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Over the course of his career, Eichiro Hasumi has been making quite a name for himself directing entertaining genre features, even though the majority of them is somewhat forgettable. Apart from “Assassination Classroom: Graduation” he is perhaps best known for this entries into the “Resident Evil”-franchise, “Infinite Darkness” and the upcoming “Death Island”, which cemented the reputation of the animated entries of the franchise being in many ways superior to the lukewarm features by the likes of Paul W.S. Anderson. In between these last two projects, he directed “re:member” (also known as “Re/Member”), which was released on Netflix, and which is his take on the horror genre, blending ideas from J-horror, the slasher genre and time travel movies.

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The story centres around six high-school students, with Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto) essentially being the main protagonist. One day, which begins seemingly normal,...

The world of Asian cinema has seen a vast share of their most recent fare emanating from manga adaptations, with titles ranging from Rurouni Kenshin, “Death Note,” Blade of the Immortal, and Gantz finding their inspiration coming from its pages. Such is the origins of the latest Netflix release in Eiichiro Hasumi's adaptation of “Re/Member,” which started out as a multi-year run in the early 2010s and was followed by an anime adaptation several years later before this current live-action feature.

After what seems to be a normal day, high-school student Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto) sees the ghost of the dead student Haruka at school, asking her to find the girl's dead body. When she and Takahiro (Gordon Maeda), Atsushi, (Fuju Kamio), Rumiko (Maika Yamamoto), Rie (Mayu Yokota), and Shota (Kotaro Daigo), a group of students, set out to find the various scattered pieces of Haruka's corpse buried in the school,...

Re/Member (Karada Sagashi) is a horror movie directed by Eiichirô Hasumi starring Kanna Hashimoto, Gordon Maeda and Maika Yamamoto among. It is based on the manga by Katsutoshi Murase and Welzard.

Re/Member is a Japanese scary movie… Japanese fashion with all the elements of recent “scary” movie successes and some extra ones extracted from the most classic Hollywood ones.

Ringu was a success because it was a novelty, Re/Member does not have much chances in standing out, precisely because of its “originality” or lack of it.

It does offer horror movie fans a little more of what they expect in this guilty sin.

Storyline

In order to break a curse, six students in a strange space/time will need to restore the balance in Sofia, a child that was murdered years ago and whom they wish to avenge.

Movie Review

A movie about ghosts and apparitions that is well made...

Poppy tunes open Vo Thanh Hoa’s screen adaptation of Kenji Uchida’s “Key of Life” (2012), following the first action scene that introduces one of the film’s three key characters – Thach (Kieu Minh Tuan), a notorious assasin who’s seen completing his task and then disappearing from the crime scene. In just a couple of minutes he will shake of a bunch of armed criminals by swiftly changing roles from one type of servant to the other, to be ridiculously defeated by a simple bar of soap. Just like in Kenji’s original, the fantom assasin gets knocked unconscious in a bath house, and wakes up with amnesia and a wrong locker key in his hand, logically believing to be someone else.

Chìa Khoá Trăm Tỷ (A Hundred Billion Key) has opened in 50 major U.S. theaters nationally on Friday, Oct 28th.

Thach starts living...

translation by Koichi Mori

Ken Ninomiya was born in 1991 in Osaka. He started his career in film in 2014, with two shorts and he did his feature debut in 2015 with Slum-Polis. Starting with his third film, “The Limit of Sleeping Beauty”, he garnered international attention, with the movie screening in Hong Kong, BiFan (Korea) and Japan FIlmfest Hamburg. “Chiwawa” in 2019 was an even bigger success internationally, while it took number one in Best Japanese Film of 2019 in our list.

On the occassion of “Tonkatsu DJ Agetaro”, his latest film, screening at New York Asian Film Festival, we speak with him about adapting the particular manga, the 80’s aesthetics of the movie, music and music video elements in his filmography, the set design of the movie, his latest film, and other topics

Why did you decide to adapt the particular manga by Ipyao and Yujiro Koyama?

The unique blend of two seemingly contradictory cultures,...

After two movies that stood out for their music video aesthetics and visual flair (“Limit of Sleeping Beauty” and “Chiwawa”) with the second one being much better, Ken Ninomiya changed his style somewhat, by shooting a title that is a tribute to the 80s (following the international trend essentially) but also so much more.

“Tonkatsu DJ Age-Taro” is screening at Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival

The script is adapted from a manga series by Ipyao and Yujiro Koyama, which also became an anime, and focuses on Agetaro Katsumata, whose family runs a tonkatsu (pork cutlet) restaurant in Shibuya, Tokyo. Agetaro will inherit the restaurant one day and he currently performs menial jobs at the restaurant, like chopping up the cabbage and delivering food orders. He isn’t satisfied with his work, while his father still believes he is not dedicated enough to be allowed to deep fry meat. He and...

After taking on the live-action adaptation of “Gintama”, the director of “Hk: Forbidden Super Hero” was bound to continue in the same, commercially successful path, this time dealing with another iconic manga,”Kyo kara Ore wa!!”. The initial story revolves around two high school students, Takashi Mitsuhashi and Shinji Ito, who meet each other at a salon, and when they realize they are transferring to the same new school, decide to reinvent themselves, and become the greatest delinquents in Japan.

“From Today, It’s My Turn!!” is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

In the particular story, Takashi finds himself antagonizing Katsutoshi Imai, another rather strong delinquent who has a thing for his sister, Riko. At the same time, another school full of thugs temporarily transfers to their own, and soon take over through their own two leaders, giant Shigehiro Otake and knife wielding Eiji Yanagi, who even force the...

