koichi sato

ONE LAST BLOOM: Ryusei Yokohama And Koichi Sato Fight One More Round In The Official Trailer

With the teaser behind us as of April, Gaga Corporation is moving onward as of Tuesday with the official trailer for One Last Bloom. Takahisa Zeze directed the new boxing drama which is slated for August 25 in Japan, and stars Ryusei Yokohama and Koichi Sato from Zeze’s script. Based on Kotaro Sawaki’s 2017 novel, One Last Bloom was launched as the international title being sold under Gaga’s world sales banner at Cannes. The cast is also led by Kanna Hashimoto, Masataka Kubota, Tsurutaro Kataoka, Tomoko Yamaguchi, Ryota Bando and Show Aikawa. A struggling young boxer Shogo is stunned by an elderly guy Jin’s sharp counterpunch during a street fight, and asks him to be his trainer. Jin, it turns out, used to be a promising boxer who retired without realizing his dream to become a world champion. Jin tries to persuades Shogo not to risk his life when Shogo […]

FALLING IN SPRING Teaser Signals New Boxing Drama From Takahisa Zeze

Lee B. Golden III

A few seasons away from the ceremonial reception of last year’s WWII romantic drama, Fragments Of The Last Will, it’ll be much later this year when director Takahisa Zeze returns to the masses as he readies Falling In Spring, otherwise known as Harui ni Chiru as noted via the original title of Kotaro Sawaki’s 2017 novel. Zeze takes the reins here with a cast led by Koichi Sato and Usogui star Ryusei Yokohama who star as a veteran boxing trainer and his pugilistic protégé. That’s it. That’s about all we know from what’s been offered by the heads at Gaga Corporation other than the following bit, translated. The two decided to live only for the “moment”. Also starring are Kanna Hashimoto and Masataka Kubota and more for the film’s August 25 release, and with that, peep the teaser!

SILENT TOKYO Teaser Reveals A Night Of Holiday Terror

Lee B. Golden III

Toei looks like they’ve put in some serious work to take one of their sets to replicate one of the world’s usually busiest metropolitan Meccas, as suited for Takafumi Hatano’s new novel adaptation, Silent Tokyo. Filmed last October long prior to the current Covid-19 pandemic, the new film certainly teases an exciting high stakes hostage thriller, and it’s coming to Japan cinemas this December. Silent Tokyo is based on author Takehiko Hata’s 2016 novel, “And So This Is Christmas”, with a story that follows multiple arcs amidst a spiraling crimewave on Christmas Eve, in which a TV contract employee and a housewife are enveloped in a deadly conspiracy by an elusive terrorist menacing the streets of Shibuya. Written by Masahiro Yamaura (Ajin: Demi-Human), the film stars Koichi Sato, Yuriko Ishida, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tomoya Nakamura, Alice Hirose, Kai Inowaki, and Ryo Katsuji.

Japan Cuts Review: Setsuro Wakamtasu’s FUKUSHIMA 50, And The Faults Of Human Ingenuity

Japan Cuts Review: Setsuro Wakamtasu’s FUKUSHIMA 50 Casts A Teachable Moment About Human Ingenuity

Lee B. Golden III

It’s been more than nine years since the world bore witness to the devastation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. For posterity, the story of the people who stayed on site became the subject of Ryusho Kadota’s own non-fiction own novel, “On the Brink: The Inside Story of Fukushima Daiichi”, published originally in 2012 prior to English translations made available thereafter. That book now takes on new life in Fukushima 50, the latest film from Aircraft Carrier Ibuki and Snow On The Blades helmer Setsuro Wakamatsu, and screenwriter Youichi Maekawa who makes the transition here from television for his first-ever feature screenplay. It is the first film made that directly depicts the events of March 11, 2011, and the hours that followed as a team of fifty people worked to maintain the cooling systems in all four reactor buildings, all while mitigating with bureaucratic red tape from the Tokyo […]

JAPAN CUTS Review: Sayaka Kai’s RED SNOW, The Color Of Ambiguity, And The Power Of Closure

Lee B. Golden III

In Red Snow, Masatoshi Nagase stars as a Kazuki, a varnish artist who works on bowls for a living with acrylic paints. He resides on a coastal northern island in Japan, afflicted by a past he can barely remember between his hazy memory and the lurid, snowdriven dreamscape he awakens from in the morning. This is the continued aftermath afflicting him in the decades since chasing his brother up a path amid a heavy snowfall, only to see him disappear right before his eyes. Thirty years later, he’s buried much of his emotions though lives in what appears to be a constant state of emotionless wonderment. It’s just another cold day on the island though, it seems, until one day when a journalist named Shogo (Arata Iura) shows up with details that renew the investigation of his brother’s disappearance. When Kazuki declines to comment, Shogo’s inquiry then lands him the […]