A limited edition 4 disc digipack bluray set of 4 films from legendary Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi.
Limited to just 2000 copies and includes a booklet by Ren Scateni and Joseph Kime.
Disc 1: School in the Crosshairs ねらわれた学園 (1981)
Special Features:
Selected audio commentary by Aaron Gerow
Interview with Chigumi Obayashi
Translation Notes by Owen Baron
Original Theatrical Trailer
Disc 2: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time 時をかける少女 (1983)
Special Features:
Archival interview with Nobuhiko Obayashi
Tomoyo Harada Story: Audition and Behind the Scenes
Music Video
Original Theatrical Trailer
Disc 3: The Island Closest to Heaven 天国にいちばん近い島 (1984)
Special Features:
Audio Commentary by Samm Deighan
Video Essay: “Obayashi - Femininity in Transition” by Robert Edwards
Original Theatrical Trailer
Disc 4: His Motorbike, Her Island 彼のオートバイ、彼女の島 (1986)
Special Features:
Audio Commentary by Tom Mes
Archival interview with Nobuhiko Obayashi
Original Theatrical Trailer
Pretty tempted by this set. These films seem like they'd be up my alley; especially The Girl Who Leapt Through Time which I've been interested in for years.
It's a pricy set, and hardly what I'm interested in watching during Spooky Season. But I ordered it because of the limited stock of it, and I'm sure I'll enjoy at least School in the Crosshairs and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
It's a pricy set, and hardly what I'm interested in watching during Spooky Season. But I ordered it because of the limited stock of it, and I'm sure I'll enjoy at least School in the Crosshairs and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
Kept on getting FOMO with Terracotta constantly mentioning its lower price before release date. Looking forward to it arriving today perhaps.
I've now watched the whole set (thoughts below copied from my posts in the Third Window set) and I can't see anything topping it as my favourite release of the year. An absolutely essential purchase.
[Show spoiler]
One of Obayashi’s most popular films in his homeland, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was voted as one of the top 100 Japanese films ever made in the most recent Kinema Junpo poll. The middle film in his ‘Onomichi Trilogy’ of films set in his hometown, it is based upon an early novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui which was also later adapted into an animated film of the same name by Mamoru Hosoda.
From what I gather, the film was produced as a vehicle for upcoming idol Tomoyo Harada who, at that point, was the lead in the TV series adaptation of Sailor Suit and Machine Gun which had earlier been a massive hit as a theatrical feature directed by Shinji Somai that launched the career of Hiroko Yakushimaru. Yakushimaru also starred in Detective Story, the film that was double billed with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time on original release. Harada would go on to a successful singing career, as well as working with Obayashi on The Island Closest to Heaven (also included in this set), Samurai Kids, Goodbye for Tomorrow, and as lead voice actress on his lone anime Kenya Boy. She would also narrate the 1997 version/60s-set prequel of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time directed by Haruki Kadokawa, who personally funded the original Obayashi film and as then-president of Kadokawa was instrumental in launching her career. Kadokawa directed the film after being released from jail, where he was serving time for drug smuggling and embezzlement. Anyway…
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time foregrounds some of the themes that would occupy Obayashi for his entire career, most obviously that of the non-linearity of time; as Faulkner famously wrote in Requiem for a Nun, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In the work of Obayashi, characters and communities forever struggle to escape from the past – and to understand it. From House to his War Trilogy, he spent his career illustrating how the past, whether personal or impersonal, exerts influence on the relationships and actions of his characters in the present day.
In The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, “time isn’t the past, it’s the future” as schoolgirl Kazuko finds herself reliving the same day after a lavender-related laboratory accident. In comparison to other Obayashi films, time is something more tangible in this film – a dimension through which characters can travel – but nevertheless, the principle is largely the same as is best summed up in the final couple of scenes.
The film directly ties Kazuko’s slightly-wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey experience to puberty and coming-of-age, anchoring the fantastic in a relatable narrative of first love - the heady rush of hormones and confusingly new emotions.
I think that Obayashi’s distinctive visual style really came of age in this film, with his use of both black-and-white and colour photography being influenced by not only The Wizard of Oz (a poster of which is present in Kazuko’s bedroom) but, perhaps more overtly, by Otto Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse. Despite being famed for his wacky, sometimes incongruous, visuals, Obayashi’s aesthetic has always been in service to his thematic concerns and the time travel scene, perhaps the centrepiece of the film, uses optical effects, still photographs, multiple exposures, time lapse photography and other techniques that draw on Obayashi’s background in experimental shorts and make it perhaps the most interesting depiction of travel this side of Marker’s La jetee.
Given the popularity of Obayashi’s House and Hosoda’s anime version of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I’m surprised that it has taken so long for this film to get a release outside of Japan. It’s one of his most purely enjoyable works – romantic and sincerely sentimental but not cloyingly so, wrapped up in a lo-fi sci-fi package with a splash of pastel colours and a touch of early MTV that so defined the 80s idol movie. Alongside Somai’s Sailor Suit and Machine Gun, it might be the best of them.
