Watching "Top Knot Detective" is a very confounding experience but also a fun ride from beginning to end. Despite it being released in 2018 it is structured like one of those lost tv-documentaries from the 00s in both execution and style. Heck the end-credits scene of this movie even alludes to this being a part of a multi-documentary series of similar "schlocky" and trashy shows/movies from other countries putting this movie in a sort of meta-cinematic universe of its own. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Top Knot Detective is a mockumentary about a Detective Samurai tv show in Japan that used to be very big due to its excessive use of violence, nudity and comedy but due to some personal circumstances and murder (!) it has become completely wiped off the map, only to have survived as a popular series abroad in Australia where it has A LOT of fans (the parallels to Searching for Sugar Man is kind of cool). The mockumentary's approach is to focus on one man, the sole creator of the series called Takashi Takamoto who stars, directs, writes etc in the show. So the mockumentary then proceeds to interview all the actors and people from the show and their relationship to Takashi and showing footage from this show giving it both a comedic and also dramatic and sad tone.
The footage from the show is done in such an amazing and fun way, these were the best things from this movie/fake documentary, you can see that the creators and writers of this movie have a deep love for lost and alternative media that might not be so high brow but that speak to the heart. Heck, even I wanted to see the show after this movie but I can't, since it's not real.
The actors portraying these people supposedly from the show did also a great job and were super believable.
A negative of this film is that perhaps it doesn't really go anywhere? Like you get to know the story of this samurai tv show and its troubled creator but it kind of doesn't have a drive in the last 30 mins or so of the movie, the supposed mystery of the murder doesn't really get "solved", it all kind of ends in a question mark rather than something conclusive. Maybe it was the intention to make it like that because documentaries of this style rarely do have something conclusive but it would've been more interesting if the murder angle was explored more and perhaps solved because that was a part of the mystery of this movie but it's instead left as a footnote. In fact the most tragic thing about this is how it is kind of unceremonious towards its main character in those ending moments... but once again maybe that was the point? I'm not sure... I mean shouldn't the advantage of making something like this is that you can make up everything and you have control over the story unlike reality.
Either way I thought this was a very good watch, funny, strange and sometimes affecting - even if the conclusion isn't very satisfying it is indeed a fun watch throughout! Check it out!
(Also make sure to watch the end credits scene at the end of the credits!)
