Air Doll (2009)

http://asianwiki.com/Air_Doll
http://twitchfilm.com/reviews/2010/06/air-doll-review.php
http://japancinema.net/2010/09/01/air-doll-review/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127350715
http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/2010/07/29/fantasia-2010-air-doll-review/
http://www.bateszi.me/2010/04/06/people-with-cold-hands-have-warm-hearts-air-doll-review/

One Hell of a Doll:

Things you Can't put out with the trash.

Air Doll is not a Romantic comedy like it appears to be on the trailer, The narrative is presented at first as a love-triangle but the audience soon release that the story is more to do with Nozomi who is a Air Doll.  Nozomi is a Sex toy that comes to life , the films the Narrative questions societies relation with both each other and toward technology. Nozomi is born, so the character reflect the persona of a child, innocence and learning about the world from the begging but she also has a sexual relationship with Hideo which sounds weird. In Japanese media there is a concern with both youth culture and technology in the sense of it destructive behaviour. In Air Doll there was both of these elements in the film, there issues of age because the older generation felt pushed aside from society and there a feeling of symbolism of the older generation being judged to the point of self loafing. Naive Nozomi follow a woman around with the false concept that she is a Doll also and she offers her make up to cover her line but the woman  played by Kimiko Yo missunderstands what Nozomi is saying.

The film is questioning the concept of Humanity, The film start out like like any other Japanese Manga where the Inanimate object come to life and the concept is similar to robot story where robot girl explores Japan and becomes almost human but there where Dark side story that you could see building up along side the main narrative. Nozomi was not really Human, even though she appears to be human, she doesn't have any real human emotions and like any other monster movie the creature always destroys the master or in her case her inability to understand how the human body works is her curse. The reason for Nozomi naivety is because she is just a Doll, the concept of life, death are somewhat impossible to her and this is what make her in a sense dangerous to society because people use her to fill their own void unaware that she is somewhat emotionless.

The beginning of the film is a bit creepy with sex scenes with the Doll but apart from that Nozomi is an interesting character, like all the other characters in the film, she eventually becomes useless and put away. The film commenting on the disposable society that we live in but it has taken the concept a little further by commenting that people are just as disposable as technology (there will always be another, better model available). Nozomi like the Pinocchio concept, she wants to be a human like everyone else but unlike Pinocchio the narrative reveals that her inability to understand emotions and the boundaries that in effect cause her to inflict pain to the character she cares about. The character do not change through out the journey, they come to some sense of realisation but there is no real Hollywood happy ending and Nozomi accidentally kills the guy she likes. The film is amazing though, the effects are well though out, the Narrative is realistic even though it is a bit bizarre at time but i have seen weirder concepts in Japanese cinema.

High Kick Girl (2009)

http://asianwiki.com/High_Kick_Girl!
http://www.nipponcinema.com/blog/review-high-kick-girl
http://twitchfilm.com/reviews/2009/07/pifan-09-review-high-kick-girl.php

Teacher/ Student Movie

Class starts Now Motherfucker :

The movie is presented like the main female character is the hero but the audience soon release that the narrative is a little more complicated than that. in fact Kei Tsuchiya is not our main female protagonist but instead she is  more of the cause of every ones troubles throughout the film. The first fight scene that Kei Tsuchiya was interesting but after a while it seemed to be predictable and the director seems to want have a more realistic effect to the film by allowing our female protagonist to lose. All the  character seem to be students apart from the Karate Maser, He is trying to to teach the other characters how to fight and behave because their actions have consequences. The karate master is the true main character, the film should not be called High Kick Girl but it should be called High Kick Teacher or something to that effect because the ending of the film is more interesting when the teacher takes over.

The teacher ends up having his Ass Kicked so that he can save his students but he shows an example to the students and they learn from this but it seems a bit too far fetched. The film tried to have some intense moments by pausing for dramatic effect but the pauses seemed to long and i was glad when the film was over. I enjoyed the movie but it was not what I was expecting because the director also produced Shoalin Girl which starred Kou Shibasaki and also was a awesome film. Some of the fights where over too fast but I can see what theme the director has in mind because the film has same theme as Shaolin Girl.