Funeral Parade of Roses (薔薇の葬列) is part documentary, part art film and part dramatic narrative, following the gay and drug cultures of late 1960’s – early 1970’s Japan.

Like any movie that is trying to be so many things at once, it’s only partially successful at any of them.

The “gay” part follows Leda and Eddie, two gay crossdressers who work as hostesses at an okama bar. Leda is the owner’s regular, his wife in effect, and Eddie is his piece on the side. Leda rants about Eddie at home and Eddie stresses about Leda in the car. The owner is kind of an asshole, so I don’t feel bad for him. There’s a bittersweet story in between the melodrama here, one about love and betrayal and is exactly why so many LGBTQ people today are fighting to be able to have legal, social and financial recognition for their relationships.

Interspersed between art film scenes which can only be described as “Man Ray, they ain’t” are scenes of the group that are making those films led by a guy they call Guevara, and the drugs and parties they participate in. These scenes are campy because really, there’s no other way to film semi-nude drunken/stoned dancing in their underwear scenes that aren’t plain old sad.

These scenes are further cut by “documentary” sequences in which the film crew asks inane questions of the okama boys, or the drug users. These questions invariably made this viewer cringe. “So,” the interviewer asks Leda, “you don’t see women as sexually attractive?” or asks one of Guevara’s group, “What happens when you smoke marijuana?” I cringed for the same reason I cringe when I’m forced to watch a show on Ancient Egypt on Discovery and the narrator talks about everything in that tone of obsequious amazement. (We have a shorthand phrase for that kind of ingenuous astonishment – “Were they here….or did they come?” which was an actual phrase used at the sound and light show at Chichen Itza. It was used as a kind of chorus, and made us laugh every time they said it.)

Everything between Leda and Eddie comes to a head when they have an extremely silly fight, made even sillier by goofy carnival music. (I was rooting for Leda. Eddie was a jerk.) Another counterculture element is added in the form of a Eddie participating in a porn movie shoot and scenes from Eddie’s youth that are taken right out of a pulp novel. The end to the story was likewise full of pulp-y horror and melodrama, and post-story art film moralizing.

The DVD comes with a pretty thick pamphlet that will tell you everything I just said, but do it with film crit admiration, hyperbole and a digression into Pink films and lots of references to filmmaker’s names, which I won’t.

The links to the title on Amazon go to the Region 2 version with subtitles. I don’t suppose that should present too many obstacles to modern viewers, but FYI. The R2 has been localized for a British English speaking audience, which provided me with a little bit of extra pleasure to imagine the British audience for this movie.

The movie itself is paced excruciatingly slowly, with that slow, death-trance music that so many Japanese movies seem to favor. (See my reviews of Blue and Kakera for similar complaints.) The background for the movie is the student protest-torn Japanese political and social landscape, which represents both a counterculture – and the roots of the political landscape that now exists in Japan in mainstream culture.

I can’t say I learned anything from this movie I didn’t know, or couldn’t guess, but then, I was actually alive during these years. For an audience twenty years younger than me, the bits at the gay bar might be a bit of a lesson about a world long before they were born.

Overall – 6

My very sincere thanks to James Welker for his sponsorship of today’s review – it was an interesting experience!

Well I just finished watching Kakera, a live-action adaptation of Sakurazawa Erika’s Love Vibes manga. In a word, it was abysmal.

The original was a short romance between two women, each who have other attachments they need to clear up before they can get together comfortably. The main conflict comes from Mako’s discomfort with “being gay,” when she is still in a “I’m not gay, I just love you” mindset…and the issue of her boyfriend who feels that he’s allowed to leave her, but when she leaves him for another woman, gets angry. You know, pretty normal stuff. If you are interested, you can read my review of the Love Vibes manga from back in 2004.

The original ended on a high point, maybe a little idealistically, as Mika and Mako go running off together hand in hand.

The movie pretty much squeezes the life out of the original story, and fills the gaps with the movie equivalent of formaldehyde, giving it body without making it look truly alive, and leaving behind an unpleasant smell.

Mako, the cheerful, average girl with an average boyfriend has been turned into a total wet rag, Haru. Mika, the energetic bisexual now becomes Riko, a sculptor of prosthetic body parts who lives at home and is…strange.

