{"id":21733,"date":"2016-08-05T00:15:46","date_gmt":"2016-08-05T04:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=21733"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:10:38","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T15:10:38","slug":"kaijyu-mono-2016-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/05\/kaijyu-mono-2016-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaijyu Mono (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/kaijumono.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-21734\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/kaijumono.jpg\" alt=\"kaijumono\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" \/><\/a>In the only logical location for Kaijyu attacks, Japan, a Kaijyu wakes up and eats teenagers in a forest.\u00a0 A scientist and his assistants look into the event and get involved in the fight against the Kaijyu. The film is directed and co-written by Minoru Kawasaki who also worked on The Calamari Wrestler, a film with a very particular story line.\u00a0 With his co-writer on Kaijyu Mono, Takao Nakano, they create a delightfully bizarre tale that only makes sense when screening at Fantasia.<\/p>\n<p>The story they build here is full of surprises and twists, not all of which make sense but they somehow fit in this film.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to explain, but it works, possibly because the whole premise is completely crazy.\u00a0 The characters they have created are not particularly original or deep and they feel like crazy caricatures which brought this viewer to the conclusion that it\u2019s a wanted thing.\u00a0 They add so many odd selections to their film that it all has to be planned.<\/p>\n<p>The cast for this is composed of Saki Akai, Bin Furuya, Shinzo Hotta, etc.\u00a0 They all are a bit cartoon-y and definitely do so on purpose as this is what the story lend itself to.\u00a0 That being said, the acting, within its confines and limitations, is quite good.\u00a0 It cannot be easy to keep a straight face when the elder actor on set shows up dressed as Sailor Moon for example.<\/p>\n<p>The titular Kaijyu us fun, but not particularly original.\u00a0 It looks similar to many Kaijyus seen before, which is most likely a wanted thing as a throwback to old school Kaijyu films.\u00a0 This particular monster is clearly a man in a suit and it shows, adding charm to its appearances and to its fight sequences.\u00a0 In these sequences, the monster fights a giant man, made so by shots in the story and by using cool maquettes in the film techniques, bringing even more nostalgia to the proceedings.\u00a0 The fights themselves are more like wrestling than martial arts even though they do through some of that in there, they are very exaggerated, but quite entertaining.<\/p>\n<p>Kaijyu Mono is a fairly simple film, keeping proceedings to a minimum of locations and characters.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun and entertaining but doesn\u2019t re-write the book on its genre or bring much new elements to the table.\u00a0 It\u2019s silly, many elements are just there to be funny or look cool, but it works in a sense that it\u2019s entertaining non-sense with a strong sense of nostalgia.\u00a0 Fans of old Kaijyu films should love Kaijyu Mono.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fantasia International Film Festival ran from July 14<sup>th<\/sup> until August 3<sup>rd<\/sup>, 2016 and will be back in the summer of 2017.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the only logical location for Kaijyu attacks, Japan, a Kaijyu wakes up and eats teenagers in a forest.\u00a0 A scientist and his assistants look into the event and get involved in the fight against the Kaijyu. The film is directed and co-written by Minoru Kawasaki who also worked on The Calamari Wrestler, a film [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2497,1284,12],"tags":[58,71,113,219,349,367,570,571,906],"class_list":["post-21733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fantasia-fest","category-festivalsevents","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-asian","tag-comedy","tag-fantasy","tag-foreign","tag-k","tag-kaiju","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21735,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21733\/revisions\/21735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}