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 aizo Hayasahi's "Zipang" isn't bad, it's just
irrelevant. There isn't really much to say about "Zipang" other than
that you will either like it or you won't. It's one of those movies that defies
category, not to mention logic, because it's just so in a world of its own
making that criticizing much of it is an exercise in futility. Written and
directed by Kaizo Hayashi, "Zipang" mostly resembles a feature length
version of "The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers", only there's bloodshed
when you least expect it. More often than not, the film is a PG-rated Samurai
and Ninja film, but without any respect for either genre.
Here's the deal: Jigoku (Masahiro Takashima) and his loyal
band of merry men (including what I think is a plastic baby elephant?) are
running from bounty hunters when they come across a golden sword that can
magically transport its user to a City of Gold in some other dimensional plane
or whatever (does it really matter?). Along the way, Jigoku falls for the lovely
Pistol Lily (Narumi Yasuda), who is also after the bounty on Jigoku's head. Lily
got the nickname because she usually hunts her victims with a two-shot pistol,
although why she doesn't use a 6-shot revolver (another character in the film
wields two of them) and thus make herself 3 times as deadly, I don't know.
In the nonsensical City of Gold, which is actually just a
Castle of Gold, there's an old guy whose skin is covered in gold, and he's
apparently also made of gold. Here, the Gold King (my name for him) is
keeping prisoner a woman whose love he cannot have. The woman's true love was
locked away along with the golden sword, but since the sword has been librated,
so too is the guy. One silly encounter with a bunch of ninjas after another, and
Jigoku and company ends up in the City of Gold to fight King Gold. And since
"Zipang" has as much need for realism as the aforementioned
"Mighty Morphin Power Rangers", everything ends hunky dory -- except
for the bad guys, of course.
"Zipang" takes a lot of getting used to. The
movie starts off as a joke, with Hayashi throwing in every Samurai and Ninja
stereotype/cliché that he can think of at the screen. The ninja are armed with
some incredible (re: impossible) weapons, including a portable ninja throwing
star that is also a photo camera! There's also a series of encounters where
Jigoku kills about 100 or so bounty hunters and ninjas in a row with not a
single drop of blood spilled on either side. Because the sequences are shot to
be parodies, Jigoku's opponents all take time out to wait for him to finish
killing a victim before lunging into the fray. And of course they always slash
at Jigoku with their swords raised high, telegraphing their status as
next-in-line-to-die.
But here's the rub. While "Zipang" plays it all
for laughs in its first 40 minutes, the rest of the movie gets surprisingly more
graphic. The first blood splatter shows up at around the time the City of Gold
is discovered. We also get a gruesome scene of the golden sword meticulously
digging into a victim's chest. All of this will throw many viewers off, and why
shouldn't it? Hayashi declared his intentions to make a parody out of his movie
in the first half, only to throw us completely off balance with the appearance
of blood. It's not necessary, and I would have much prefer the movie to remain a
joke.
"Zipang" makes the same mistake that so many
films in the action-comedy genre do. It wants to be too many things, but ends up
being uneven instead.
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