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The Great Yokai War
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - ICHIBAN!
Miike does it again! Just when you think you've got this guy figured out, he does something different and somehow makes it his own! THE GREAT YOKAI WAR is a fantasy movie in the same vein as NEVERENDING STORY, DARK CRYSTAL, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, LOTR, and LABYRINTH. However, by sucessfully intergrating japanese folklore and contemparary stylization, something new and fresh is created. While there is no overly didactic messages, elements of anti-consumerism and envioronmentalism are hinted at. Essentially the themes are as simple as believing in yourself and the magic of childhood.
Tadashi Ino is an introspective kid living with his mother at his grandpa's house after his parents divorce. When he is bitten by a puppet dragon (a kirin) at a festival, he is told by the local kids that he is now the Kirin Rider. Takashi takes the duty seriously as it becomes more evident thoughout the film that this folklore is true! Soon enough this kid (who's a very good actor, by the way) is up to his chin in monsters and adventure! He teams up with a motley crew of spooks and weirdos (including the rockstar of yokai, the KAPPA), gets an awesome sword, fights robots, and saves Tokyo from the forces of evil! What more could you ask for?
One of the greatest things about the film is the inventiveness of the yokai costumes themselves. All kinds of masks, suits, makeup, puppets, prosthetics, and digital effects are used to create an epic rouges gallery of monsters. Miike always works with great physical effects artists and designers. Also, Miike taps his large pool of veteran actors like Kenichi Endo and Renji Ishibashi to play some of the yokai. He creates a sort of yokai theatre that both children and adults can get lost in. There are a few small scenes that might be a little on the scary side for very small kids, but overall this is a very colorful and light hearted fantasy film. I'm glad this genre is making a comeback (MIRRORMASK comes to mind), and I'm happy to see that Takashi Miike dove right in there and gave us this gem!
Rating: - Japanese folklore comes to life
Kappa. Tengu. Yuki Onna, Kawa Hime. Chochin Obake. Kasa Obake. Japan's fantasy monsters, called Yokai in Japanese, are an unending list of bizarre creativity, from a culture that spawns goblins for almost every situation. Something of a national obsession, there are books and comics and movies dedicated to packing as many of them as possible.
Takashi Miike's "The Great Yokai War" ("Yokai Daisenso") is the latest flick to gather all the yokai together, sending all the kids of Japan running for their copies of Shigeru Mizuki's yokai encyclopedias to see if they can name that obscure creature that popped on the screen for a few seconds. While Miike is best known in the US for his controversial hard horror films like "Audition" and "Visitor Q", this is not his first jaunt into light-hearted kid's films, having previously made the superhero film "Zebraman." "The Great Yokai War" is a remake of a 1968 film of the same name, that was released as "Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare" in the US.
All in all, it is lots of fun. The story is pretty typical of children's fantasy, with the young boy Tadashi Ino being a nobody at school, the target for bullies and abuse. Tadashi is one day chosen at a local festival to be the Kirin Rider, for which he receives a small flag and a special lunch. Although Tadashi doesn't think this actually means anything, he finds himself drawn in a yokai war, acting as the chosen human champion to help fight the evil Kato, who is merging yokai spirits into machine technology in order to create an army to take over the world. Tadashi gets some help along the way, with his fighting companions being a kappa, the red-faced Kirin Herald, and the childlike but seductive River Princess. Of course he has a magic sword.
The yokai are the real stars, and Miike has used modern special effects to create them in a realistic but amusing fashion. Some of them are scary, some are ridiculous, but they are all actual creatures from Japanese folklore. It is pretty cool seeing them all on the screen and moving around, especially the bizarre Kasa Obake, a haunted umbrella with a long wagging tongue. Along with his digital monsters, Miike has pulled in some of Japan's great modern actors too, including the ubiquitous Takenaka Naoto ("Shall we dance?" "Waterboys") and Kuriyama Chiaki ("Battle Royale," "Kill Bill 1"). It is really great seeing veteran actor Sugawara Bunta ("Battles without honor or humanity") playing Tadashi's grandfather.
Lots of comparisons can be drawn between "The Great Yokai War" and other children's fantasy films like "Neverending Story," and the similarities are obvious. However, "Neverending Story" is a great flick, and what works there works here too. Tadashi is a believable child-hero, and the yokai are as charming and funny as any of Bastian's companions.
