The 17th Japanese Film Festival in Australia is now showing in Melbourne, the last major city on its national tour before wrapping up for the year. Eden Law (Fukushima JET 2010-2011, current member of JETAA NSW reviews some of the films on offer.
I said SHUSH MF!! * machine gun fire *
Library Wars (Toshokan Senso) is the latest in a series of adaptation of an extremely popular series of light novels by Hiro Arikawa, which has included your usual manga and anime. The inspiration for the plot comes from the real life Statement on Intellectual Freedom in Libraries of the Japan Library Association, which kind of sounds pretty bad-ass when you think about it. Especially when, interpreting its mission statement rather liberally to mean the right to bear arms. Armed librarians. Hate to think what the penalties for late returns would be.
Dealing with the theme of censorship, Japan in an alternate reality has gone overboard with outlawing ‘unsuitable’ reading material, raiding shops with maniacal book-burning zeal. But against this thought police are the librarians who form the defensive Librarian force, who take up arms to protect the citizens’ right and access to information. Joining the ranks is Iku Kasahara (Nana Eikura), who is your typical rough diamond – brash, impulsive, klutzy, a rule-breaker and therefore audience favourite. She continuously butts head against hard-arse Atsushi Dojo (Junichi Okada), a no-nonsense senior librarian who naturally, questions her place in the force. Around them, forces are on the move to consolidate and destroy books and knowledge, and the Library Force gears up for the ultimate confrontation.
This isn’t Fahrenheit 451, although there are some discussions about freedom of speech and an out of control state that doesn’t know where to draw the line in the name of protecting the hearts and minds of the nation from indecency and corruption. But for the most part, it’s largely kept light and focused on comedy and action, with recognizable character tropes from Japanese fiction. While it’s a pure escapism, some things are a bit far-fetched: you wonder why no one, in the year 2019, have thought about making backups, especially if these things are so precious, for example.
The cast perform their roles as expected, their characters doesn’t have much need for complex character development. Things like character quirks that might work in a novel or an anime situation don’t translate too well into a live-action film – Kasahara’s personality isn’t that endearing, and Dojo, as handsome as he is, is rather a one-note character. There’s obviously a lot that hasn’t been transferred from a wealth of source material into the short timeframe of a film. Although I must say Jun Hashimoto’s scenery chewing is one of the entertaining things to watch in this film (it’s like each facial muscle is working independently of each other). Things pick up in the last half as it’s action-packed, but the film is largely froth and would appeal the most to the fan base. Had it been a lot funnier, I might be more forgiving of some of the plot holes, but as such, while it isn’t bad, it’s just rather pedestrian and unmemorable.
Library Wars (Toshokan Senso) by Shinsuke Sato, released April 27 2013 in Japan, starring Junichi Okada, Nana Eikura, Kei Tanaka, Sota Fukushi, Chiaki Kuriyama, Kenji Takeyama, Iwao Nishina, Ryusuke Kenta and Maki Orikuchi.
Comments are closed.