As The Gods Say (神さまの言うとおり)

Damn, I've not made a post in a few days thanks to quite a busy weekend of doing stuff with the wife and streaming.  One of the things that I did with the wife that kept me away from making posts was popping down to a cinema to see a new movie!


神さまの言うとおり or "As the Gods Say" for those of you who don't read Japanese is a "horror" movie directed by Takeshi Miike and based off a Manga of the same name.  I put the word horror in inverted commas because it's not so much a horror movie and it's more of a Death Game movie, but I'm not sure if I said "Death Game" movie people would know what I'm on about.  If you're unsure what I mean by "Death Game", just think about Battle Royale and you'll probably understand what I mean.

The story is about a group of high school students who get caught up in a number of deadly games conducted by Gods taking the form of fairly innocent icons of Japanese culture.  For example, the movie opens up with the scene in the above picture where a group of students have to play "Red Light, Green Light" with a Daruma (traditionally a symbol of good luck) sat on the front desk.  If you're unfamiliar with "Red Light, Green Light" the idea is that the person who is "it" turns round during a green light and can turn at any time and exclaim "Red Light!".  If you are caught moving during a red light, then you lose and have to start over.  In this movie however, if the Daruma catches you moving then your head explodes and you die.

A small group of students survive this opening scene and move on to play a variety of other children's games each with their own deadly twist.  Each game is quite gripping because the solution for the characters to win and move on isn't immediately obvious and you never know what dirty trick the enemies are going to play next to kill off a few more members of the cast.

I greatly enjoyed this movie but I have to say that I've not read the manga so I'm not entirely sure about how it stacks up to the original story.  A long time ago I saw a movie adaptation of another manga called Gantz that was changed so drastically it just pissed me off more than anything else.  Maybe fans of the manga wouldn't enjoy the movie as much as someone going in with no prior knowledge of the source material.

I had a number of nitpicks with the film but it didn't ruin the overall experience and I would totally recommend this movie.  I'm hunting down the manga to see how it compares (which can be read in English if you know where to look) and I'm sure one day a version with subtitles will be uploaded somewhere for all you non-Japanese speakers.  

When that day comes, watch this movie.  It's bloody good fun.

Yume Nikki: I'm Not In Your Dream

I don't think anyone I know personally has heard of this game, let alone played it so let me tell you  about a brilliant little Japanese indie gem called Yume Nikki.

Yumi Nikki (meaning Dream Diary) is a surreal horror adventure game where you have to wander round some girls dreams and find items.  Finding items grants powers but what you really have to do is drop these items (known as effects) into a big room to reach the ending.  This game is so strange, so surreal that any attempt I make to describe it won't put across just how cooked out the whole thing is.  It's a free download so just google it and give it a play, you will not regret it.

Anyway, yesterday I was linked to this website.

http://yumenikki.net/

Yesterday it was a countdown timer, and the cynical side of me wanted to just forget about the whole thing because after The World Ends With You countdown I now think that every countdown timer will just lead to disappointment.

Luckily, I was wrong and while we didn't get a new game or a Steam version or anything like that, I met the announcement with a smile.  For those that can't read the Japanese in the above picture, it's basically saying that there is some kind of book adaptation of the Yume Nikki game coming out.

If you look at the website, the box in the middle is talking about a web manga, which I'm pretty sure is separate from the whole book thing since to my knowledge there is a clear distinction between "Novel" and "Manga".  Finally, the bottom box mentions some kind of soundtrack called "A waltz for Yume Nikki"

Given how the games were I'm super interested to see how these adaptations turn out.  Hopefully they'll get released before I have to return to the UK so I can have something to translate on the plane.