The Shikisoku Generation
AKA: Shikisoku zenereishon & Oh, My Buddha! (festival title)
Year: 2009
Directed: Tomorowo Taguchi
Genre: Comedy
Runtime: 1:53:57
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Cast: Daichi Watanabe, Kazunobu Mineta, Shigeru Kishida, Asami Usuda, Chiemi Hori, Lily Franky
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1267327/
Synopsis / Plot / Review
Actor/director Taguchi Tomorowo’s second feature tells a sexual coming-of-age story about an average, if extraordinarily excitable, teenage boy. The year is 1974 and the setting is Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital. Since Taguchi was a teenager at the same time and, like the hero, had a major fixation on Bob Dylan, the film has an autobiographical element, as well as a warm glow of nostalgia. (The novel on which the film is based, however, is by Miura Jun.) What sets Oh, My Buddha! apart from the many similar seishun eiga ("youth films"
in Japan by similarly nostalgic middle-aged directors, is that, instead of trying idealize his youthful self (or rather his fictional stand-in), Taguchi gives us a hero who is dopey, gawky and sex-besotted in the extreme. At the same time, this hero, Jun (Watanabe Daichi), is not a comic caricature, though his adventures, including the romantic and erotic, are mostly played for laughs. He is rather an average middle-class kid in whom many a male audience member will see his idiotic adolescent self, whether he wants to admit it or not. Jun attends a Buddhist high school, which may sound New Age-y, but the black- uniformed student body is universally bored by the chanting and other religious rigamarole that is being crammed down their throats. Instead, Jun and two of his pals become obsessed with a plan for vacationing on an island known for its "free sex". But when they finally arrive for their three-day stay (all they can evidently afford), they find themselves in an ordinary youth hostel, managed by a welcoming, worldly-wise hippie who calls himself Hige Godzilla (Bearded Godzilla, Mineta Kazunobu). Promisingly, though, one of their fellow guests is the sweet, curvy, easy-going Olive (Usuda Asami) - or "free sex" personified. When she learns that Jun is a guitar player and song writer - and asks him to sing and write something for her - his hopes soar. Oh, My Buddha! wouldn't be a comedy if Jun's hopes weren't dashed (though not completely). It also wouldn't be a seishun eiga if he didn't also find himself attracted to Kyoko (Ishibashi Anna), his pretty, virginal classmate since childhood, to whom he can barely speak: pure-hearted puppy love of this sort is a genre staple. The film, though, is light on cliches, dense with close, funny observations about its period and characters. You don't have to be a Japanese of Taguchi's generation to understand Jun's growing pains, which are universal. It may make you wish, though, that you had taken up the guitar, a peerless seduction tool, even in the hands of a teenage goof.Screens
File Info
QUOTE:
| Filename: Tomorowo.Taguchi-The.Shikisoku.Generation.2009.DVDRip.H264.AC3 Filesize: 1.37 GB ( 1,436,980 KB / 1,471,468,100 bytes ) Streams (i.e. Video, Audio): 2 Video Stream Compression: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Avg. Bitrate: 1263 kbit/s Resolution: 720 x 400 Running Time: 1:53:57 Framerate: 23.976 fps Frames: 163,925 Audio Stream Wave Type: AC3 Audio Avg. Bitrate: 448 kb/s Sample Rate: 48000 Hz Bit Depth: 0 Bits Channels: 2 |
Comments
Thanks to chochoc, famitsu1, koji for DVD9 and subs timing/editing! Original English subtitles by Jeanette Amano.