Otoko wa tsurai yo: Naniwa no koi no Torajirô

A return to a more formulaic Tora San story, but I liked it quite a lot... maybe I've been missing the formula after recent entries took more story risks, or otherwise had Tora helping others fall in love, rather than trying to fall in love with someone himself.

The cast and filmmakers all know exactly what they're doing at this point, and the film unfolds so naturally and enjoyably.

It's the ultimate form of comfort cinema, these movies and their familiar aesthetics, plots, and character interactions, which all help the odd entry that does buckle the formula stand out even more.

I'll miss this series once I reach the end of it, I'm sure.

Tora-san, the eternal traveler, has by this movie covered a large portion of Japan on his journeys, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. This movie, the 27th entry into the franchise, takes one destination off Tora's bucket list, that being the industrial metropolis of Osaka. More than your usual "Otoko wa tsurai yo" installation, this movie gives central stage to its location, and much of the humor is drawn from the juxtaposition of Osaka and Tokyo cultures. "Osaka men are different from Tokyo men", after all.

The film opens with the usual dream sequence, this one taking place in an underwater kingdom (with a literal Octopus, har har). Then Tora comes home to Shibamata, and there is the usual fight. On his travels, he meets Fumi (Matsuzaka Keiko), a geisha from Osaka, with whom he falls in love. Tora spends the majority of the film in Osaka, where he also makes friends with the inn-keeper who lives with his mom, and is pretty much the Osaka version of Tora-san.

We see many sides of Osaka throughout the film, but one can hardly call this a tourism add for the city. Yamada paints it as a busy, hectic, sad and downright dirty landscape: a location where modernization has turned the place into an efficient, but faceless environment. Of course the idyllic Shibamata is presented as the counterpart.

This is not one of the funnier entries - Tora is kind of a dick in the first act - but the romance is good, and so is the depiction of the milieu.