Category Archives: News

Age of Shadows

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In 1910, after decades of intrigues, provocations and double-crosses, Japan formally annexed Korea. For the next 35 years, Korea showed up on maps as part of Japan, its capital Seoul renamed Keijo, its royal family whisked away to Tokyo as hostages, its people force-fed a diet of Japanese nationalism.

Detective inspector Lee (Song Kang-ho) is a good-hearted cop, who finds his loyalties tested when his Japanese masters task him with hunting down the resistance. Rebel mastermind Che-san (Lee Byung-hun) senses that Lee is on the verge of switching sides, and lures him ever closer to an explosives-smuggling ring that uses an antique shop as a front. But will Lee wake up to the cause and join the rebels, or will he hand over his countrymen to his dastardly Japanese bosses?

Director Kim Jee-woon returns to his native land, after helming Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Last Stand, for a gory, uncompromising glimpse of the rise of the Japanese war machine and the fires of the Korean resistance. Known simply as “Spy” (Miljeong) in its homeland, his beautifully grim, smoky vision of 1920s occupation has been released abroad with a far more evocative title, reflecting both its look and its loyalties: Age of Shadows.

“I’m drawn towards double agents,” comments Kim, pointing to people with divided loyalties who “act in secret while surrounded by enemies, standing at the borders of their turbulent age.” His film is all the more remarkable for being inspired by history, most notably the rise of the “Heroic Corps” (Uiyoldan). With dynasties collapsing in both Korea and China, and the Japanese plundering treasures from both, the real-life Heroic Corps did indeed use the antiques trade as a means of importing weapons from across the border. They carried out targeted assassinations of Japanese troops, high-level collaborators and a vaguely-defined subset of “traitors”.

Several schemes were thwarted by the authorities, but their first success came in 1923, with the bombing of the prominent Bell Street police station in central Seoul. The bomber, Kim Sang-ok, fought his way through a police cordon around his home, and committed suicide after a costly gun battle on the slopes of Mount Namsan. This all adds a touch of gritty realism to the film’s depiction of revolutionary intrigues, most notably a prolonged set-piece as agents desperately try track the glamorous but iron-willed arms smuggler, Gye-Soon (Han Ji-Min), on the Shanghai train.

“I wanted to capture the image of people navigating a tightrope between supporting or resisting Japanese colonial rule,” says Kim, “and being swept up in the consequences of setting one’s foot down on either side of the line.” Although it’s pretty clear which side of the line he is on – the Japanese are presented as unrelentingly cruel, old-school baddies. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Age of Shadows is a Korean initiative, rather than a Japanese one. For a former coloniser to depict the period for entertainment purposes would seem gauche and indiscreet – how many English films have glorified the Irish War of Independence?

Far too many Korean movies are obsessed with a fratricidal, traitorous motif seemingly inspired by today’s North-South divide. But Age of Shadows makes it clear that Korean allegiances have been split for far longer, with the colonial regime struggling to hang onto its collaborators and root out its rebels. Antique dealer Woo-jin (Gong Yoo) is a Lovejoy charmer, trying to win over his police tail with honeyed words, dressing to impress in another historical touch – “I was fascinated to hear that real-life members of the resistance, never knowing which day might be their last, dressed each day with style,” the actor reveals.

For director Kim, the film was a chance to capture not only the atmosphere of the era, but also the lives of the founders of modern South Korea. “On the day before we started shooting, I visited the former office of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai,” he recalls. “It was so small that the bathroom was located right next to the dinner table. I wanted to suffuse the film with the emotion I felt, learning about the struggles of independence fighters who endeavoured to reclaim the spirit of a people who had lost their country.”

Jonathan Clements is the author of A Brief History of Japan. This article first appeared in Geeky Monkey #20, 2017.

Enemies Reunited

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Over at the All the Anime blog, I write an article about Naoko Yamada’s acclaimed film A Silent Voice.

“A Silent Voice had a rollercoaster ride to success. Despite winning a Kodansha comics competition in 2008, it sat unpublished for three years as editors and lawyers debated its provocative stance. Disability drama is a recognised sub-genre in the Japanese media, but usually strives for a worthy, didactic message. The implied audience is all too often an ignoramus who needs to be educated about specific conditions. Such stories are often termed Pure dramas, deriving their name from the autism-related 1996 TV series of the same name. But A Silent Voice often focussed not on the saintly deaf girl but on the young thug who bullied her, along with his classmates’ casual disinterest. When it finally saw print in 2011, it did so with a ringing endorsement from the Japanese Federation of the Deaf: ‘Please publish it as it is and do not change a thing.'”

For Honor: Samurai vs Everyone

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Over at Samuel Steele’s YouTube page, he interviews me about the technology and culture of the samurai. It’s “just a bit of fun” as the TV historians like to say, designed to think through some of the implications of the ideas behind the computer game For Honor, in which samurai, Vikings and knights duel for control of thinning resources. The interview is split into three parts, the first, largely on weapons and armour, the second, largely on “the warrior code” and the existence of the ninja, and the third on archery, women, and who would win in a stand-up fight.

