The last work of Jin Min's completion plan is also the only drama work. It can be said to be the culmination of Jin Min's elements. In this 13-episode film, you can see Jin Min's superb representative elements used in other feature films: dreams, seemingly meaningless combinations of words, butterflies, virtual reality. A narrative that jumps from time to time...
The first four episodes are quite coherent stories, successfully building an initial impression in the audience's mind-the baseball boy does not really exist, but the "persecution delusion" of desperate people who want to escape reality. "As long as it is a stick, there is no trouble at all."
However, at the end of the fourth episode, a physical baseball boy appeared, and the fifth episode used a "Millennium Actress"-style immersive, gamified interrogation scene. It completely shattered the worldview that the audience finally established in the first four episodes.
The sixth to eleventh episodes are like "Love Dead Machine". Each episode is an independent drama, connected by a seemingly non-existent hook, but they all reflect the theme of "escape" and "persecution delusion".
Episodes 12 and 13 finally returned to the main storyline, back to Yue Zi's childhood, to decipher why "Baby Boy" appeared, and why it was said that "Battle Boy" and Ma Lomei were actually the same. In the end, the criminal police team cooperated, forcing Yue Zi to face up to her childhood shadow, return to the moment when the accident happened (ideally), and say "sorry" to the pet dog who died because of her mistake. It's hard to admit mistakes and face up to problems. But "the reality of losing my home is my real home."
The end of the final episode and the beginning of the whole play form an Ouroboros. The streets of Tokyo are full of people, people are complaining about life on the phone, and people on the subway are all embarrassed and collectively anxious. The little criminal policeman was already full of gray hair, and like an old man at the beginning, he wrote an unfathomable formula with chalk on the ground, and at the end he became a little old man in a suit reading a dream.
The core of the whole play is not difficult to understand, even super positive energy. Escape is inescapable. To be human is to grit your teeth and get through it together. Don't hope for "freedom". It's just the subtle and terrifying atmosphere created by the whole play in the area between reality and surrealism, which makes the experience of watching the play really like reading Freud, cringing and cringing. Especially after watching the next few episodes, we often look at each other when the ending song starts.
Apart from these parts of "We are not good enough to deserve Jin Min", I am often moved by the ingenuity in the narrative and the smooth switching of virtual and real jumps. The title of each episode is actually taken from an excerpt from a street sign in the episode, especially "Final Return", which is made up of three cards with one word each among the signs scattered around in the chaos. In the episode "Men's Way", the actions of the bad detective in reality are seamlessly connected with the plot in the "Men's Way" comic, and even some lines are used intertextually. Whether or not the main idea is fully felt, the storytelling technique itself is truly remarkable and breathtaking.
Below are the episode titles and some small notes.
Episode 1 "Young Boys Come on!!" (Junior sticks)
Lu Yuezi, the author of the popular doll Ma Lomei, feels the pressure of urging the manuscript, and at the same time, she has been gossiped by her colleagues. One night on the way home, he was attacked by a "road demon". According to her self-reported, the person who attacked her was a schoolboy wearing a gold inline wheel and holding a curved baseball bat. The urban tabloid reporter Chuan Jin happened to bump into a colleague of the criminal police who went to understand the situation at the hospital, and was attracted by this incident. During his fact-finding, Chuanjin found an eyewitness, an old granny scavenger, and also proved his conjecture. In fact, there was no other person attacking Yuezi.
But at this moment, Kawazu himself was also attacked by the "baseball boy".
Episode 2 "Golden Boots" (Golden Boots)
As a popular cartoonist, the attack on Yuezi has attracted widespread attention, and because the suspect is a primary school student, it has added to the topic. The sixth grader of elementary school is the kind of student council president candidate. Good grades, good sports, good popularity, good family conditions. But because his usual demeanor and dress are very similar to the currently circulating "baseball boy", he began to be isolated by his classmates at school. He is arrogant and thinks that this is his running opponent, and the transfer student Niu Shan is involved in a conspiracy, and because of this, he quietly threatens Niu Shan's classmates.
On the way home from school one day, Niu Shan was attacked by the "baseball boy". So he fell into fear that he would be further isolated and misunderstood, which also made him an "attack target" and admitted to the hospital.
Episode 3 "ダブルリップ" (DOUBLE LIP)
This episode is my personal favorite and tells the story of a schizophrenic woman. Personality A is a tutor and a quiet university researcher. Personality B is a daring assisted dating girl with heavy make-up and flamboyant behavior. Wardrobes and dressers are two styles of objects, two personalities talking through an answering machine, and both want to get rid of each other. In the end, the heavily made-up personality is attacked on the street late at night.
Super strong narrative, R18, amazing.
Episode 4 "The Way of Men" (The Way of a Man's Survival)
The protagonist of this episode is one of the acquaintances of the previous episode's assisted dating girl, a small patrolman who has an affair with the underworld, and also has a fetish. A complex character, he has a strong sense of responsibility for his family, and he wants to build his own private house, so he makes black money in the underworld. But later, under the coercion of the underworld, in order to maintain it, he had to put on a mask and embark on the road of robbers. Hirukawa's heart was actually very painful, and he hoped that someone could help him free. So at the end, "Baby Boy" appeared in response, but he never expected to be knocked down by Hirukawa, who was a patrolman.
