Cool Japanese Movie

[merlinofchaos]

I saw Onmyoji today at mkellis's place today. Really excellent flick, it's a nice Heian era magic & demons film with a well put together story and fantastic costuming. Some of the special effects are kind of bad, but they clearly had a budget. I liked the editing and the sound work particularly. I recommend it, especially to the L5R players.

Comments

[colubra.livejournal.com]

Is the film out on DVD? I've been curious about it and want to see it.

[merlinofchaos]

Yes it is.

[colubra.livejournal.com]

Yaay! I've been wanting to view this for a while. I've found the onmyouji interesting for years, but haven't been able to find a good reference on them, so I'd been looking forward to this just for the little tidbits that could be gleaned about their view of magic, their myth base, &c. Your review makes it sound even better than I'd hoped, yay!

[mkellis.livejournal.com]

It really is remarkably good. It feels extremely Japanese (which of course it is), but it isn't a samurai flick, and in fact it doesn't subscribe to any of the standard samurai stereotypes. This is fortunate because in the Heian era, the samurai didn't exactly exist yet as a coherent and visible class.

The magic's great. It's ritual magic. They hit on many of the standard tropes you'll find outlined in something like The Catalpa Bow, and it's without question the best visual reference I've ever seen for both Heian-era roleplaying and how to do Japanese ritual magic in a game and not have it look silly. The exorcism in particular is beautifully done, including the need for a miko and a shaman to manage a two-stage exorcism.

I'm sure they got some things 'wrong', in the interests of drama and modern sensibilities, but I didn't notice anything that really annoyed me. Worth seeing, and thanks to incandescens for letting us borrow it.

One thing wrong, actually...

[mkellis.livejournal.com]

Nobody had their teeth blacked out. I think I can live with that.

[colubra.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the in-depth review from a history student's perspective! I definitely will be picking this up (though I'd decided that before your review)-- and now I can really look forward to it, too! Many many thanks. :)

[esmerel.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it enough that I didn't want to leave the room to go to the bathroom, in case I'd miss something. :)