The Day Heidi was Born

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Over at the All the Anime website, I review Kaori Chiba’s new Japanese-language book on Heidi, Girl of the Alps, the landmark anime series that carved out an entire niche in evening programming.

“Chiba deals with the anime’s planning, the shooting of its pilot, and the crew’s location hunt in Switzerland, wherein Miyazaki, Takahata and their long-term collaborator Yoichi Kotabe descend like dervishes on the farmhouse of a baffled local family, demanding to photograph their kitchen table and their cows. From Maienfeld, they head up to Ulm and Frankfurt, soaking up the metropolitan imagery for Heidi’s later adventures in Germany.

“Chiba devotes ample space to the production of the first episode – the scoring of the music, the theme song, and the auditions for the voice actors, the character designs and the backgrounds. It’s only towards the end of the book that her account takes a darker tone, drawing on the complaints of the staff, particularly Miyazaki himself in many later articles and interviews, that television animation was a brutal, relentless, unending task, gobbling up talent and time. The animators put their all into Heidi, only to find that television networks greet its manifest quality with an indifferent shrug.”

Eurovision Shouty I-Spy 2017

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This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is in Ukraine, land of some of the best ever Eurovision mentalists. Sadly this year we’ve already lost Latvia’s disco-goth Sailor Moon and Montenegro’s ponytail whirling spacefarer, but there’s plenty of nutters left for Saturday..

This year is the year of the Man-Bun, with these monstrosities appearing on singers, dancers and band members. We also trial our new SHOW A LEG category, for any moment when someone has a single bare leg poking out their costume. This replaces our usual Mullet Dress category, since too many things that look like a mullet dress from a distance turn out to be miniskirts with bum veils. Yes, we have probably thought about this far too much.

Step One: you will probably need to be quite drunk. Step Two: The following sights will be seen during this Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest. Can you see them first? Remember to shout it out. Party hosts will need to keep score of who gets what first, or otherwise dish out the forfeits to those that aren’t quick enough. As ever, there is more than one key change, and plenty of orbital cleavage, but this year you have to be quick to catch the subtlest of bimbles. Keep your eyes (or ears) open for any of the following. And when you notice it, SHOUT IT OUT!

In no particular order, in Saturday’s final you should look out for:

SHOW A LEG!
The Star Trek Away Team (science, command, security and… orange)
Tap that jug!
Hold my microphone for me
The one-legged hoppy dance
MAN-BUN!
Hands make a heart (several)
Singing in a boat
Conveyor belt dancing
It’s the man in the moon!
WINKING (a lot of winking this year)
COSTUME CHANGE
It’s the Eiffel Tower!
Suddenly shouts “SAMURAI!”
Yodelling
Mask made out of fairy lights
Bouquet throwing
KEY CHANGE! (every time you hear one)
Slapping a pond
Writing on people with chalk
DANCING GORILLA!
Walking on a line he just drew
Onstage cannons
Sign: “Feeling all alone and insecure.”
Big Giant Head
Girl standing in a kaleidoscope (you’ll see three of her)
Xena Warrior Princess voguing in the back (looky likee)
Fat man in half a leather jacket
Glitterboobs (Visible glitter on boobs)
FLAME ON! (every time there’s pyrotechnics)
Man with a horse’s head on top of a stepladder
Woman on a pedestal
Topless man/men
Mask made out of fairy lights
Brushes off imaginary dandruff (got to be quick with this one)
Bimbling*
ORBITAL CLEAVAGE**
Buddha Jazz Hands***

(*swaying one’s head from side to side in a snakey fashion)

(**ostentatious cleavage sufficient to see from a satellite in orbit, which, according to Eurovision bra consultant Tom Clancy, requires a minimum of C-cup)

(***the dancers all pile behind the singer in a line and then fling their arms out, creating a multi-limbed oriental deity-look)

BONUS SCORING

Cyprus gives Greece 12 points
Greece gives Cyprus 12 points
Finland gives Sweden 12 points
Britain scores nul points
Brazilian or Russian flag spotted in the audience.
Eastern European delegate makes ominous comment about friendship
Ukrainian hosts compliment themselves on their attractiveness

Apologies to American readers, who will have to just imagine what the world’s biggest, gayest song contest is like. Just imagine, for one day every year, Europe gets to behave the way that Japan does all the time.

The Phantom Pippi Longstocking

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Up on the All the Anime blog, my article on the aborted Pippi Longstocking anime project that caused Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Yoshio Kotabe to walk off their jobs at Toei and jump feet-first into the world of television.

“There is no real evidence for [Astrid] Lindgren’s reluctance at the Japanese end, apart from a cryptic comment from Tokyo Movie’s Keishi Yamazaki, who thought that she had once said in a TV programme that Japanese animation was ‘too violent’. Where on Earth she got that idea from in 1971 is anyone’s guess — I like to imagine a Stockholm tea-time coven of famous children’s authors, complaining about foreign cartoons.”