The narrative of this episode is very interesting, with real world and comic characters alternately appearing, and even shouting the same lines.
Episode 5 "Saint Warrior" (Saint Warrior)
The arrested "baseball boy" Foxzuka was interrogated, and he described himself as a holy warrior who defeated his inner demons. But in the end, it was revealed that he was just a copycat, and he only attacked Niushan classmate and Hirukawa police officer.
The narrative of this episode is very "Millennium Actress". The two detectives also turned into game characters and roamed the game world following the narrative of Fox Zuka.
Episode 6 "The Uneasy of Straight Shots" (Uneasy Facing the Truth)
Tokyo before the typhoon is the backdrop for this episode. One line is that two detectives also found an old woman who was a witness to scavenge waste. The mother-in-law said that there was no one else at the scene of the attack. One line is Taeko, a girl who ran away from home (the last contact was the daughter of the Hirugawa patrol officer), and the reason for her running away from home was that she found that a camera was installed in her bedroom...
Taeko walks alone in the storm, reminiscing about the warm past with his father, and the anger of discovering the camera, and finally gets attacked and even loses his memory.
Episode 7 "MHz" (MHz MHz)
The two detectives who learned the truth went to ask Yuezi to tell the truth again. At the same time, Fox Tsukam committed suicide in custody. The two detectives resigned as a result.
I really didn't understand this episode, including who the radio secret room was.
Episode 8 "Mingya Family Project" (Happy Family Project)
An episode hailed as a masterpiece, it was bland when I watched it, and my hair stood up when I recalled it. It is a story of three netizens with different styles, the old grandfather Dongfeng, the gay zebra and the little girl Xiaoou who want to die together. Reality is interspersed with chat records. In fact, there used to be a fourth person in the chat room, Fox, the Fox Mound who chose to commit suicide in custody. This also confirms why Fox Zuka committed suicide, it was not the police who came to the door, but what he had always wanted to accomplish.
The magic work is that at the end of the film, it is discovered that the three people are actually dead in the past, but they are still constantly seeking death. Like an allegory of Sisyphus.
Even death cannot be a sanctuary for the escapist. Extremely desperate, yet extremely hopeful.
Episode 9 "ETC" (ETC and others)
The three long-tongued women gathered downstairs in the community to discuss all kinds of gossip, and the newly moved Mrs. Kabara also tried her best to fit in. The four made up a lot of things that happened around the "baseball boy" that were not true or false. One of them was even the story of O Henry's last green leaf, which was ridiculous.
At the end of the episode, Mrs. Kamohara returns home in frustration because of her inability to integrate. Seeing her husband lying in a pool of blood and shouting "Baby Boy", the first reaction was to shake him and ask him to tell the story of the attack, so that he could talk more.
Episode 10 "Malomiya" (Malome's Rest)
Very interesting episode, even the scripted scene. Introducing the division of labor in the animation industry, Ma Lomei's narration is also very funny, reminding me of the last episode of Golden Boy. Animators never stop complaining about the animation industry, it's the liver!
The entire project team was wiped out, and the first domino was the screenwriter Kamogawa who was attacked in the previous episode.
This episode can be interpreted as the pressure that caused everyone to escape, or it can be interpreted as the chores who always thought that their abilities were not enough and were despised by the group played the role of "baseball boy" in order to make a splash.
Episode 11 "Entry Prohibited" (No Entry)
The 1:1 between the old detective's wife and the baseball boy, people are not as fragile as you think. Even so, we took a new step. Straight to the subject of preaching! But it's still 10,000 times higher than Soul.
Episode 12 "Realman" (Radar Superman)
The little criminal policeman has turned into a "holy warrior", fighting alone against the "baseball boy" who has been growing stronger under the nourishment of rumors and delusions. The story is a bit mysterious here. With the help of a group of figures, he learned that the secret of the "Road Demon" may be buried in the memory of an attack in Yuezi's childhood. So she visited Yuezi's hometown in the countryside and learned the truth from her father.
Episode 13 "The Final Round." (The Final Round.)
The old criminal policeman was indulged in the "glorious years" and couldn't extricate himself. My God, the shaping of this section is very "red pepper" and very "inside out". Our hearts are the theaters we build for ourselves.
In reality, people are addicted to the peace and healing brought by Malome, but an unknown black torrent swept the city and devoured everything.
The old criminal policeman's wife shouted to him spiritually when he was dying, bringing him back to reality. The old criminal policeman angrily smashed the fantasy of Anle Township and shouted, "The reality of losing my destination is my destination." Go back to reality and fight side by side with the little detective.
The little detective told the old detective and Yuezi the truth that he had investigated. Tsukiko, who was chased and escaped by the black torrent, finally returned to the day in her memory. At the moment when the "baseball boy" appeared, she picked up the pet dog that died because of her mistake, and apologized to him. The shadow of "baseball boy" also dissipated.
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