Finally, Third Window have rescued this and included it in their absolutely essential set Nobuhiko Obayashi 80s Kadokawa Years. Technical quality is fine; this has had two Blu-Ray releases in Japan – one from an older, probably DVD-era, master and one from a more recent 4K restoration. I think this is the former – it’s certainly softer than I’d expect a 4K restoration to be. I seem to remember seeing screencaps a few years ago that showed that the colour timing had been set a lot warmer with a yellow push in the new restoration, whereas the colours in this transfer are more natural.
Extras wise, we have an archival interview with Obayashi who is always engaging and worth listening to. There’s also short promo called The Tomoyo Harada Story which shows her initial audition for Kadokawa and recounts her rise to fame. Finally, there’s a music video and trailer.
With his second vehicle for idol Tomoyo Harada, Obayashi takes us to the picturesque shores of New Caledonia in search of the utopian ‘island closest to heaven’ vividly described to young Mari (Harada) by her recently deceased father. Will she find the ideal that she imagined she was looking for? More? Less? Maybe the important thing will be the friends she makes along her way?
There are interesting aspects to the film – the opening and closing credits are pure classical Hollywood and the visuals are beautiful (and the resulting increase in tourism to New Caledonia is hardly surprising) but I felt like there wasn’t much below the surface that Obayashi didn’t go onto revisit with greater complexity and more deft in later features – particularly in Chizuko’s Younger Sister, where Mika also comes of age under the weight of great loss but has to navigate the shadow of that ghost to affirm her own identity. In The Island Closest to Heaven, Mari's wistfulness makes way to an aimlessness and, ultimately, what feels like a pointlessness unless you want to spend 90 minutes with views of the beach.
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The other 'island' film in the set is more than worth the price of admission. His Motorbike, Her Island was one of two films that Obayashi released in 1986, the other being Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast - an incredible one-two a la Francis Ford Coppola in '74 or Godard in '64 (or '65!).
Riki Takeuchi makes his film debut (he would also have a smaller role in Bound for the Fields...) as a young biker who takes a trip out of the city to clear his head after a break-up. There he meets Kiwako Harada (younger sister of Tomoyo, idol star of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Island Closest to Heaven), who plays a young islander that quickly develops a crush on him - and moreso the motorcycle and the biker life.
It was adapted from a novel by Yoshio Kataoka that, to my knowledge, has never been translated to English but opens with the quote "Summer is more than just a season; it's a state of mind" - a play on the opening line of Samuel Ullman's poem Youth, well known in Japan as a favourite of Gen. MacArthur's. I think that Obayashi's film carries a similar tone - it's not as obviously counter-cultural as other biker / bōsōzoku films like Yanagimachi's God Speed You! Black Emperor or Ishii's Crazy Thunder Road or even, say, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider but it nevertheless has a cheeky irreverence.
And, like all great summers of youth, the memories they make are idealised distortions of reality. Obayashi's interchanging of black-and-white and colour film is, in this film, most clearly purposeful and effective - mirroring the variability of memories: the vibrancy, intensity and accuracy of the remembered image and how that relates to the affect of the character(s) at the time.
"I'll be a motorbike, you'll be an island and together we'll be the wind!"
His Motorbike, Her Island is one of the most romantic films ever made but not only is it a romance between two young bikers, it's a romance between them and the ideal of freedom. The freedom of the wind, forever changing direction and exploring new corners of the horizon. A freedom enabled and emboldened by technology and the Japanese economic miracle. A freedom made possible by peace and a generation unburdened by wartime responsibility. A freedom that is, nevertheless, fragile with unknowns around the next bend in the road.
It's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful film - one of the best of the 1980s and one of the best of Obayashi's career. I've seen it a few times now and every time it's like a breath of fresh air, one of the most purely enjoyable films ever made.
Third Window's release is essential. I admit that I haven't listened to Tom Mes' commentary yet, but the Obayashi interview is good.
I finished the Obayashi set off by watching School in the Crosshairs - a superhero/sci-fi/alien invasion/fascist allegory where he's still working within his crazy House wheelhouse but you can tell that his more sensitive, character-driven dramas like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Lonely Heart are within touching distance. It's wonderfully enjoyable, like a Japanese equivalent to the great live action films that Disney made in the 80s. But better.
Third Window's disc has a lovely interview with Chigumi Obayashi conducted by Aaron Gerow, where she shares memories and behind-the-scenes nuggets from the films included in the set. There's such great stories in 20 minutes that I wish that there was one of those feature-length career-overview documentaries about Obayashi and his work; I haven't seen the documentary Seijo Story - 60 Years of Making Films that was made before his death, so maybe that's what I'm looking for.
Got my set in yesterday, and watched the School in the Crosshairs disc completely. The films here have been aired in the last year so I was able to compare this BD to the recording I made of WOWOW Plus on Feb. 21st. The UK disc and the OTA both have similar color grades, but beyond that they differ. The OTA is slightly windowboxed (perhaps indicating an older HD master?) and there are obvious spots of debris and damage over the course of the film that are now clean for the UK edition. The biggest difference though is in gamma. As you can see from the caps earlier in this thread, the UK disc is (all four are?) very low contrast which leaves plenty of shadow detail visible. This is completely opposite the TV master which has gamma dialed into a typical 1980s era (Japanese) feature film level, blacks crushing to the point where the shadows are black (school uniforms appear dark blue, as they would in real life). Back to back, the OTA seems more "correct" but I will give Third Window the benefit of the doubt here and assume this brightness wasn't a mastering mistake. Grain has been managed to a large extent on the BD, projected it seemed a bit heavy handed (static), but compression was much better than OTA which suffers from (more grain and) lower bitrate MPEG-2.