Rating: - Cult fantasy for the Python crowd
For many critics, it's very tempting to lump hard-to-categorize cinema with films from the same country. In a way, Beat Takeshi does deal with some similar issues that Miyazeki/Gibrli Studios addresses in films: the old Traditional ways verses the Modern culture, history verses embracing the new, technology verses nature and ritual verses anarchy. What's more confusing is that American viewers who aren't familiar with Japanese culture and mythology may miss symbolism that Japanese Traditionals and international folklorists are familiar with in storytelling, thus missing the depth of The Great Yokgai War (see Peter Carey's journey into Japan for a further explanation). However, there is an audience for this film. For those who loved the off-beat nature of The Happiness of the Katamuras (Beat), Tampopo, Monty Python films, Gilliam's films, the puppetry films of the '80s and Harryhausen's creature features, this film is a must-have. While there are no common place symbols such as red gates, wells or kitsunes that frequently populate Japanese fantasy, this story is based in quirky product placement (post modern references to beer, anyone?) and swampy revelations with innovative, but traditional puppetry/CG work. Yes, it does posess some of the typical fantasy characters: a cute (but not in an annoying Disney way) poppet of a boy, a fuzzy creature that will make some viewers become obsessed with possessing a stuffed animal that looks like a sunekosur &, a wise & old guide, but somehow it works and the tongue-in-cheek attitude makes it rise to level of Time Bandits. The dialogue superb and in this way, Beat's influences are more similar to say, Gilliam's or Itami's films than the corny dialogue that ruins otherwise impressive anime (ie. Howl's Moving Castle).
By far, this is my favorite 2006 film so far (have yet to see The Prestige or Gilliam's Tideland). Sadly, it looks like Miike's latest release will suffer McKean's & Gaiman's Mirrormask's fate in 2005 as one of the most overlooked and misunderstood films of the year.
If you enjoy this film, I highly recommend reading Murakami's The Windup Bird Chronicle which deals with similar concepts and complexities and checking out Wolf's Rain, one of the strongest anime series that incorporates Japanese folklore.
Rating:  - Miike doing a children's movie
I believe that almost every fan of Japanese film, if they actually like his films or not, are familiar with the cinema of Miike Takashi. With such films as Audition, Ichi the Killer, and Visitor Q Miike has left his mark on the world of cinema because of the pure brutality often depicted in his films, however, there is also another side of Miike. With films such as The Bird People of China Miike displays that his filmic scope can go beyond the realm of visceral violence, and with The Great Yokai War Miike does something that few of his fans and critics would think possible: create a film for children.
After his parents get divorced, Ino Tadashi moves with his mother to his grandfather's home in a rural village. Teased by the other children because of his Tokyo origins, Tadashi leads a pretty solitary existence either reminding his grandfather that he is not his mother's deceased older brother Akira or leading his grandfather back home from one of his aimless wanderings. He lives a pretty drab existence, but this is soon to change. One night while attending a local festival, Tadashi is chosen by the Kirin, two men in a costume, to be the one that it will bite that year. Receiving gifts of azukj beans and rice and a towel, makes his way home and has a phone conversation with his elder sister who he longs to see. Later he learns from a couple of the boys who bully him that because he is the Kirin Rider he must climb Hobgoblin Mountain to retrieve the sword of the Hobgoblin King. Making his way up the mountain, Tadashi is frightened by some voices and he runs to board an odd bus where he encounters an odd cat/rat/hamster creature that had been injured in an earlier scene by a mechanical monster and a female yokai, Kuriyama Chiaki, sporting a beehive hairdo and wielding a whip. However, this little, fuzzy creature is only the first of many yokai that Tadashi will meet. Later after learning that because he is the one chosen to be the Kirin Rider he is the one chosen to save the yokai from evil, Tadashi joins a group of yokai, including a kappa, a water princess, and an azuki bean washer in an amazing quest that will remind any child of the 1980s of the films The Never Ending Story, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and Legend.
Although this might seem like an odd comparison, the first film director I thought of while watching this film was Miyazaki Hayao. While it does not play as strong of a role in this film as it does in many of Miyazaki's animated classics, the battle between nature and technology does play a role in this film. However, this role is quite tenuous at best and at some points it comes across as being a bit heavy handed. However, underlying meanings are not the main purpose of this film, what The Great Yokai War brings to the table is a visual delight of monsters that have filled Japanese folklore for centuries. While many of the creatures will remain unknown to the non-Japanese many such as the snow woman, tengu and demonic lanterns and umbrellas will be familiar to those with a basic familiarity with Japanese folklore. While not a great film, The Great Yokai War is a fun film to watch and, as I stated above, it is an interesting film to be added to the cinematic work of Miike.
Rating:  - I saw it at the Brattle...
Yes, I watched this at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA and I have to say I thought it was AMAZING!!! I don't know how it'll be on DVD, but up on the big screen, it was tons of fun. Lots of crazy monster costumes, some tongue-in-cheek humor, and Grandpa's song about Azuki beans! (They are good for you!) No clue what American kids will make of it, but I loved it.
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