Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

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HungFist
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Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

Post by HungFist »

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A live action adaptation based on Suehiro Maruo's ero-guro manga, which was made into a rather legendary anime / live freak show in 1992, called Midori.

Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X4FZO1c4Ws

Website:
http://www.vap.co.jp/s_tsubaki/

I don't expect this to be anything as controversial as the earlier versions, but it does interest me a little bit. Might also be worth mentioning it's directed by a woman.
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

Post by Guro Taku »

That looks pretty good to me from the trailer. Decent production values and while it has been about 10 years since I last read the manga, I recognized a number of scenes in the trailer so it should be fairly faithful. There is nothing in the manga that can't fit into a R-15 movie so censorship isn't something I'm worried about. The anime is only controversial because the director refuses to let anybody pixellate the brief nudity in it and so never allowed it to be released either theatrically or on home video in Japan.
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

Post by HungFist »

Good info, thanks. I was under the impression there were some further censorship issues, but perhaps I was mistaken.

Wiki says:

The film is considered partially lost: it was banned to outside countries on account of depicting imagery illegal at the time and seized, with some sequences surviving only in standard definition from telecining prior.

I don't really understand what that means? Outside countries? Banned and seized by who? Some sequences lost or not lost (surviving in SD)?
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

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That makes no sense to me either. My understanding (which is mainly based on an interview with the director on the French DVD - see more on that below) is that Hiroshi Harada, the director, made the anime as a pure labor of love on his own over the course of many years. He then refused to let it be rated by EIRIN because they would have demanded pixellating of an instance or two of full frontal nudity - that's your "illegal imagery". That of course meant that the film couldn't be shown in any theaters or receive a home video release in Japan. Sometimes the director would stage elaborate underground events and screen his film as the centerpiece of a real freak show. I guess that made it a borderline lost/unavailable film in some sense? Anyway, the anime was officially released on DVD by French company Cinemalta in 2006 with subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German with the goal of making the film available to all these markets. That certainly ended the film's unavailability.

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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

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Thanks. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm certainly interested.
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

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I had no idea one of Maruo's works was going to be adapted like this. It's going to be interesting and with it coming out in Japan in less than a month, we should have some idea about its quality very soon! I'm rooting for it to be a success in every way because maybe that will get some of Maruo's other works onto movie screens. I have no hopes for his scatological, splatteriffic and sexually explicit early works but could see more mainstream titles like The Laughing Vampire (笑う吸血鬼) or his most recent manga release, Tomino the Damned (トミノの地獄), which shares its travelling freak show theme with Midori, work as theatrical movies.
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

Post by Guro Taku »

BD/DVD on November 23rd:

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Extras listed are just a making of and the trailer. I was hoping there'd be an interview with Maruo but maybe that's included in the docu.
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

Post by Guro Taku »

Well, this is certainly an unusual film. I re-read Suehiro Maruo's original 1984 manga after watching the film (for the first time in 12 years!) and for much of its running time the film is sticking incredibly closely to the source material. I'm not talking just scenes here, but most of the dialogue is taken word-for-word from the manga. There are some small additions that I actually found really cool, like how the film is supposedly taking place in Showa 107, which would be the year 2032 if Hirohito hadn't died in 1989 or the fact that the carnival now has a graffitied tour bus that everybody only ever refers to as a "beast".

The weakest part of the film is easily the final 20 minutes, which is where it goes off the source material and does its own thing. Midori's acting career, Masamitsu's backstory, the transferral of power... All those are additions made by writer/director Torico. I'd have preferred a 70 minute version that remained true to the source entirely.

Still well worth a look, though!

And no, Maruo is nowhere in sight in the making of docu on the BD.
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

Post by HungFist »

Thanks for the comments. I'll probably rent this some day.
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

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Interview in English with the director:

http://www.asianfilmvault.com/2017/05/i ... e-can.html
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Re: Shôjo tsubaki (2016)

Post by Guro Taku »

HK DVD with English subs came out today, January 26th.

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