The other BIG difference is the audio. The TV master is two-channel mono, while the BD is 5.1. The rejiggered surround audio could be jarring, with sound effects of enhanced dynamic range applied to the L/R/surrounds (or bass, VERY deep bass) standing in stark contrast to the tonally limited central audio stem. It was only employed in a limited number of scenes making it all the more obvious. I would have liked an option of the original mono track on the BD, but perhaps this remaster was all that was available?
Supplements were nice but (iphone?) auto-focus really needs to be disabled for interview and talking head pieces. I wound up watching the interview at 2x speed silent reading the subtitles to avoid having the constant focus racking distract me from the content!
Just received my set and took a look at the discs. Was very disappointed to find the The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is clearly sourced from an older master when a 4K scan of this film exists (and is available in Blu-ray in Japan: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-L...lu-ray/114680/). For a comparison, see this video:
(even with YouTube's compression you can clearly see the difference).
I know Japanese companies can be rather particular about these things and I wouldn't put it past them they provided Third Window Films with an older master to prevent reverse importation. Even more strange is that Arrow's recent release of another Kadokawa film from the 80s (Sailor Suit and Machine Gun) is sourced from the 4K scan!
I have contacted Third Window for an explanation and will update if they reply.
Last edited by KaizerChef; 11-14-2022 at 08:40 PM.
We did briefly discuss it over at the Third Window thread. To be fair, they never advertised that it would be the 4K restoration, though one certainly hoped it would have been 8 years after the Japanese release. I've given up on trying to understand why Japanese studios do what they do.
Update: I got a reply from Adam Torel from Third Window Films:
Quote:
KaizerChef
I'm not sure what the issue is to be honest. I asked Kadokawa for the correct master and they sent me that, so I assumed it was from the 4K scan.
They also sent the master to Spectrum Films in France (who will also release it), so I guess we both assumed it was the correct one.
I hadn't seen the new 4k master of the film and thought they knew what they were sending, but I guess they didn't and without being able to compare and contrast masters I could only assume what I got was the right one.
Saying that, the video you sent (and what other people have been talking about online) is comparing TV broadcasts of the film, not the original bluray and the newer 4k bluray. TV broadcasts are always different anyways and some TV stations also incorporate their own ways of sharpening and amending materials for the sake of broadcast. They also make their own materials which are usually different to the ones which the sales agents own. I've run into many situations where the rights holders don't have good materials as separate companies in Japan (TV stations or bluray manufacturers) have made their own materials and copyrighted the new materials as their own.
Japan is very complicated when it comes to these matters
----------------
Adam Torel
Third Window Films
It appears Kadokawa either does not own the rights to the 4K scan, deliberately sent an older scan, or it was just an honest mistake on their part... I don't know what to think, but trying to understand how Japanese studios operate is a fool's errand indeed.
Update: I got a reply from Adam Torel from Third Window Films:
It appears Kadokawa either does not own the rights to the 4K scan, deliberately sent an older scan, or it was just an honest mistake on their part... I don't know what to think, but trying to understand how Japanese studios operate is a fool's errand indeed.
it's a great shame, to some extent, we end up in these situations still. bad enough most japanese cinema won't get an airing in the west, somehow worse if the releases aren't as good as would seem possible. i will buy the set still if it goes very very cheap in time.
it's a great shame, to some extent, we end up in these situations still. bad enough most japanese cinema won't get an airing in the west, somehow worse if the releases aren't as good as would seem possible. i will buy the set still if it goes very very cheap in time.
It is definitely not worse to get something rather than nothing!
I think it is a fair point that they didn’t promote that film as having a 4K restoration on the release. It is disappointing to be sure but it sounds like an issue that might not be resolved. Maybe another foreign distributor can license that film for 4K.
Update: I got a reply from Adam Torel from Third Window Films:
It appears Kadokawa either does not own the rights to the 4K scan, deliberately sent an older scan, or it was just an honest mistake on their part... I don't know what to think, but trying to understand how Japanese studios operate is a fool's errand indeed.
Deliberately sending older scans to Western labels is certainly something we've seen before, so wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
I remember there being drama that Criterion were sent older masters for some Godzilla movies compared to what was available in Japan
It is definitely not worse to get something rather than nothing!
sure, i get that, to an extent. it's the accumulative effect of things promoted across the formats, that end up being less than ideal. it gets frustrating and disappointing to see little issues. i don't really buy films regularly any more because of these issues, in large part. there are a small handful each year worth following, and this was one of them for me. i'd like more japanese cinema that isn't widely covered, especially 80s stuff.
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Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 80s Kadokawa Years - Limited Edition(Third Window Films)
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