A Look At Katsuhito Ishii's Hokuro Kyodai Full Throttle!!!!
I hesitate to refer to this as a review for the simple reason that this latest effort by Japanese cult director and animator Katsuhito Ishii -- he of Taste of Tea and Funky Forest fame -- is incredibly resistant to any attempts at analysis. There is no story, per se, no linear thread tying anything together. It's not a film but a series of animated shorts that exist purely to extend the life of The Mole Brothers, the stand up comedy duo Ishii created for Funky Forest. It is as though Ishii has simply gone and indulged a personal whim and created a very extended in-joke, one which he is now sharing with the public. Happily, however, though this particular joke will simply baffle most and is by no means a good place to begin to crack the Ishii ouvre fans of Funky Forest will be delighted.
If you've seen Ishii's previous film then you are already well familiar with this duo, they are the white suited, hyperactive and possibly bi-polar pair riffing off nonsense humor when not physically abusing each other throughout Funky Forest's run time. They continue to do the same here with one notable exception: they are now CG animated rather than actual people. There are seven shorts in all for a total run time of thirty six minutes, six of the shorts capturing different stage performances while the middle performance offers a back stage glimpse of their daily life. They squabble, they argue, they sing and dance, and they hit each other A LOT. The mouths never stop moving except for those moments when Ishii indulges one of his surreal whims and inserts a sudden burst of science fiction action, a giant monster, a yakuza gangster, a competing comedy duo or the like. Don't look for a point, don't look for it to make a lot of sense, this is purely about high energy entertainment.
Japanese stand up comedy is a strange thing, most playing in duos but playing by entirely different rules than what you see in the west. There is no straight man in stand up, no set up and resolution. Rather, Japanese comics engage in a frenzied game of one-upmanship, each trying to beat the other to the punch in a mad, surreal rush. It's rapid fire, seldom pauses, and is very much an acquired taste for western eyes. And even by Japanese standards these guys go quick. Meaning? For every one person who gets it -- and those people will get it hard -- there will probably be ten or so more who experience as little more than a stream of noise. There won't be middle ground on this. You will love it or you will despise it.
The obvious question you might put to Ishii is if he wanted to bring these characters back and do so in a format that has them simply performing live stand up, then why animate? Why ot bring back the original actors? Well, it actually makes a good amount of sense once you get into it. Ishii has used a style of CG animation built around high resolution facial scans of the original actors, both of whom return to supply the voices. He then takes these faces and sticks them on bodies just slightly disproportionate, slightly rubbery, and able to bend -- of not break -- the rules of physics. He is taking characters that began as essentially living cartoons and pushed them out to their logical conclusion, allowing himself to create a recognizable but slightly off kilter world where the weirdness and odd bursts of violence work far better than they would in live action. Half an hour of this with live actors would be tedious, half an hour of animation gives Ishii enough room to play and invent that it stays fresh throughout.
The DVD release is basic in terms of extras -- trailers and an interview are all that are included -- but the picture quality and English subtitling are both excellent, though I'd wager that the English text simplifies the Japanese dialogue a fair amount simply because if they'd gone word for word it'd never have all fit on screen. As it is you need to read fast. It certainly won't be for everyone but Hokuro Kyodai Full Throttle!!!! is significantly more than a simple vanity piece for completists. It's a worthy expansion of Ishii's very odd world.
