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Ryuhei Kitamura has had a rather interesting career. Starting with some of the cult titles of the 00s, including “Versus”, “Azumi” and “LoveDeath”, he then shot a Godzilla and a “Lupin The Third” film, then he moved to Hollywood to shoot films with Ruby Rose and Jean Reno among others, and now he is back with “Three Sisters of Tenmasou”, a manga adaptation that shows his most sensitive side as of now.

Three Sisters of Tenmasou is screening at Japan Cuts

The particular manga is “Tenmasou no Sanshimai: Sky High” by Tsutomu Takahashi (published from 2013 to 2014 by Young Jump Comics) and revolves around the said inn, a quaint out-of-time place in the small port town of Mitsuse. The establishment functions as a stopping point for people on the verge of death to decide if they want to return to the world of the living, where they are in a coma from an accident or illness,...

In true fashion, the inspiration for the Japanese horror film Bldg. N is an urban legend. In the early 2000s, there was a media storm about the “poltergeist apartments” in Tomika, Gifu. This new complex lured many tenants with its cheap rent, but they gradually cleared out once the paranormal activity began and the news coverage became unreasonable. The reports on the supposed haunting don’t come across as especially unique, so director and writer Yōsuke Gotō understandably had to fill in the gaps when writing his adaptation of the incident. What he came up with is indeed unusual, given that Japanese ghost films don’t typically include Midsommar-esque death cults.

Bldg. N (or N-Goto) opens with the literal definition of thanatophobia, an intense fear of death and the dying process. The story then introduces the character afflicted with said phobia and shows how much of a toll it has taken on her life.

There comes a certain moment in everyone’s life, when it’s time to abandon the nest and assert ourselves as a separate entity; when it’s time to cut for good the invisible umbilical cord that straps us to our parents and when it’s time to celebrate our own individuality. Frightening and utterly disrupting, this pivotal moment of crisis is a necessary step, very important for a future good life and good … storytelling. In fact, the array of strong – often extreme – feelings of this transforming process makes it one of the richest and rewarding topics to explore in any kind of narration, from cinema to music. Director and writer Kenichi Sono has his say on the matter in an imaginative and captivating fashion, with his 2019 1-hour-14-minute featurette “Fake Plastic Planet”.

Fake Plastic Planet is streaming on TodoiF

At the opening of the film, 25-year-old Shiho (Kasumi Yamaya...

The Japanese pop culture blog Gigazine has posted individual trailers for the trilogy of "Real Onigokko" movies being released in Japan this May.

All three movies are directed by Mari Asato (Ju-on: Black Ghost, Keitai Kanojo) and their events take place at the same time in different locations.

The Real Onigokko franchise is based on a novel by Yusuke Yamada about a parallel world where everyone with the last name "Sato" is hunted by masked men for some mysterious reason. "Onigokko" is the Japanese equivalent of the children's game "tag". The person designated "oni" (demon) tries to catch any of the other players. Appropriately, these movies generally stick to the basic theme of people being chased. Fighting back is rarely an option due to the single-minded determination of the "oni", so survivors end up running for their lives in a series of nonstop action scenes. In a similar vein to Battle Royale,...