The idea that Riko could find *anything* appealing about Haru is hard to swallow for most of the movie. And when they do kiss, it’s that typical Japanese no-movement, no-reaction dry lip pressing that just makes me want to stab something. Every time you almost sort of start to like one or both of the characters for a second, or the movie shows some sign of life, an awkward, unpleasant and usually depressing scene is inserted that stops the momentum and ruins the mood.

In an interview, the director proudly says she rewrote about 80% of the original story. All I can say is that she has some serious issues, if this was written with her life experiences in mind. (Thanks to Katherine H for the link to the interview. It explained a lot.)

What really just kills this movie dead is that it utterly craps all over the happy ending of the manga. Forget running off hand in hand. I won’t tell you what happens, because it’ll just piss you off.

Ratings:

UGH

This is exactly how not to do a live-action adaptation of a manga.

After watching and reading fourteen million hours worth of Catholic schoolgirls getting into vary degrees of trouble, or not, I am the obviously not the only one who thought, “I wonder what would happen if these characters had superpowers and had to fight evil nuns?” Kawahara Izumi clearly had that same thought and so wrote the shoujo manga Warau Daitenshi Mikaeru, about three girls at St. Michael’s Academy, a private school for girls. I have not yet had a chance to read the manga, but after watching the Live Action adaptation of the story, which has come to America under the name Arch Angels, I absolutely will track it down.

The story follows Shijou Fumio, whose life radically alters when her mother dies. Although they lived in poverty, it turns out that Fumio’s father was unbelievably wealthy and her older brother, who had been kept by the grandmother who threw her pregnant mother out, now wants Fumio in his life.

Fumio transfers to St. Michael’s and instantly, due to her good grades, excellent athleticism and general down-to-earth qualities, is immediately escalated to the rank of star of the school, nicknamed “The Saviour.” She joins Saiki Kazune, known as “Oscar-sama,” and Sarashina Yuzuko called, hysterically, “the Colobockle.” Of course, there’s oodles of akogare/admiration involved in this new star status.

The three are bonded together over their love of average, everyday Japanese food and snacks, and further grow close because they suddenly manifest superpowers, which they will use to defeat the evil Sister Marlena who is kidnapping random delectably pure girls for some nefarious fate or other.

Okay, so that’s the plot. What makes this movie work is the utterly crackheaded use of special effects, and the insane plot complications, compounded by things like eyeball grenades, a CGI dog named “Damian” and a climax which had me *howling* with laughter. Everytime you thought it couldn’t get weirder and funnier…it went leaps past that.

So, now I have a submarine run by a St. Michael’s nun to add to my helicopters at Astrea Hill. If I keep this up, I’ll have a whole military division just based on Catholic school armaments! Awesome. Clearly I need to collect the whole set! And that doesn’t even include soulassassin’s fighter jets.

Oh, and for those of you who watched Ueno Juri in Last Friends and went gaga for her butchy Ruka – she plays Fumio. ^_^

Ratings:

Cinematography – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 2
Service – 2

Overall – 8

Anyway, if you, like myself, need to detox from Catholic schoolgirls and their keigo-speaking proper selves, by watching them slurp ramen before they take on evil with their superpowers, Arch Angels is exactly what you are waiting for. ^_^

A great deal of anime and manga fanfiction is written with what we call around my house “Hand of God” writing – i.e., writing that uses a great big emotional trauma as a plot driver. Like taking an established couple from a series and killing one of them off in order to force the other to react. Its a very common tactic in fanfic, especially when people are first trying their hand at writing. A trauma that makes a character react or characters getting drunk to provide a lead-in to sexual encounters are “Hand of God” writing.

For original fiction, there’s no real difference. Soap operas thrive on ridiculous, overstated situations and melodrama to drive their plots. I’m immediately reminded of my youth, when *everyone* was watching Luke and Laura try to find to one-armed boy before the mysterious Australian Robert Scorpio did, on General Hospital. (And let me remind you all that Luke raped Laura earlier in their relationship, but then they became a couple, and after years, finally married with an amazing amount of fanfare and buzz.)

