Week 12 (Sept 6 – 12) – Japanese V- Cinema: V-Cinema is shorthand for the Japanese direct-to-video wave of the 90s and 00s. These movies were often produced by major studios with very low budgets, but they allowed the filmmakers a huge amount of creative freedom as long as they could deliver the “exploitable elements.” This proved to be a great training ground for young directors like Takeshi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hideo Nakat and more.
Minoru Kawasaki (The Calamari Wrestler, Executive Koala,), to turn what should have been a standard softcore home video into a full-blown surrealist epic.
The story follows a shy, downtrodden office worker (Eiko Kuroki, Star Virgin) who is hiding a major secret: she’s actually a bunny. Living in a domestic wonderland completely decked out with bunny ears on the television, a bunny cuckoo clock, massive carrots and endless glasses of bunbun sake, she has to navigate a world that just doesn’t understand her long-eared lifestyle.
Things get considerably more complex when a nefarious, googly-eyed pineapple-headed man starts snatching up beautiful women off the streets of Tokyo, and our heroine has to unleash her true Miracle Bunny transformation to fight back.
Did I mention there is a giant CG turtle randomly crossing the screen?
“Let me introduce this sexy girl, bouncing around, she’s not a kid, you know! She’s a rabbit!”
You can watch this on YouTube.
