the characters don't have their motivation or importance in the story explained until way after their introduction. At points, some characters disappear entirely until they make another reappearance further down the line. It's all rather overwhelming but very rewarding- each character is entertaining and has some sort of story to tell. My favorite is police chief Sasayama (wonderfully played by Ren Osugi), who goes through so much crap to expose the truth that by the end of the series you've got to feel sorry for him.

All in all, MPD Psycho is certainly not one of Takashi Miike's best works, but it showcases his talent and showmanship more than any of his other projects. Watch it through its entirety and you won't be disappointed, especially if you're a Miike fan.