Review: Big Man Japan

BIG MAN JAPAN, aka DAI NIPPONJIN (2007)

Distributed by Revolver Entertainment
Released: 21 September 2009

Stars: Hitosi Matsumoto, Ua, Tomoji Hasegawa | Written by Hitosi Matsumoto, Mitsuyoshi Takasu | Directed by Hitosi Matsumoto

Big Man Japan is an strange film… Shot for the most part in a documentary style, the film is essentially the story of a lonely middle aged slacker coasting through life on the reputation of his grandfather – only his grandfather was the legendary 4th Dai Nipponjin, defender of Japan. Our ‘hero,’ Masaru Daisato, is now the sixth generation of dai nipponjin, all of whom grow to enormous size when exposed to electricity in order to battle monsters that plauge Japan! The job has taken a toll on his life, he is divorced from his wife, hardly ever sees his daughter and has to take care of his now senile grandfather…

There’s a real dichotmy to Big Man Japan – the regular everyday life of a Japanese man and the life of a superhero. The day to day life of Daisato is boring: he’s bored of his life, the Japanese public is bored of him, and by extension the viewer feels the boredom. He spends his days sitting in the park or a a local cafe eating power noodles, waiting for the call to action from the defense department. It’s when he gets the call that the film becomes an absurd parody of the popular kaiju genre; with monsters such as “Smelly baddie,” with the odour of 10,000 human feaces; “Jumpy baddie,” merely a head on a leg; and my personal favourite, “Mean-Look baddie,” a chicken with no head and an eyeball on the end of it’s super-extendable penis!!

With CGI rendered characters the kaiju sequences in Big Man Japan wouldn’t look out of place in a wierd Japanese videogame, and director Matsumoto knows this. Each “fight” is preceeded by a character breakdown of the villain, including their strengths and weaknesses, exactly like you would see in a game. But that’s just one example of the other-worldy wierdness of the film. The entire runtime of Big Man Japan is filled with crazy scenes – if it’s not the absurd monsters attacking Japan, it’s the dementia-riddled 4th Dai Nipponjin rampaging giant-sized across Japan, or the frankly bizarre scene of the defense department breaking into Dai Nipponjin’s house to supercharge him whilst he sleeps, played out to the strains of a Japanese love song, and the final 10 minutes of the film, what an ending! The perfect end to such a ridiculous film…

The events of Big Man Japan are made to feel “everyday” – like giant superheroes and monsters are nothing new (which in cinematic terms is very true), this coupled with director, writer and star Hitosi Matsumoto’s deadpan aproach to his subject matter only heightens the absurdity, but despite the absurdity of it all the film is still played very straight. And whilst the film is a parody of the kaiju genre is it also a telling commentary on today’s society, from issues of corporate and governmental sponsorship to the price of fame.

As a storytelling device, using a documentary style to juxtapose the lives of man and “superman” really works. Big Man Japan really is Dogme meets Godzilla, and it is one of the strangest, most compelling films I have seen in a long time. If you’re familiar with the kaiju genre, or the films of Toho, you’ll find a lot to love about Big Man Japan…

DISC SPECS:
Audio: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Running time: 109 mins

**** (4/5)