Stray Dog Blog: Mamoru Oshii News &c.

Kenji Kawai and his Cinema Symphony

2007-11-17T21:32:00.000-06:00

In my regular email updates from CDJapan I noticed they're taking preorders for this upcoming CD compilation by Kenji Kawai, the man who has done the soundtrack work for nearly all of Oshii's films (in addition to many other films, TV series, and video games).

The set -- "K-Pleasure -Kawai Kenji Best of Movies" -- will focus on Kawai's work on Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell, and (the non-Oshii related) Death Note. It's main selling point seems to be that the CDs are in the hybrid Super Audio CD format.

Anyway, this reminds me that earlier this month Kenji Kawai performed a number of his soundtrack works at a live performance in Tokyo. Check out a couple of TV spots here. A slideshow from the event can be seen here. (A good selection, definitely weighted toward the Oshii-helmed features.) I think I read that there's going to be an upcoming DVD release of this performance. I certainly hope so.

Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden trailer

2007-11-14T22:03:00.000-06:00

Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden just came out in Japan a couple of days ago, but I have yet to see any English-language reviews of it. I'm hoping that Mark Schilling over at The Japan Times might do one, but we'll have to see.

For now, here's the trailer via the new Twitch video player.

My Newest Oshii Paper

2007-11-14T20:00:00.000-06:00

All right! My proposal for next year's Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference has been accepted. Now I just need to actually write the paper -- titled "Documenting the Anime City: Auteurism and the Anime-ic Documentary in Oshii Mamoru’s Tokyo Scanner and Tokyo Vein" -- by March.

FsJ8 "Temjin"

2007-10-31T00:36:00.000-05:00

I'll post later about the Amazon Japan shipment I received last week with some great Oshii-related stuff, but I thought I'd say a bit first about the figure you see in the picture here. It's apparently called the FsJ8 "Temjin" and it's from one of Oshii's segments of the "Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden" film. It has to be the coolest mech I've seen in quite a while. I'm not into the whole toy/figure collecting scene, but I'd totally buy this figure if it didn't run a cool 35,000 yen (that's ~US$305).

Oshii and Murphy's Irish Stout: Last Orders CM

2007-10-23T22:32:00.000-05:00

I was just checking out Oshii's IMDB listing a couple of days ago and noticed an entry I had never seen before -- a commercial called "Murphy's Irish Stout: Last Orders." Oshii made a commercial in the late 1990s? How had this previously escaped my attention?

However, I couldn't find much to back up the assertion that Oshii was involved in this project. The official Production IG listing for the commercial just lists Hiroyuki Kitakubo as director with character design and animation by Kazuchika Kise. (The Production IG 15th anniversary book lists the same scant info for the commercial.) I can't find any other print resource in Japanese or English that associates Oshii with this commercial.

So I'm pretty that Oshii didn't have anything to do with the "Murphy's Irish Stout: Last Orders" commercial.

Shin Onna Tachigui Retsuden premieres

2007-10-23T07:27:00.000-05:00

ANN as a brief writeup of the Shin Onna Tachigui Retsuden premiere at TIFF: Oshii Introduces Tachigui Sequel at Tokyo Film Fest. There are many reasons I would have liked to have been there, of course, not least of which is to witness Oshii's "flamboyant red carpet entrance."

Oshii in Variety

2007-10-21T12:55:00.000-05:00

Via ANN, a new article in Variety titled "Anime films follow new inspirations: Evolving format aims to reach wider audience" briefly covers some of the new developments in anime, one of which is Oshii's upcoming film The Sky Crawlers:

Likewise, Production I.G's "The Sky Crawlers," which is set to unspool in Japan next year, will contain a romantic theme. For the pic, in which a society of children lives in eternal adolescence, helmer Mamoru Oshii ("Ghost in the Shell") decided to work with young scriptwriter Chihiro Itou so that his message could reach his intended audience.

"Nowadays, there are many stories in live-action and animation that are targeting young people," producer Tomohiko Ishii explains. "However, very few of them have earnestly depicted the reality that youngsters are actually living in."

It'll be really interesting to see what they come up with for the film. The screenwriter Chihiro Ito previously wrote the scripts for the films Crying out Love, in the Center of the World (aka Socrates in Love, in the English adaptation of the original novel) and Spring Snow (Haru no Yuki, the recent film version of the Mishima novel). It's been a while since Oshii has worked with a screenwriter other than Kazunori Ito (no relation to Chihiro, I assume).

GRM

2007-10-21T08:28:00.000-05:00

When I next revisit Oshii's work as a whole (perhaps to write a follow-up to Stray Dog of Anime), I'm really going to need to pay more attention to GRM. It's a CG project that was originally going to follow Ghost in the Shell, but it never came to be, although much of its look and feel was turned into what became Avalon.

There's some information on this project floating around the web (in particular, check out the old official website through Archive.org), and more has been written in Japanese in some of the books on Oshii I have on my bookshelf.

Anyway, this post was prompted by some interesting GRM footage I stumbled across on YouTube:

Coverage in Goethe magazine

2007-10-07T12:48:00.000-05:00

The Japanese magazine Goethe has been running some interesting coverage of Oshii as in preparation for his upcoming film Sky Crawlers. The first part of the coverage is up online as a PDF here. The second volume of coverage is in the November issue of the magazine, which I just ordered from Amazon Japan. (Along with a preorder for the Kerberos x Tachiguishi collection and the upcoming December issue of Comic Ryu, which is supposed to come with a special Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden navigate DVD.)