The live-action J-drama, Last Friends, is about 6 people whose lives intertwine deeply. Eri owns a house, which becomes a refuge for friends who find themselves in need of a support network. The friends’ lives are very complex and dramatic and frankly of no interest to me at all, except for the fact that two of them are named Ruka and Michiru and seem *awfully* similar to Haruka and Michiru from Sailor Moon…in a very “Hand of God” fanfic way. ^_^

**There will be spoilers in this post**

Do not read further if you do not want to be spoiled – perhaps emotionally damaged.

That is all.

** **

In this version, Ruka, still a motocross racer and still massively in love with Michiru since high school, is having serious issues about her gender. She simply feels wrong in this body – unable to compete equally in her chosen sport and unable to protect Michiru properly.

And boy does Michiru need protecting. Brought up in an abusive household, Michiru has entered into an extremely abusive relationship with Sousuke. Her inability to see and comprehend Ruka’s feelings for her and Ruka’s fear of verbalizing them sits like a wall between them. Everyone around them is, whether they know it or not, dancing to the tune of this non-relationship.

Adding to the complexity of the polygon is Takeru who is really gay, although he doesn’t know it (this is not in the story so much as in my watching of the story, because he is REALLY very gay) and who has fallen for boyish Ruka. (Well, duh.)

And then there’s Eri who owns the absolutely adorable house they all live in, whose own problems constantly take a back seat to the major drama, and the other guy, but no one cares about him at all.

The best thing about the series is Ruka’s actress. She does a fabulous job of being all but blatantly in love with Michiru in a way that only the willfully ignorant and straight can’t see. ^_^

Now here’s the thing. This story is 99% sure to not have the happy ending that we want. (Really 100%, but I’m being kind and offering is a glimmer of hope.) In the first five minutes of the show, we saw a pregnant Michiru talking about how if things had gone differently, “that person” wouldn’t have had to die. Realistically, what we should expect is Ruka dead by Sousuke’s hands, Sousuke in jail and Takeru and Michiru together to raise her and Sousuke’s baby whom they will name Ruka.

Alternately, Sousuke, who I am far more inclined to call “that person” than Ruka, will die and Ruka will leave to get her surgery and build a new life. Takeru and Michiru together to raise her and Sousuke’s baby whom they will name Ruka.

Of course there’s the infinitesimal chance that Ruka and Michiru will get together at the end, but what’s the likelihood? .0001%?

Because this series is highly unlikely to end in a way I find satisfying, I’ve taken up the hobby of constructing possible alternate endings to the series for fun. The individual episodes are so miserable, that if I don’t do something else with my brain, I get all stabby. I invite you all to join in the in the comments. ^_^ Here’s a few of the alternatives I’ve come up with:

Ruka has her surgery and comes back as a boy, stabs Sousuke in self defense and marries Michiru. Takeru realizes that he is (duh!) gay and lives with them as a housemaid.

Michiru and Ruka realize that they are in love and run away “to America.”

Takeru kills Sousuke and goes to jail. Eri loses the other guy, changes her name to Setsuna and the three of them raise the child together. (This one makes me laugh every time I think of it.)

Sousuke kills Takeru, we all feel bad for a microsecond, and Ruka, Michiru and Eri raise the baby together.

Sousuke dies and we all have a “ding dong the witch is dead” party at Eri’s adorable house and live happily every after.

Anyway, that’s a small selection of the endings that this series will not have. Feel free to add your own, because that’s about all the satisfaction we’ll get out of this particular fanfic. However, if you are one of those folks who likes WEtv, and enjoys the institutionalized sexism and violence against women of josei manga, this show is right up your alley.

Ratings:

Story – 4 (As we all know, I really loathe violence against women as entertainment for women)
Characters – 6 I’d like to like them more, but this is a J-drama….
Yuri – 4
Loser FanGirl – 8

Overall – 5

If I thought for a second that the ending would be Yuri-friendly, I *might* be able to tolerate the rest of the garbage heap, but I doubt it, really. ^_^

Update: It ended and it wasn’t as bad as expected. Ambiguously happy, which is about as good as we can expect from a J-Drama. “That person” did indeed turn out to be Sousuke. Yay.