Human Vapor Season 01 (2026)

Tokyo gets into a bit of tizzy when a scientist rises into the air and explodes during a live TV interview with reporter Kyoko Kono (Yu Aoi). The case is more than a little weird, so the police reactivate Kenji Okamoto (Shun Oguri).

Okamoto had been suspended because he was taken to be responsible for leaks about a date-raping yakuza turned CEO reaching a journalist, and the concurrent suicide of said yakuza turned CEO. The journalist was, of course, Kyoko, who was in a relationship with Okamoto at the time, and betrayed him to get the info.

Obviously, there are complicated feelings between these two now, which will not become less complicated when both of them start investigating the murder. Not that Kyoko has much of a choice, for the killer, someone (something?) calling himself the Human Vapor (Uta), wants her – specifically - to interview him about his further plans.

Apparently, he uses practically supernatural powers in a quest for vengeance on a mysterious, influential group in the habit of using the weakest members of society as “human fuel”.

This Japanese/Korean co-production directed by Shinzo Katayama and written by Yeong Sang-ho (of Train to Busan fame) and Ryu Yong-jae does a very convincing job of adapting the Ishiro Honda classic to modern times and the demands of the streaming show form. Though, curiously enough, the filmmakers seem to do this through the lens and style of mangaka Naoki Urasawa, who has nothing whatsoever to do with the show, unless his way of storytelling fitting the streaming show form pretty perfectly.

Yet still, the structural approach, the use of flashbacks, even of classic Japanese rock, the character types used, even the show’s moments of very Japanese and genuinely endearing goofiness (let’s just say “bowling” so as not to spoil things), are so in tune with how the creator of 20th Century Boys and so on operates, one can’t help but wonder how and why this exact approach was chosen. Hell, the show even shares Urasawa’s tendency for cheap plot twist trick tactics based on first showing the audience only half of what actually happened in a scene. Which is okay when used with care, but does get a bit old when it happens in nearly every single episode.

On the plus side, the plot runs like clockwork, and many elements that seem like pointless asides to get the series to length – curse of streaming - will eventually turn out to be actually meaningful and important not just structurally but also thematically.

Speaking of themes, the show is driven by a genuine sense of righteous fury about the abuses and uses, possibly even existence, of power in ways tiny and huge. Men – and it’s invariably men – with power are all portrayed as grotesques, mostly having left their actual humanity behind when they started to convince themselves people without power are only there to be used at their whim, if they ever cared at all. Even the small fry bad guys are fucking weirdoes.

The cast is obviously pretty great. Aoi and Oguri of course so, the rest of the cast sometimes to my surprise. Everyone sells even the plot’s less plausible parts with conviction, and appears to do their outmost not to be made subservient to the plot twists, and instead make these twists actual parts of their characters and performances.

Three Films Make A Post: From Embryo To Woman in 4 1/2 Weeks

One Million Yen Girl aka One Million Yen And The Nigamushi Woman (2008): Yuki Tanada's indie drama/comedy (you know the type) with the fantastic Yu Aoi is at its best when it's just calmly and with inconspicuous elegance watching its characters and letting the audience sort out for themselves what to think about what they see. That method kept me pretty happy for about ninety minutes of the two hour running time. Then, the director suddenly seems to remember that she actually wants to make a specific, moral point and calmly and inelegantly begins to just tell the audience what that point is and what they are supposed to think and feel about it in the most mawkish way imaginable.

It's not enough to ruin the film for me (especially since there's a well-meant attempt at breaking up the mood of moral pedantry again at the movie's end), but it drags a film that up to that point was silently brilliant into the realm of the merely good.

Gantz (2011): Somehow, director Shinsuke Sato takes a manga and anime that's so testosterone-driven, sexist and gory that I'm pretty sure it's not written by a human being but by a penis, surgically removes about half the sexism, all the nudity, a lot of the gore and two thirds of the dumbness, and turns it into a pretty entertaining, even clever(!) bit of big budget mainstream action/science fiction.

Sato keeps the story's ruthlessness, as well as the elements that can be read as critical of the juvenile power fantasies that are the basis of Gantz's violence, so that one might at times get the impression that he's just about to really mess with the genre he's working in.

It's still a very mainstream affair though, and so the more deconstructive side of the film has too make room for some J-drama inspired melodrama and rather unconvincing character development for much of the film's last act. I didn't mind, though, because the action's pretty awesome and Gantz still is much cleverer than it needs to be, which is more than you can expect from this sort of affair.

The Task (2010): A bunch of clichés takes part in a reality show where they have to do stupid tasks in a haunted prison. As you'd expect, there's more going on in the prison than the TV crew (who, by the way, are so hard up financially they're making a reality show without having security personnel or a paramedic in place) expected, and the ghost of the prison's warden (trademark: does not like to wear shirts though he really, really should) gets stabby. It all ends in the usual dumb double twist ending. Of course.

If you're burning to see a movie where a total absence of originality and interesting ideas meet overly broad acting and vague technical competence, this will be just the thing for you. Not bad enough to deserve at actual derision, The Task is horror cinema so mediocre it's not even exciting enough to bore properly. Watch this, watch nothing, watch anything - it's pretty much all the same.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese movies,american movies,drama,comedy,sf,action,horror,in short,yuki tanada,yu aoi,shinsuke sato