| Hiroshi Aramata's novel The
Legend of the Capital (Teito Monogatari),
has seen its fair share of adaptations, including
the 1991 animated version, Doomed Megalopolis
to the mid-1990's live action remake.
Yet the largest scale of these is easily director
Akio Jissoji's 1987 film Tokyo: The Last
Megalopolis. Unfortunately, the amount
of money thrown at a project rarely guarantees
an entertaining product, and Jissoji's film
ends up being fairly demonstrative of this.
The movie's biggest dilemma is simply that
it strives to achieve too much, crafting an
overall storyline that seems to be trying
to tell two different plots at once, of Kato's
ambitions for conquest and a financial attempt
to advise and reconstruct Tokyo, while introducing
more than a dozen characters, none of which
are developed and most of whom the audience
will struggle to even keep track of. Thankfully
other aspects fare a little better, with the
acting being at least competent and the production
values being noticeably high for a 1980's
Japanese film. Although neither of these can
hope to overcome the problems found at the
story level, or make up for the overall pacing
and Keiichi Uraoka's often sporadic editing.
For a quick summation of the movie's
plot, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis covers
psychic Yasunori Kato's attempts to level Japan's
capital and restore the city's areas back
to “holy grounds”. This leads him
to try and resurrect Masadako, hoping that he
will seek vengeance on Tokyo. After laying down
a long-term plan to achieve this through impregnating
Yukai, a descendent of Masadako, Kato waits a
decade during the Meiji era before going about
creating a small tremor in Dalian, China, which
is magnified into a powerful earthquake by the
time it reaches Tokyo. The seismic event ends
up demolishing the capital, yet Masadako does
not awake and instead lashes out at Kato. This
turn of events leave Kato puzzled as he now focuses
solely on his plan with Yukai, who has given birth
to a daughter. Time transcends as the country
rebuilds Tokyo into a more modern city during
the start of the Showa era. However, it's
not long before Kato locates, and kidnaps, Yukai's
daughter: Yukiko. The plan to awaken Masadako
is then put into effect while Keiko, the daughter
of a local priest who has been training since
Yukai was impregnated, ventures off to confront
Kato in a final battle before Yukiko can be sacrificed.
Now if only the entire movie
was as simple as the plot synopsis makes it
out to be. Unfortunately, the summary only
skims the very surface, as numerous other
things run in tandem with the main story.
The largest of these is an underground side-plot
about energy veins running below Tokyo. This
is further complicated by the on going story
of a young man named Torahiko Terada, and
how he wishes to develop an underground metropolis
to protect Tokyo from earthquakes, which is
of course a horrible idea. He ends up compromising,
though, and getting involved with an underground
subway that is being developed during the
Showa era. The construction is meant with
a roadblock due to the energy veins, as Kato
has deployed Shikigami to the region that
are attacking anyone who ventures too far
down the tunnels. This leads to Terada requesting
the aid of the recently unveiled Gakutensoku,
a golden mech whose movement is achieved through
air pressure. The mech is met with a great
deal of resistance, but after utilizing its
self-destruct sequence it manages to clear
the tunnel of the Shikigami and disrupt the
energy flow.
Again, that's only a side-plot,
even though it's devoted an incredible amount
of screen time and features a good number of its
own characters, all of which aren't involved
with the main plot at all. To that degree it's
not hard to see where I'm getting at: the
whole underground story within a story just doesn't
work. It's far too divorced from the main
plot, and the only time it does relate is very
late in the film during the climax, which itself
is oddly staged as someone apparently thought
that the Gakutensoku sequence was important enough
to have it run tandem with the final battle. Anyway,
with the energy vein severed the Goho Doji is
destroyed and one would assume that Kato's plans
have now been ruined, right? Hardly, as he simply
proclaims that he will “stimulate the underground
dragon himself” now that the energy vein
is gone, which only begs the viewer to ask what
the hell was the point of all that then? Well,
it seems that director Jissoji and the crew actually
thought they were developing quite the character
in the Gakutensoku machine, although the special
effects revolving around it tend to be pretty
limited and it doesn't really do much that
would prompt the audience to care about it. Never
the less the production team's affection for the
machine are quite clear, as they have characters
nearly worship the thing, with Terada even running
after it when the self destruct plan is revealed
while screaming “let me see Gakutensoku's
last moments!” This kind of fanaticism over
a machine that doesn't have a very great
design to begin with, or did anything particularly
memorable in the movie, just seems to turn off
the viewer more than anything else.
The underground stuff aside, the
actual meat of the story isn't particularly bad.
However, it does tend to get very confusing due
to trying to cover too much. For example, Kato's
exploits are kind of set up as an epic plan: a
battle that is meant to start in the Meiji era
and last tell the dawn of the Showa. Unfortunately
the pacing is far too sporadic to support a more
engrossed story like this, especially when the
viewer has to deal with wading through the Terada's
underground ordeals. The ending result is that
the audience is more than likely to get lost during
the proceeding events. Of course, if one is willing,
the story does tend to make a great deal more
sense if the viewer has the patience to watch
it more than once and keep track of everything.
Even then, though, Uraoka's sporadic editing doesn't
help matters, as he is fond of often making confusing
and jarring cuts. The film also seems to hope
about chronologically, often having years pass
between sequences although it often does little
to make it clear to the viewer when this is happening,
beyond the obvious transition to the Showa era.
