Dear Diary, last week I attended the japanese filmfestival in the large town near me. It was fun. Overall my film selection was pretty good, I think I'll do some short reviews at the end. I ended up going two days, because the saturday was already partially sold out and by experience these days are usually pretty exhausting.
What I was hoping for was to see Knight and/or Spike at the festival. With both of them I didnt have that much contact lately. With Spike I havent talked in half a year now to be honest. And Knight I last congratulated to her birthday in March and after a few days of sporadic messages she left me on read. Its fine I get it, but I wish I had the ability to keep contact to them better. Spike had never been too enthusiastic to chat with me, but there had been this glimpses where we talked in person and she seemed to want to be better friends or potentially even more. Hah maybe I am just grasping at straws but I am so desperate for female attention. Its getting more and more likely that I will never have a girlfriend. I need every little bit of this I can get.
So at the last movie on Friday evening I actually saw Spike. Knight probably didnt even go to the festival, I saw her active on discord most of the time. It was late evening and I was standing in a large crowd waiting to be let into the theatre. I was waiting for a while when she came in. But she didnt notice me. (unless she was ignoring me) I was also hesitant to walk up to her. My main reason was that it had been a long hot day and I was kinda self conscious about beeing sweaty. Also I was unsure if she even wanted to talk to me after so long.
I still wanted to at least try though. So I started multiple attempts at gaining her attention. Waving at her, smiling, catching her gaze. After 3 or 4 attempts it finally worked and she smiled back at me. But she didnt come over and soon started looking somewhere else again. I became selfconscious and thought that she probably didnt want to talk. I didnt look at her for a bit and when I looked back she was gone.
After a while we were let into the cinema. I took my place which was towards the back. And after a while I saw Spike take her place further down. There wasnt really room to talk, but still would have been nice.
She looked good her hair was shorter than before, freshly colored black. She was also wearing a long black dress of some sort, or maybe a gown? I am no expert in female dress names. She looked a bit sad though I hope she is doing fine. Our only interations have been through twitter lately and with that I mean me liking her reposts and some posts. She never likes anything I repost. Probably not a good sign even though I repost pretty cringy nerd stuff.
The movie was really bad and the people next to me SUCKED. They kept talking to each other and making cringy jokes.
Dont know how Spike liked the film but she got up almost imediately after the credits started rolling. Thats unusual for her as the biggest cinephile I know. I was surprised and wondered if I should follow. I certainly wasnt interested in the director Q&A so after less of a minute I went after her, quickly stuffing my one star ballot into the voting box. But she was already gone and I was too late. My chances of mainaining my hard earned connections to some women around here are growing dimmer and dimmer...
Ok so the movies:
The Mystery of Gegege: The Birth of Kitaro: Surprisingly adult take on the classic childrens horror series. Hit hard emotionally, had great J Horror vibes and even political undertones. Pacing was a bit too fast though, a little more time to breathe would have been nice. Will probably check out the manga now
Shortfilm collection: These were pretty good for shortfilms centered around the bizarre. The first one about a scientist had sort of a clever twist but didnt leave much of an impact. The second one about a couple in old Japan and some sort of plot by a woman to get a fortune didnt come together that well but had nice atmosphere plus a nicely bizarre animated sex scene. The third one about a school girl dealing with her friends death had nice lynchian vibes. Liked it could have been a full movie.
The last one was interesting though. Triggerwarning for violence. Its called Killmageddon and the whole thing is filmed like an old family vhs tape. Only that its about a young couple brutally killing innocent people and torturing them. In the first ten minutes they slowly kill this other couple with a lot of blood splattering. When the woman says she is pregnant they dont believe her and rip out her womb. The female main character makes fun of her because the womb is empty qnd makes the guy eat it. Then there is a montage of them killing people to techno music. Until there is suddenly a quiet scene where the female mc tells her boyfriend she is pregnant. He is very moved and says this will be the last day they kill people. Then they go into a house and brutally murder a family who is celebrating their sons birthday. After this the tape turns into normal family recordings. You see their son get born and grow up, they are a normal family and the son gets a motorcycle. Until he finds the old tape and vomits seeing his parents murder people. He then says he will be a hero and films himself murdering his parents wearing his motorcycle helmet. They try to flee but he comes after them stabbing them to death.
Obviously this left quite an impact on the audience. Some people left because they couldnt stomach the gore. Unfortunately the Q&A was with the director of the first more unremarkable shortfilm. Wish we could have talked about this one. Personally I think it was about how people are always wild and adventurous in their youth but then also seemlessly transition into a conservative lifestyle. I dont mean murdering. I mean partying, drugs and sex and then becoming a married person working in a bank. And then these people often act surprised when their kids act up and are wild in their youth. So for me them getting killed in the way they used to kill symbolized them not being honest and consistent in their own values. They valued their own freedom over others and were surprised when their son acted the same way.
Triggerwarning over
The next day I saw Ghost Cat Anzu. A nice wholesome animated movie about a girl spending a summer in the country side where she meets a anthropomorphic ghost cat that lives just like a human. Then she meets other yokai and some nice adventures ensue. Recommend this one too. Interestingly it was filmed irl and then rotoscoped.
Next I saw the animated movie In this Corner of the World, which is about a woman living in and near Hiroshima during WW2. Really heartbreaking to see her life get slowly worse and worse and her passion of drawing ripped away from her. Still the movie focused on the small moments of happiniess amidst the tragedy. Afterward a guy was reall insistent in the QA about criticizing the film for not showing enough of the japanese war crimes and showing the people who collaborated with the fascist government by making weapons as victims. And while I think its true that Japan likes to brush over its terrible crimes, I think its still ok to show the civilian victims. Its not like these people were monsters. The atomic bomb droppings were terrible warcrimes by the US just like any bombing on civilians. Plus the movie showed lots of subtle critiques of the propaganda at the time. Like the character who was forced to be a sexslave for the soldiers for example.
And yeah the last movie Transcending Dimensions was terrible. Something about a crazy cult leader, a monk and a assassins battling with psychic powers and finding the edge of the universe 2001 style. Most of the film was just slowmo and zoom shots stretching out the runtime. The only fun stuff was some of the bizarre things the cult leader does. For example there was a scene where a guy goes to the toilet in the Dojo only to find a naked woman sitting there. He excuses himself but she informs him that she is just the seatwarmer, kneels next to the toilet and beckons him to sit down. The movie cuts away but I wonder what he did. Quite an erotic situation if you think about it. Wonder what Spike thought about it...