Displaced youngsters begin to find a new sense of place thanks to a warmhearted young woman and an old man’s ambient sound obsession in Kahori Higashi’s quirky drama
Apr 28, 2022 • Subscribe
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Melting Sounds ほとぼりメルトサウンズ Director: Kahori Higashi [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022]
Melting Sounds is a wonderfully incisive yet offbeat MOOSIC LAB film concerned with mortality and human connections. Higashi’s light touch delivers a profound, cute, and deeply humanistic pae…
Melting Sounds ほとぼりメルトサウンズ Director: Kahori Higashi [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022] Rewrite
Melting Sounds is a wonderfully incisive yet offbeat MOOSIC LAB film concerned with mortality and human connections. Higashi’s light touch delivers a profound, cute, and deeply humanistic pae…
Belonging (とりつくしま, Kahori Higashi, 2024)
The recently deceased watch over their loved ones from the vantage point of a familiar object in Kahori Higashi’s wistful drama.
An Interview with Kahori Higashi, Director of Melting Sounds [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022]
An Interview with Kahori Higashi, Director of MOOSIC Lab affiliated film “Melting Sounds”. It is available in Japanese and English. [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022]
川のほとりに立つ者は
A young woman named Kiyose was recently promoted to the position of manager at an independent café. She devotes her love and attention to the business, but all…
Melting Sounds (2022) review [OAFF 2022]
“Kahori Higashi’s debut is impressive.”
In Her Room (ひとりぼっちじゃない, Chihiro Ito, 2022)
A shy dentist’s sense of reality is undermined by his relationship with a mysterious woman living in an indoor forest in Chihiro Ito’s ethereal drama.
となりのメタラーさん
Author & Artist: マミタ (Mamita)Released April 2020 by Tokuma Shoten Publishing’s Chara ComicsGenre: Romance, Drama
Memories of His Scent (においが眠るまで, Kahori Higashi, 2024)
A young woman travels Japan looking for the scent of her later father in Kahori Higashi’s gentle summer move.
The Residents 暮らしの残像 Director: Kahori Higashi [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022]
The Residents, by director Kahori Higashi, is a snappy ensemble comedy that follows a traditional four-act structure of intro, development, twist, and conclusion. The Residents 暮らしの残像 Director: Kah…
Alone Again in Fukushima ナオト、いまもひとりっきり Dir: Mayu Nakamura (2021) [Yamagata International Film Festival 2021]
Alone Again in Fukushima sees director Mayu Nakamura visit an interesting samaritan who remained behind to look after abandoned animals. Alone Again in Fukushima ナオト、いまもひとりっきり Dir: Mayu Nakamura…
The Blue Danube (きまじめ楽隊のぼんやり戦争, Akira Ikeda, 2021)
An earnest soldier begins to question everything he’s been told thanks to musical intervention and a curious young man in Akira Ikeda’s absurdist anti-war drama
In Her Room ひとりぼっちじゃない (2022) Director: Chihiro Ito [New York Asian Film Festival 2023] 2
In Her Room ひとりぼっちじゃない (2022), by director Chihiro Ito, is an offbeat and erotic tale of jealousy that is told in a visually dazzling way with a slow pace…
Haru to Midori, Volume 3 (春とみどり)
Haru is a lonely woman. She’s never really moved on with her life, even as she has lived it. There was once a girl who had meant something…
Memories of His Scent においが眠るまで Director: Kahori Higashi [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024]
Memories of His Scent においが眠るまで, by director Kahori Higashi, is a gentle and melancholy tale of a teenage girl searching for her late father through smell and visiting…
My Father’s Tracks (僕と彼女とラリーと, Renpei Tsukamoto, 2021)
A struggling actor rediscovers his sense of purpose on returning to his home town in the wake of his father’s death in Rempei Tsukamoto’s heartwarming drama
Haru to Midori Manga, Volume 2 (春とみどり)
In Haru to Midori, Volume 2 (春とみどり) having committed to being a foster parent for her late childhood friend’s daughter, Midori struggles daily to separate her feelings for…
My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
A pair of sisters rejoice in the wonder of the natural world while befriending a fluffy forest creature in the charming Studio Ghibli family animation.