The movie really suffers, though,
from trying to develop too large of a cast, while
also making it unclear for the audience which
they should be paying attention to. In total,
the movie deals with more than a dozen prominent
characters, most of which tend to drift in and
out of the movie while usually only getting quick
introductions. Consequently, it's very hard
for the audience to keep track of them, and the
fact that almost no one is developed makes this
all the harder as one only tends to have a face
and a name to go by without much behind that to
help jog the memory. Of course the large exception
to all of this is the movie's antagonist: Kato.
A powerful psychic decked out in a Chinese military
uniform, a design which would undoubtedly become
the inspiration behind the later M. Bision (or
Vega in Japan) character in Capcom's Street
Fighter series, is a hard figure not to be
impressed by. He pulls off a level of interest
about him for his often-maintained attitude in
the face of adversity, such as getting stabbed
by a sword only to take the blade and run it through
someone nearby, all while keeping a straight face.
The character is also given small tidbit of history
about him, as apparently he's a descendant of
ancient “psychics” such as Enno Uzumu
and Abe no Seimei (if that springs forth memories
of Onmyoji
[2001], then you are not alone). Beyond this stand
out figure, though, there isn't much to recall
from the rest of characters.
Thankfully, the acting tends to
hold up better, although that's not saying
much. In general, though, it tends to range from
serviceable to down right poor. Of the cast, Meiko
Harada as Keiko Mekata/Tatsumiya and Kyusaku Shimada
as Kato tend to fare the best. Harada is aided
mostly by her looks, but she still does a fairly
decent job and doesn't have any sequences
that make the audience cringe unlike a lot of
the cast, particularly the bit players. Shimada
also does a good job here as Kato, feeling very
menacing at times while also putting a great deal
of energy into his performance. His portrayal,
in fact, is really the only thing that salvages
the picture as a whole from not being a total
bust, although even Shimada is responsible for
a few bad scenes, like seeing him flop around
unconvincingly after Masakado has zapped him.
Shintaro Katsu, of Zatoichi
fame, is probably the only readily familiar actor
amongst the cast, as he portrays Eichi Shibusawa.
Unfortunately he isn't given a whole lot
to do, as his character tends to monologue to
other officials in front of his Tokyo models about
how he wants to turn the city into the greatest
metropolitan throughout Asia, before he is later
“downgraded” to simply reappearing
ever so often with only a word or so to say if
that. Granted, there is nothing wrong with the
actor's portrayal here, but those expecting Katsu's
trademark comedic spin or outlandishness will
be disappointed at the straight faced Shibusawa
along with the fact that his role equates mostly
to a cameo in terms of the movie as a whole, although
his ending speech is nice if not a little out
of place.
The last performance to address
is that of Koji Takahashi, who plays Rohan Kado.
I'm sure many are familiar with Takahashi
for his role as Doctor Shiragami in Godzilla
vs. Biollante (1989), where his straight
faced mannerism and lack of emotion seemed to
fit with the character. Here it seems much more
out of place and awkward, though. To his credit
there are a few sequences where he actually seems
to get into the role, like his first assault on
Kato, but these are pretty few and far between.
Thankfully, his role isn't very demanding,
so he is able to carry it to the movie's closure
without much problem.
From a more technical aspect, the
special effects tend to be fairly good for the
period when the film was produced. The model work,
for example, is excellent, particularly the pans
over the Meiji era cityscape and the destruction
of the bell tower in Tokyo. Sadly, a lot of the
other stuff, while good at the time, is very dated
by today's standards. The creature effects are
a good example of this. It's very rare,
though, to see claymation used in a Japanese film,
presumably because the production schedules there
tend to be so tight and the process so time consuming,
and its actually used to great effect here. There
are a lot of impressive sequences involving it,
like seeing the creatures transform out of the
paper Kato and his minions throw. It's when
these creatures are brought to life by other methods,
like suitmation or props, that the effects get
embarrassing. The Goho-Doji, the creature designed
by H.R.Giger, is one example of this. It's
from this that the movie often tends to get the
most press overseas, with foreign distributors
often quick to tout this fact even though the
Xenomorph designer for the Alien series
had hardly any involvement with the project. His
designs, though, were for a very organic and twisted
sort of creature, while the end product is mostly
immobile. More like a metal statue with blades
and tentacles then something that was alive. The
creature in general feels like it was wasted anyway
and it's not hard to see why Giger has distanced
himself from his creation for the movie.
In terms of its musical score,
composer Maki Ishii does a decent job on the film.
There are no standout themes, though, while the
music as a whole is kind of a temporary score
which sounds a little dated today. His biggest
hurdle, though, is simply the size of the orchestra
he has been given, which makes even his more action
oriented themes sound rather meek.
In summary, it's sad to see this
rather high scale Japanese production falter so
thoroughly. The movie simply tries to cover far
too much ground in too short a time, yet at present
it feels like it stretches on forever as the viewer
is left mostly confused and uninterested through
out the film's duration. On a closing note, it
should be mentioned that the movie's subject
matter takes a strong stomach at points, from
severed hands impregnating others to a women throwing
up a more than a foot long “worm”.
Normally I wouldn't bother to mention this,
but the movie was promoted heavily on some of
ADV's kaiju releases and might be attracting an
audience that's far younger then it should be.
|
(1.5/5)
