CAT’S EYE

1997/Director: Kaizo Hayashi /Writers: Kaizo Hayashi, Tsukasa Hojo (comic book creator)
Cast: Yuki Uchida, Izumi Inamori, Norika Fujiwara, Kenta Harada, Naoko Yamazaki, Kane Kosugi

I just have never been a big fan of Manga though I have tried. God knows I’ve tried. In the end it is not my cup of tea though I typically enjoy Japanese cinema and know a lot of modern action style films from Japan are heavily influenced by Manga comics. Here is a movie that I knew was based on a Manga comic as I had thumbed through the book before at a comic book store in Seattle. I was not expecting too much from the movie but was almost surprised by the first fifteen minutes or so. It really seemed to take off and had a lot of energy and style. The problem is after that first fifteen minutes the film seemed to fizzle and for the most part got pretty sappy with some romance sub-plots that were just soap-operaish.

To be honest the film had a mark against it since the copy I have is not subtitled in English. I live in China and more often than not Japanese or Korean movies are subtitled in Chinese but not English, even if the box says there are English subtitles. I watched it with my wife and she translated the story fro me every few minutes so I could follow it, but there was not much to follow other than the really hot Japanese girls in tight black leather outfits

The comic book by Tsukasa Hojo is supposed to be quite popular and there was an animated TV series based around the story. The film by Kaizo Haiashi has moments and look nice here and there, but is just not that great over all and I wish it had been better. The fight sequences are just so cheesy and lame and the romance aspect becomes maudlin Asian teenage girl fodder that ruined what little hope I held out for. Anyway, if you are a fan of the comic then maybe you will want to check this out. I knew a couple people who liked the comic and were more disappointed with the film than I was. The girls are pretty, but that really is not enough here.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Comic Books and Magazines, Japanese and Asian Cinema . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.