Splendor & Misery

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Up now at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, I add three new entries about modern issues in science fiction — the Hugo-nominated rap album Splendor & Misery, the controversially whitewashed Ghost in the Shell, and the “maliciously” reviewed Great Wall. I’ve still got a bunch of Japanese science fiction authors to add, but these three were just a little diversion to keep me busy over Easter.

Who Will Make Anime Now?

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Over at the All the Anime blog, I review Tadashi Sudo’s just-published book on disruptions to the Japanese animation business.

“Sudo’s book is no simple statement of the obvious. Despite its pocket size, it is an admirable synthesis of two decades of anime business writing, and of the immense changes wrought upon the industry by developments in technology and shifts in demographics. China is, sensibly, a huge part of his argument, as he deals with the seemingly unsolvable problem of pushing Japanese products into a marketplace with willing fans but hostile gatekeepers. He not only points to the disruption of traditional models, but also the growing influence of the likes of Netflix and Amazon in how anime is watched, and how it is funded in the first place. He also deals directly with issues of single personalities, and how they might be expected to influence the business.”

Go, Go, Power Rangers

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When astronauts accidentally free evil sorceress Rita Repulsa from 10,000 years of stasis, she resolves to take over the world. Only five (er… six) “teenagers with attitude” can hold her and her monsters back, suiting up as the Power Rangers to save the planet.

With a little bit of Thunderbirds and a little bit of Battle of the Planets, Japanese toy companies tried to find a winning combination that would maximise the potential of an action-packed kids’ show that would sell action figures. They first hit on the magic formula in 1975, when Masked Rider creator Shotaro Ishinomori brain-stormed Secret Battle Team Go Ranger, a bunch of super-powered, colour coded heroes who came accompanied by a toy line of matching vehicles. Thereafter, there was a “sentai” (Battle Team) show every year, each with a different unifying theme, everything from playing cards to Egyptian gods, and in the case of the 1979 Battlefever J, dance steps – including a Russian cossack and a disco-themed all-American girl.

There were a few experiments with Ishinomori’s template, but it was soon relatively fixed. A five-strong battle team would pilot signature vehicles that combine into a super-vehicle, all the better to encourage parents to buy the whole set. They would fight a series of crazy monsters-of-the-week, and there would usually be a “shock” discovery halfway through when one of the baddies switched sides. As for the toys, the uniforms would change just enough each season to make last year’s models seem like old hat. The moulds at the toy factory would make a slight adjustment to helmet design or giveaway weapons, and last year’s Red Ranger simply would not do

Producers Haim Saban and Shuki Levy struggled for years to find a way to transport the franchise over to America. They finally struck gold with 1992’s Dinosaur Battle Team Zyu Ranger, when they realised that they only had to keep the fights and monsters. The original Japanese heroes were thrown out, and replaced with all-new footage of all-American teens off-duty in everytown Angel Grove, chosen by the enigmatic Zordon to defend the Earth from the cackling Rita Repulsa.

“Oh… kids, y’know, they’re really funny,” Pink Ranger Amy Jo Johnson once told me. “But I mean Power Rangers has got everything that they look for in a show. It’s got dinosaurs, monsters, real kids they can relate to, bright colours.” Although it’s easy to overlook today, it was also worthily inclusive, with the WASPy leads accompanied by a black colleague and even Vietnamese girl Trini (although famously her boobs disappeared when she transformed, as her counterpart in the Japanese original was played by a man).

Despite its square-jawed genuflections towards love and peace, Power Rangers was also a fighting show, and inevitably there were tears at bedtime when toddlers in the Midwest tried to imitate a flying kick against a Putty Patroller. And yet, for an entire global generation of six-year-olds. Power Rangers was a veritable religion. It’s difficult to comprehend, a generation later, just how deep an impact it had on its young audiences. Most traumatic to many youngsters was the sudden disappearance of the Green Ranger, a figure who started as a bad guy, but then became arguably the biggest hero of the original line-up.

“Oh yeah!” remembered Amy Jo Johnson, “I mean, first season the Green Ranger leaves, but the kids went mad, so they bring him back. I mean, we had mothers calling up saying ‘My little boy won’t come out of his room.’ God!”

The problem was managed out of existence by finding new reasons to splice the former Green Ranger back into the show. Actor Jason David Frank came back as the White Ranger, two different Red Rangers and a Black Ranger in later seasons. Power Rangers and its Japanese counterparts have become increasingly hybridised in later years, with the Japanese actively contributing to the American (and more recently, New Zealand-shot) footage, swapping stuntmen and planning ahead for integrating characters. This year’s Power Rangers Ninja Steel is a respray of a Japanese original from two years ago. If you want to know what Power Rangers will look like in two years’ time, then Space Battle Team Kyu Ranger is running on Japanese telly at this very moment

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the original series, is released this June by Manga Entertainment. This article originally appeared in Geeky Monkey #20, 2017.