Yatterman

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release Yes
Watched With: Myself

Ok, interesting way to start of the new year and the new blog. Takashi Miike is one of my favourite directors. Even when he makes stuff I don't enjoy you cannot argue that it isn't interesting. The man makes about 2 features a year so he's bound to have some crap but I'm always curious as to what he has up his sleeves and he somehow always manages to surprise me.

So they have given him the task of adapting some beloved manga franchise to the big screen, a franchise I know NOTHING about so I'm sure most of the references went over my head. When you get the man who made such hardcore graphic and violent cinema (like Audition, Visitor Q, Gozu, Dead or Alive and of course the infamous Ichi the Killer) to make an anime adaptation primarily for children, who know what you are going to get. I have seen his adaptation of Zebraman which, in typical Miike fashion, was throughly self referential and post-modern and one of my favourites, The Great Yokai War which has some fabulously subversive elements in it that make it just too unsuitable for the littler kids.

With Yatterman I wasn't disappointed, the subversive elements were even more gratuitous than his other "kids" films. But not with violence this time, although the demon possessed father giving a hard beating to his crying daughter could cause some upset. This time it was more to do with mindboggilingly inappropriate (perhaps only in western eyes) sexual innuendo. There is quite literally a sex scene between two giant robot mecha things that starts off as a fight and then gets all kinds of creepy naughty. The fact that one is a giant woman with huge breasts that fire missiles and the other is a big red dog only adds to the confusion. Perhaps more hilarious/disturbing is one of the baddies fantasies involving "every high school girl." Nuff said.

But apart from these few undeniably Miike touches the rest of the film plays like a big budget power rangers episode shot entirely on greenscreen. If you can enjoy those goofy power ranges costumes and acting then you'll eat this up. I enjoyed those few unexpected moments but didn't care much for the rest. Still I'll be interested to see what he might come up with for a sequel.