Fantastic Fest 09: Katsuhide Motoki's KAMOGAWA HORUMO - BATTLE LEAGUE OF KYOTO
During their first year at Kyoto University, Akira Abe (Takayuki Yamada) and Koichi Takamura (Gaku Hamada) areinvited to a party for a campus club called Order of the Azure Dragon. Intially, they are told that its a regular group that interacts with other schools, has parties, and goes snowboarding. Abe decides to join the group after falling for Kyoko Sawara (Sei Ashina), who along with Fumi Kusunoki (Chiaki Kuriyama), is one of only a few female members. Of course, Abe drags Takamura along with him.
As all the freshman eventually find out, the Order of the Azure Dragon is one of four clubs from universities in Kyoto, including the White Tiger (Ritsumeikan), Red Phoenix (Ryukoku), and Black Snake (Kyoto Sangyo). The clubs form a league in which the members learn to command and control a team of a thousand Oni spirits. Whereas Oni are traditionally portrayed as demons with fangs and horns, these spirits are short, monkish beings with puckered faces. The Harumo teams face off in Horumo battles where the teams use shouted Oni language commands and contorted body movies to cause the rival Oni spirits to fight each other. As one might expect, Abe lets his affection for Sawara guide his participation in the team, and he eventually has work out the conflict between his emotions and his commitment to the team.
In spite of the crazy marketing materials, Kamogawa Horumo - Battle League of Kyoto is actually rather restrained. The film draws most of its laughs from from dialog and situations. Goofy ritual dancing and Oni command moves, which make the performers look like they are playing a Nintendo Wii game, are also a source of humor, but this sort of material isn't as prominent as one might hope.
Katsuhide Motoki's restrained comedic touch tends to highlight the film's central problem: an imbalance between the "normal" material and the fantastic elements. The "battle league" element doesn't really emerge for 40 minutes, which seems a bit too long given the film's 2 hour running time. Thus, the film relies on the light comedy and college friendship and romance story, which is overly familiar, to keep the audience engaged. This approach is undoubtedly fine for most people (the film is obviously directed at college age viewers), but the non-fantastic material surely could have been much livelier and punchier than it turned out to be.
Even through the more standard elements of the film tend to be a drag, Kamogawa Horumo is fairly entertaining with enough great moments to make it worth watching.
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