This review is a modified version of the one I wrote when the film screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. It has been updated to include details on the recently released Hong Kong DVD of the film.
Ah, Miike. Always unpredictable, (almost) always entertaining. A new Miike film is an event these days and his big budget kids film The Great Yokai War is no exception. It's a film that we've been following around here for quite a while now and judging by the packed house at the Toronto International Film Festival screenings we weren't the only ones anticipating this one. The verdict? It's not quite the all around success that last years Zebraman was but it's still an awful lot of fun.
The film revolves around the titular yokai and a young boy named Tadashi. The yokai are major figures of Japanese folklore, spirits that inhabit virtually everything. Some are friendly, some are not, but they are all around us. The villainous Kato, who was once human but has become a demon, is incensed at the way humans use and discard everyday items - in effect using and discarding the yokai who live within those items with no regard for the yokai's feelings - and is determined to bring retribution. With the help of the beautiful and menacing Agi - played by the fantastic Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill and Battle Royale fame - Kato rounds up as many of the yokai as he can and forcibly joins them to discarded pieces of machinery, a process that transforms them into hideous killing machines that he plans to unleash on humanity.
Who can stop Kato's abuse of the yokai and prevent the destruction of humanity? That task falls to Tadashi. A young boy of ten or eleven Tadashi has moved into rural Japan with his mother following his parents' divorce, with his sister and father staying behind in Tokyo. He is a quiet, sensitive boy, teased ruthlessly by his classmates and frequently mistaken for his dead uncle by his eccentric grandfather. When Tadashi is selected the Kirin Rider at the local village festival he becomes, by default, humanity's chosen savior and must travel up the Goblin Mountain to the Great Goblin's cave and retrieve the magical sword that will help him to defend the land.
Miike's unstoppable energy and bizarre sense of humor are on full display here. The yokai themselves - classic characters such as the kappa and tanuki to the hysterically funny wall yokai, which is nothing more than a wall with arms and legs sticking out, to the yokai who does nothing but wash and count his beans - are visual gold in Miike's capable hands. Necks extend wildly, a rice paper wall grows eyes in every panel, an umbrella hops around dangling it's enormous tongue ... you can never be certain what's around the next corner. He breaks out all the tricks in the book, from high gloss CG to low tech sock puppets and hits absolutely all stops in between. The film is loaded with his bizarre bursts of humor - Tadashi's grandfather is good for a handful of baffling non-sequitors - and he has a pair of absolutely brilliant villains in Kato and Agi.
Where the film stumbles somewhat is in its young lead. Not that the actor playing Tadashi is weak - he seems quite good, actually - but Miike gives him very little to do. The basic range goes like this: look surpised and yell, look scared and yell, look angry and yell. And sometimes cry because people are mean to you. That's a lot of yelling from the central character and it becomes a bit one-note after a while. As always Miike is to be congratulated for sneaking a surprising amount of subtext into the film - Tadashi dealing with his family's break up and what it means to grow up are major threads - but he unfortunately undercuts himself by leaving Tadashi rather two dimensional for long stretches of film. A fun film and wildly entertaining for the most part but it doesn't quite reach the stature of truly top flight Miike.
The recently released Hong Kong edition of the film is a stellar example of the rapidly rising quality standards in Hong Kong DVDs. This two disc set is, by far, the highest quality release I have ever seen from Hong Kong's Universe Entertainment. Packaged in a very heavy gauge outer box - all the lettering is silver, there is none of the yellow that appears in the image above, and it just generally looks much better full sized in real life - the discs themselves come in an equally heavy gauge mock wood grained gatefold. Disc one contains the feature itself treated to a gorgeous anamorphic transfer with the Japanese audio in 5.1 and DTS streams and a Cantonese dub in 5.1. The english subtitles are excellent, well translated and easy to read. The prize, however, is the second disc which is absolutely loaded with features. There are two goofy, ulta lo-fi Yokai shorts clocking in at sixteen and fourteen minutes respectively; fifty minutes of cast interviews; a thirteen minute reel from an international yokai conference with Miike in attendence; a seventeen minute press conference; a twenty seven minute documentary tracking the young star through the production process; a forty one minute making of documentary and, finally, an extensive catalog of different yokai creatures with full details on their history and background. The best part? Everything, absolutely everything, comes with English options. The lack of a commentary track is unfortunate, but Miike being as busy as he is he seldom takes the time to record commentaries for any of his films. That being the case the only thing you could possibly say is lacking is an English dub for those who want to share the film with their children. Beyond that this is an absolutely perfect release and comes with our highest recommendation.