Japanese commercials are even stranger than the ones they build to catch our attention in the west. Having said that, a lot of these would work anywhere around the world, but about 25% of them could only come from Japan. That probably has as much to do with the globalization of culture on Earth as it does with the difference in cultures from different parts of the world. As recently as 40 years ago, only about 15% of them had anything in common at all. These days, they are selling you the same products with a slant that they hope will increase sales within the national borders of a given country. That tends to limit creativity, but there are still a few interesting and unique commercials among the collection.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec was an amazing 2010 French movie by the master Luc Besson, and it is finally being released on DVD in the US. This is thanks to the team at Shout Factory, a company I have grown to appreciate as they keep releasing those quirky little programs that don’t have the kind of mass market appeal to bring in the millions of copies sales the big companies insist on. Examples in my collection include the complete surviving works of Ernie Kovacs, the entire ReBoot animation series, way more Roger Corman movies than I should ever admit to owning, and a Blu-Ray version of the cult classic Harlan Ellison movie A Boy And His Dog, complete with a reversible cover o you can pretend it is another movie entirely when your friends come over. This one really is one of the best, pretty much Steampunk based on an excellent graphics novel series by the guy who did The 5th Element, you should catch it as soon as possible.
I watched a beautiful trailer for Terry Gilliam’s latest masterpiece The Zero Theorem and I would love to post it here, but it was watermarked Not For Distribution, and while I couldn’t make out all the small print below that I got the impression it was to be used to shop the film around to find a distributor. As soon as I find a version that can be shared here I will post it; in the meantime, I thought you might like to here him speak a bit about it, and about the state of the film industry today.
After watching yesterday’s video I explored a bit more, and somebody is actually compiling the best, or at least strangest, commercials from Japan each week or 3. These include some serious genre references and products along side the merely wacked out, and I enjoyed them too much to keep them to myself. I particularly enjoyed the Kyary Pamyu Pamyu spots on each video, using her music to promote her fashion line, and the Mecha spots they had long before we started doing Iron Man commercials..
The band CN Blue from Korea has a bit of rock to their style, unlike many of their contemporaries who seem to worship at the Pop Alter… watch the videos and let me know what you think.
Crunchyroll has started playing the spring anime season shows, and it is off to a great start; you can see the lineup here. I thought I should mention a few of the ones that look promising to me in case you might want to check them out.
Attack On Titan is a tale of humanity trapped within a walled city by giants who seek to eat them. The Scouting Legion are the only ones brave enough to explore beyond the walls, and mostly they just die… a lot. Eren may be the one to pull humanity through the walls into the future.
HENNEKO – The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat is about two people who went to beg a favor from a god, only to have their wish granted by having a part of their mind removed. Now they each act in ways they never expected, and are trying to find their ways back to being themselves, complete with the lost bits.
DEVIL SURVIVOR 2 is fairly Gantz-like; thirteen people die, and are given the choice to live, enlisted into the front line with the war with demonic forces attacking their family and friends. Only the summoning spells are built into cell phone apps, and a secret government agency has a completely different set of such apps. It looks to be quite the winner so far.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet brings a taste of Earth with a serious twist, and may be the most interesting series of all. Our protagonist starts out in combat protecting the survivors of humanity from alien attackers while looking for a new planet to live on. He then gets spat out the side of a collapsing wormhole to a random segment of space/time, where things get really strange. This is me urging you to watch the first episode, beginning to end, and see if you don’t like it too. I suspect this one may end up being my favorite series of the new season, it has everything from the paratemporal to the transdimensional, and with a double helping of attitude just for spice!
There are more I haven’t checked out yet, I will post again if I find any more good ones.