The film is a production of Makoto Shinkai, who’s become one of Japan’s most celebrated anime feature directors thanks to hits like Weathering with You and Your Name. Our choice for the #1 Japanese movie of 2022 is Suzume. Japanese title: すずめの戸締まり| Director: Makoto Shinkai | Starring: Nanoka Hara, Hokuto Matsumura, Eri Fukatsu, Shota Sometani | Genre: Disaster, Animation, Coming-of-Age Overall, Plan 75 is a thought-provoking movie that has huge social relevance given Japan’s rapidly aging population, one that we don’t mind being Japan’s 2023 nominee for the Best International Feature Oscar. Plan 75 also explores the impact that such a program would have on the people who work in the “death-with-dignity” industry, as well as the ethical implications of deciding when it is acceptable to end a person’s life. The movie follows the story of various elderly characters who are faced with this decision, including Michi, a 78-year-old woman struggling to find a job and a place to live, and Yukio, a widowed man ready to join his wife in death. Japanese title: PLAN 75 | Director: Chie Hayakawa | Starring: Chieko Baisho, Hayato Isomura, Stefanie Arianne | Genre: Drama, Social IssueĪdapted from an eponymous short in the anthology Ten Years Japan, Plan 75 is a feature film about a hypothetical government program in which elderly citizens are compensated to end their lives in order to reduce strain on society. Learn more about My Small Land in our full length review. The movie never sensationalizes or becomes a pity party it’s a beautifully authentic story that will hopefully get more people thinking about what Japan’s national identity ought to look like as the nation depopulates. With its authentic and heartbreaking portrayal of identity crises and the travails of human migration, My Small Land helps audiences empathize with not only Japan’s ~ 2,000 strong Kurdish community, but also refugees at large. To make matters worse, her family lives in a precarious legal limbo, as Japan rarely grants formal refugee asylum requests. Its protagonist is Sarya, a Kurdish teenager living in Japan who speaks fluent Japanese but cannot find acceptance among peers. My Small Land focuses on a community at the margins of Japanese society: Kurdish refugees. Japanese title: マイスモールランド | Director: Emma Kawawada | Starring: Lina Arashi, Daiken Okudaira, Arashi Kahafizadeh, Lily Kahafizadeh | Genre: Drama While Shin Godzilla was a stronger film given its effective social commentary about Japan’s politics after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, Shin Ultraman is still decently entertaining for those who simply want a somewhat campy action movie. Working alongside Ultraman are human agents of the SSSP (S-Class Species Suppression Protocol), who must coordinate with Ultraman and get crash-courses in extraterrestrial affairs.ĭirector Shinji Higuchi and writer Hideaki Anno made Shin Ultraman as the second in a trilogy of tokusatsu reboots, with the first being 2016’s Shin Godzilla. The franchise, and Shin Ultraman, tell the story of an alien named Ultraman who comes to Earth to defend the planet from cosmic threats and kaiju (giant monsters). Shin Ultraman is a reimagining of the famous 1960s Ultraman tokusatsu (special effects-heavy action) franchise. Japanese title: シン・ウルトラマン | Director: Shinji Higuchi | Starring: Takumi Saitoh, Masami Nagasawa, Daiki Arioka, Akari Hayami | Genre: Action, Superhero, Tokusatsu Japanese WWII film buffs might find Fragments of the Last Will a more mainstream counterpart to The Human Condition, one of the most epic Japanese war movies of all time, whose third part also features Japanese in a Soviet POW camp. While its settings are bleak, Fragments doesn’t get bogged down in misery and instead rouses viewers to look at how the best of humanity can still persist in trying circumstances. The film follows Hatao’s (played by Kazunari Ninomiya) journey as he fights to keep hope alive for his fellow prisoners and reunite with his wife and children in Japan. For those without the historical context: over 625,000 Japanese soldiers were detained in harsh conditions by the Soviet Union after the end of WWII, and many did not get released until the mid-1950s. Japanese title: いとみち | Director: Takahisa Zeze | Starring: Kenta Kiritani, Keiko Kitagawa, Tori Matsuzaka | Genre: War, Drama, Periodįragments of the Last Will (also known as From Siberia with Love) is a Japanese movie inspired by the true story of Yamamoto Hatao, a prisoner of war detained in a Siberian gulag.
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