Four years after the first live action Tokyo Ghoul film, a new story based on Sui Ishida's manga comes to screens. This time around, gastronomically restrained half-ghoul hero Ken Kaneki (Masataka Kubota) is no longer wrestling with his conscience, having found a way to live without doing harm, but risks ending up on the menu himself after attracting the attention of the vicious and charismatic Gourmet (Shota Matsuda). Meanwhile, his mentor Tôka (Maika Yamamoto) is trying to persuade him to make more use of his ghoul-based fighting skills, and their friend Shun'ya Shiraishi is caught up in a romance with a human girl (Mai Kiryû). The result is a slice of cannibal horror with a distinctly soapy aftertaste.

If you've left high school and the teen drama that makes up the bulk of this film doesn't do much to hold your interest, what else does it have to offer?...

Following the success of the first “Tokyo Ghoul,” a new chapter of the live-action adaptation of the celebrated manga was sure to follow, resulting in this sequel arriving two years later. With Masataka Kubota reprising his role as half-human/half-ghoul Ken Kaneki and new directors Kazuhiko Hiramaki and Takuya Kawasaki on-board, Funimation is proud to present a special three-day theatrical release across North America and Canada of this new effort.

Still adjusting to his destiny, half-human/half-ghoul Ken Kaneki (Matsukata Kubota) tries to balance his personal life as a high-school student and his private one feeding on the flesh of humans. Trying to get his mind on track with fellow ghoul Tôka Kirshima (Maika Yamamoto) who’s training him to realize his new powers, they run into the main fear of ghouls being that the humans they need to feed on will not be able to see their human sides...

Based on the popular Japanese series ‘Tokyo Ghoul‘, written and illustrated by Sui Ishida, a live-action film titled Tokyo Ghoul was released in 2017. Tokyo Ghoul introduced us to a college student, Ken Kaneki. He transformed into half human and half ghoul after organ transplant, leading him to the moral conundrum to act on his ghoul vices. ‘Tokyo Ghoul S’ takes the story further in the sequel that is slated to be released on July 19, 2019.

The trailer features a host of familiar faces, other than the protagonist Kaneki Ken, that includes Shunya Shiraishi as Nishiki Nishio, Hiyori Sakurada as Hinami Fueguchi, Nobuyuki Suzuki as Kotaro Amon. Another highlight is the appearance of Matsuda [served as animation director for One Piece Film: Gold] as Shū Tsukiyama, who desperately wants to eat Kaneki. Maika Yamamoto will be replacing Fumika Shimizu in her role as Tōka Kirishima.

Tokyo Ghoul S Trailer...

The production on the upcoming live action film of Sui Ishida’s “Tokyo Ghoul” has recently been completed. The film is directed by Kazuhiko Hiramaki and Takuya Kawasaki, both of whom are making their directorial debut. The film sees Masataka Kubota, reprise his role from the previous entry, as Ken Kaneki, a half-ghoul/half-human university student.

“Tokyo Ghoul 2” is set for a theatrical release July 19th, 2019. This is the second trailer for the production, which was released through the official site.

Synopsis

Ken Kaneki (Masataka Kubota) is a university student. He is also half-ghoul and half-human. He agonizes over his situation. Trying to avoid other ghouls, he shelters himself at Anteiku Cafe and spends time with Toka Kirishima (Maika Yamamoto). One day, a ghoul, Shu Tsukiyama (Shota Matsuda), appears at Anteiku Cafe and he is called the “Gourmet.” (Asianwiki)...

“Tokyo Ghoul 2,” the sequel to the hit 2017 Kentaro Hagiwara dark action fantasy, started production this month, distributor Shochiku revealed. The film is set for release next year with Shochiku distributing.

Masataka Kubota stars as a college student Kaneki who becomes a “half ghoul” after being bitten by one of the flesh-eating creatures. He lives uneasily in the ghoul world, while trying to cling to his remaining humanity.

He is joined by new main cast members Shota Matsuda (“Dias Police”), who plays a sketchy ghoul, called Gourmet, and Maika Yamamoto (“Assassination Classroom”), who plays a server at a ghoul café and becomes a fighting ally.

Based on a hit comic by Sui Ichida that has sold 27 million copies worldwide in paperback edition, “Tokyo Ghoul” and its sequel are set in an alternative world where ghouls – entities who look like humans but survive on human flesh – live in hiding. Meanwhile hunters in...

Tony Sokol Feb 25, 2019

Hungry dead things come back to life in sequel to live action adaptation of anime series Tokyo Ghoul.

The Tokyo Ghoul live-action sequel is coming to life as the film's official Twitter confirmed a July 19 release date and new casting and. Nana Mori will play Yuriko Kosaka, who was played by Seika Furuhata in the 2017 live action adaption. Mai Kiryu joins the cast as Kimi Nishino. Distributor Shochiku has not yet released an official title for the sequel, which is tentatively being called Tokyo Ghoul 2.

Directed by Kentarō Hagiwara, the live-action Tokyo Ghoul film was released in Japan on July 29, 2017. It had its world premiere during Anime Expo 2017, and had a limited theatrical run from Funimation, which licensed the film for a Blu-ray and DVD release. Tokyo Ghoul starred Masataka Kubota as protagonist, Ken Kaneki, the first half-human, half-ghoul hybrid. Fumika Shimizu was the heroine, Tōka Kirishima.