Blue Spring (Aoi haru) first published by Little White Lies, as the 80th entry in my Cinema Psychotronicum column In the opening sequence of Blue Spring (Aoi haru), with a Graduation Ceremony audible in the background, teenagers Kujo (Ryuhei Matsuda) and Aoki (Hirofumi Arai) pick a lock to the roof area of the single-sex Asashi…
Before We Vanish first published by SciFiNow Kiyoshi Kurosawa is no stranger to humanity’s end. Apocalypses closed his Charisma and Pulse, and now his Before We Vanish promises the same right from its title – even if the original Japanese title, Sanpo suru shinryakusha, literally means ‘strolling invaders’. Indeed, it tells its story of alien invasion…
“Get sick and die!” yells mohican-sporting Eikichi Tamura (Ryuhei Matsuda) into the mic as he sings onstage before a club full of headbangers. Despite the energy and vitality of the performance, there is a strong sense of mortality clinging to this opening scene from Shuichi Okita’s The Mohican Comes Home (Mohican Kokyo ni Kaeru). Eikichi fronts…