Tachiguishi in Cineaste

2007-10-07T12:19:00.000-05:00

In the Fall 2007 edition of Cineaste, Rahul Hamid's coverage of the Jeonju Film Festival has a couple of paragraphs focusing on Tachiguishi Retsuden, and includes a promo pic of Moongaze Ginji.

Project Mermaid video

2007-10-02T07:53:00.001-05:00

How did I miss this before? Oshii's "Project Mermaid" posted on YouTube:

After all that, it's not quite as interesting as I thought it would be.

Oshii at TIFF

2007-09-30T23:35:00.000-05:00

It's almost October (in 20 minutes from where I'm sitting). This will be the month that the Oshii-supervised live-action sequel to "Tachiguishi Retsuden" will hit the screens. It'll be playing at the Tokyo International Film Festival later in October on the 21st and 23rd. I'd love to be there, but Tokyo's not in my near future.

Also, I just noticed that the first Patlabor film will be screening at TIFF as part of their "Tokyo in Focus: How Tokyo has been depicted in post WWII cinema" series of films. (See the complete list here.)

Oshii-like Thinking, parts 2 and 3

2007-09-30T21:57:00.000-05:00

See? I told you I wouldn't be able to keep up the daily updates. However, I didn't think it would happen so quickly. I do have an excuse, though, since I've been very sick. Now that I'm feeling better, here are the next two installments of "Oshii-like Thinking":

2. Religion (shuukyou) - "Yes, that's a nuanced topic. Actually, I am basically a religious person. By this I mean that somewhere there is something that is greater than human beings. However, I hate all of these so-called 'religious societies' or 'religious organizations.' That's my personal feeling."

3. Sex - "I love it. The reason is that it's necessary. Wars and sex are the only things people have been unable to stop."

Oshii quote in Wired

2007-09-24T00:31:00.000-05:00

In the latest issue of Wired (October 2007) there is an article on 25 years of Blade Runner. Among featured quotes by Neil Gaiman, J. Craig Venter and Ray Kurzweil is one from Oshii on page 184:

Twenty-five years ago, I was becoming dissatisfied with Japanese animation's focus on characters and stories at the expense of environments. Suddenly, the world I vaguely imagined appeared in front of me. I felt overwhelmed--but at the same time I realized that what I was attempting was not wrong at all.

The two-page spread of "The Blade Runner Nexus" beginning on the same page doesn't mention Ghost in the Shell (or Innocence, which, of Oshii's films, seems to me to draw the most from BR). Nods are given to Akira and Battle Angel, though.

Oshii-like Thinking, part 1

2007-09-23T21:40:00.000-05:00

In the book Tachiguishi, Kakukatariki (on Oshii's film Tachiguishi Retsuden), there is an interesting feature on the inside of the dust jacket. Titled "Verification * Oshii Mamoru-like Thinking / Like or Dislike - 42 Questions" (Kenshou * Oshii Mamoru teki shikou / Suki or kirai - 42 no shitsumon), it's a list of 42 things that Oshii either likes or dislikes, followed by a short explanation of why.

As a way of inaugurating this blog, I'll be translating these items and Oshii's responses. I don't know if I'll post one each day, although that's the ideal. (On the other hand, given my previous track record with blogs, I wouldn't count on such punctual updates.) This is an exercise to keep my Japanese-reading chops in shape as well, so apologies in advance for any mistranslations.

The topics covered run the gamut from politics to technology to anime to sex:

Democracy (minshushugi)
Religion (shuukyou)
Sex (sekkusu)
Nationalism (nashonarizumu)
Revolution (kakumei)
Constitution of Japan (Nihonkoku kenpou)
The Internet (intaanetto)
Mobile phones (keitai denwa)
Stock investment (kabushiki toushi)
Enka / J-pop
Morning Musume (Mouningu musume)
Martial arts (kakutougi)
Alcohol (sake)
No smoking (kin'en)
Comic Market (Komike)
Japanimation (Japanimeeshon)
Godzilla / Ultraman (Gojira / Urutoraman)
Gundam (Gandamu)
Beautiful girls (bishoujo)
Large breasts (kyonyuu)
Moe
Disney (Dizunii)
Studio Ghibli (Giburi)
Tatsunoko Productions (Tatsunoko)
Tezuka Osamu / Kajiwara Ikki
American comics (Amekomi)
Mishima Yukio
Modern poetry (gendaishi)
Pure literature (junbungaku)
Theatrical plays (engeki)
Textbooks (kyoukasho)
The emperor system (tennousei)
Patriarchy (kafuchousei)
Equality of the sexes (danjo byoudou)
Youth (seishun)
Terrorism (terorizumu)
The Olympics (Orinpikku)
Tanaka Kakuei / Koizumi Jun'ichiro
Erotic books (ero hon)
"Compensated dating" (enjo kousai)
The occult (okaruto)
Space travel (uchuu ryokou)

We'll begin today with the first one on the list, which conveniently has the shortest response:

1. Minshushugi (democracy) - "Dislike. Because it stinks of lies."

Critical Testing

2007-09-23T20:34:00.000-05:00

Testing. Oh, and in the words of Jay Sherman (from The Critic): "Buy my book! Buy my book! Buy my book!"