An Interview with Chihiro Ito, Director of In Her Room ひとりぼっちじゃない (2022) [New York Asian Film Festival 2023]
In Her Room ひとりぼっちじゃない (2022) Director: Chihiro Ito [New York Asian Film Festival 2023]
Will I Be Single Forever? (ずっと独身でいるつもり?, Momoko Fukuda, 2021)
A series of young women find themselves contemplating the meaning of a modern marriage in Momoko Fukuda’s empathetic social drama
All Around Us ぐるりのこと。(2008) Director: Ryosuke Hashiguchi
All Around Us ぐるりのこと。by Ryosuke Hashiguchi is a wonderful example of a mature drama that is told with subtlety and intelligence and it deserves to be much better…
New Moomin 44/52 - Let's Play With the Clouds (雲と遊ぼう) (1972) (English subtitles)
It's a quiet, peaceful autumn day, and Moomin is lying on a hill while looking at the clouds. All of a sudden, one of the clouds calls out…
Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume, Volume 1 (イケメン女と箱入り娘)
Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume, Volume 1 (イケメン女と箱入り娘) is written by Mochi_Au_Lait, and drawn by majoccoid for REX Comics, one of Ichijinsha’s other imprints. Honestly, I think both…
Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume, Volume 2 (イケメン女と箱入り娘)
So in Volume 1, I missed the joke. My fault. Perhaps because it wasn’t funny?Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume, Volume 2 (イケメン女と箱入り娘), written by Mochi_Au_Lait, drawn by majoccoid,…
VG Pulse 381: Melting My Heart Away
This week on VG Pulse, we’re doing two shows a month now!! We start off with side notes of work life and general updates, before heading off to…
Ito (いとみち, Satoko Yokohama, 2021)
A shy young woman with a talent for Tsugaru shamisen grows in confidence after getting a job at a maid cafe in Satoko Yokohama’s warmhearted drama
[Five] The Sounds of Togetherness
In her final year of middle school and on the grand stage of the national koto competition, Satowa Hozuki, the prodigal heir to the Hozuki school of koto,…
Riverside Mukolitta (川っぺりムコリッタ, Naoko Ogigami, 2021)
A young man recently released from prison discovers an unexpected sense of community after moving to a rural town to start again in Naoko Ogigami’s gently profound dramedy.
Shadow of Fire (ほかげ, Shinya Tsukamoto, 2023)
The ruins of a firebombed city become a purgatorial space haunted by the tortured souls who cannot escape the traumatic wartime past in Shinya Tsukamoto’s eerie voyage through…
アニメ業界のロックンロール – ウェブ系としてのりょーちもロングインタビュー
The post アニメ業界のロックンロール – ウェブ系としてのりょーちもロングインタビュー appeared first on fullfrontal.moe.
Ito いとみち Director: Satoko Yokohama (2021) [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2021]
“Ito” is a heart-warming comedy drama rich in Aomori’s culture where a girl learning to express herself through time spent at a maid cafe and her shamisen skills.…
Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 1 (作りたい女と食べたい女)
I am so excited to be able to review this particular book as my first review of 2022! Since I first read this on Comic Walker, I’ve been…
Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 2 (作りたい女と食べたい女)
Because I loved Volume 1 so very much, I ran out immediately after reviewing it, and bought Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 2 (作りたい女と食べたい女) as a digital…
Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 4 (作りたい女と食べたい女)
There are so many reasons that Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 4 (作りたい女と食べたい女) is an amazing volume of manga, that I’m hard pressed to pick one thing.…
Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 5 (作りたい女と食べたい女)
With more than two decades of reading, I am still absolutely amazed at the high quality of Yuri manga we have gotten in the last few years –…
Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 3 (作りたい女と食べたい女)
In Volume 1, we met Nomoto Yuki, a contractor in an office. She finds society’s expectations for women confining and stress-cooks to relax. We then met Kasuga-san, her…
New Moomin 33/52 - Pappa All Alone (ひとりぽっちのパパ) (1972) (English subtitles)
Pappa is feeling underappreciated. Moomin and Mamma did not tell him about a fire, and his idea to take them on vacation for a day conflicts with Moomin's…
お湯割り
In the newsletter this month I wrote about 角ハイ (kakuhai). This is a combination of 角瓶 (kakubin), Suntory’s flagship whiskey, and ハイボール (highball), a mixed drink made from…
Tsukurita Onna to Tabetai Onna Live-Action Drama (作りたい女と食べたい女)
Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna (作りたい女と食べたい女), the NHK live-action drama, may well be the very best adaptation from a manga I have ever seen in any media. Nomoto…
We’re Millennials. Got a Problem? International (ゆとりですがなにか インターナショナル, Nobuo Mizuta, 2023)
Seven years on from the hit TV series, the guys are in a very different place.
Ora, Ora Be Goin’ Alone (おらおらでひとりいぐも, Shuichi Okita, 2020)
An older woman living alone is plagued by three strange sprites forcing her to confront the reality of her life in Shuichi Okita’s surreal meditation on loneliness and…
Hoyaman (さよなら ほやマン, Teruaki Shoji, 2023)
The tranquil island life of a pair of brothers is interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious woman in Teruaki Shoji’s quirky comedy.
Exploring the Universe with ONEWE || Sounds of Seoul
ONEWE was formed in May 2015, as an independent group. At this point, they were known as M.A.S 0094. The letters in their name stood for Make A…
This Week in Games - That Naruto Sounds Different...
Controversy unfolds this week, from strange-sounding lines in Naruto X Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections to what qualifies as an "indie" game.
More Clever than it Sounds – Rideback Spoiler Review
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… wait, I already used that intro last week? Um… Rideback! So, yeah, Rideback in extremely reductionist theory is another of…
Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie (奥様は、取り扱い注意, Toya Sato, 2021) [Fantasia 2021]
Having lost her memory, assassin turned housewife Nami is pulled into local intrigue in a tranquil seaside town in this sequel to the hit TV drama