Kuroi Ame ni Utarete

From Nakazawa Keiji, the creator of Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) and Kuro ga Ita Natsu (Summer with Kuro). Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Beaten by the Black Rain) follows first and second generation survivors of the Hiroshima bombing. It's easily Nakazawa Keiji's most resentful film. The characters in this movie have a very low opinion of Americans, and the director doesn't project a flattering depiction of Americans. The characters have no outlet for all of the negative emotions they experience, so they try to get revenge on oblivious tourists by saying and doing reprehensible things. They're acutely aware of how irrational and unfair they're being; theycan't move on from their experiences due to heavy discrimination against atom bomb survivors. Ultimately this movie is the manifestation of all the pent-up bitterness and resentment that atom bomb survivors had for the inescapable circumstances that surrounded them in post WWII Japan. The Japanese government and the Japanese people failed them, and Americans were oblivious to their struggles. It's a bit of a downer, to say the least. The movie doesn't vilify or justify the actions of its characters. It leaves judgment up to the viewer. Some of these people behave terribly, some try to move on, and several of them die regardless of what they were doing. It's a polarizing movie. Some people will appreciate it, most people will see it as a pointlessly hateful and ugly movie. I'd recommend seeing it despite any preconceptions you might have. If nothing else, this movie has convinced me that atom bombs are far more destructive than we think they are, and they have ruined far more lives than Wikipedia gives them credit for. The purpose of this movie is to showcase the terrible things atom bombs can do in the hope that we never resort to them again, and I think it succeeds in that endeavor.

Based on sifting through the manga panels, this is not a top-notch adaptation. The manga's art, especially when it comes to character designs, is far more appealing. Compare how elegant the manga cover is to the hideous character art in the film. Yes, the work deals with dark subjects, the downtrodden in Japan, and we see scarred and disfigured people, but there needs to be some contrasting beauty somewhere. However, I'll admit the use of color in many scenes, whether it's the blood reds, the neon lights, or the more expressionistic imagery in the hellish WWII flashbacks or any scenes directed in a more hallucinatorymanner, is striking. Keiji Nakazawa, the author known for Barefoot Gen, can be abrasive, so a director must carefully convey the emotions properly, or it becomes schlock. There's an exploitative vibe, so some scenes are trashy, while others are surprisingly moving; the execution is inconsistent, but the majority of scenes are amateurish or flat. In particular, the crying scenes are the worst because they look like the crying soyjak meme or like they're fake crying. The opening, set to Kitaro's synth score, is stunning enough to give the film the appearance of being an overlooked gem, but it lacks the strength of Barefoot Gen, while amplifying all its problems. The synergy of sound and image reminded me of Riz Ortolani's nostalgic score for the largely gruesome Cannibal Holocaust in this scene, setting me up for unrealistic expectations. Only a few other moments come close to meeting the impact of this scene. A greater part of the problem than direction is certainly the script and characters. Sadly, I can see how the shoddy script could be rewritten into a far better, more artful film, but it's not happening. A lot of the characters, especially the ghoulish-looking prostitutes, behave in a moronic way, blinded by their rage. The juxtaposition of an orgasm with the bomb being dropped probably gives you an idea of the kind of production this is, if the cover didn't already (the guy on the right looks like he's sweating bullets while caught on the crapper). The film's anti-American politics involve plenty of racial conflict, and the Americans are depicted in a stereotypical fashion of the most insensitive proportions I've yet seen in a Japanese film, which might offend the delicate sensibilities of a modern audience weaned on organic soy milk, lesbian dance theory, and therapeutic finger painting safe spaces, so buckle up, because this is going to be a wild ride. The prostitute with syphilis is especially bizarre because she spreads her disease to American men out of spite, but... that can be resolved with antibiotics, so it's not that big of a deal. Doesn't she know anything other than getting plowed? Of all people who would know this, you'd think a prostitute who gets pounded for a living and has an increased chance of an STD would know. There's a sob story of how her son is blind: The only thing stronger than her thirst for vengeance is her bond with her little boy. Once she dies of her treatable disease (at least here the idea is that she wants to die to give her child sight, but it might be worth noting that her untreated syphilis could affect the eyes...), the intent is that her son will receive her peepers. Now, of course, like the best of mothers, she secretly has a man film her having sex with a random American client, and part of her will is for her son to watch the video once he inherits her eyes... Why would she want him to see this? I haven't a clue, other than to show mommy was a dumb whore who pointlessly slept with foreigners from an occupying country to infect them with the easily curable syphilis, hoping they would all die, much of the context likely being lost on the kid... I can imagine an epilogue where the male friend who recorded the tape is watching what is effectively DIY porn of the son's mother with him, explaining all the embarrassing details with a blackboard and chalk and a complex network of connections. "So the symbolic connotations of this American ramming your mom..." This scene truly represents the most impotent dunning-kruger-on-a-short-bus rage that I've had the misfortune to witness. There are so many ridiculous scenes: "Shin, get a good look at your mother's bones. Oh, right, you can't see. Right, I'll pass them to you so you can feel them." It almost sounds like he's mocking the kid, then he just makes it weird, creepy, and potentially comes off as a psychopath. For dumb symbolic purposes, she doesn't leave any bones behind, save for a few tiny fragments. Deep, huh? The other laughable moment is a scene with the other prostitute, who has extreme scarring from the American bombing. Her routine is bringing men to a room to have sex, only to disgust them (as well as you and I) with her deformed visage, exercising power over them. However, she learns her lesson by challenging one dumb-fuck American who takes it as a challenge and forces himself on her to prove that America always wins, lol! There's no way this could be intended as anything other than hilarity, yet the surrounding oh-so-serious edgy tone of the series proves otherwise. One moronic simp is so eager to make himself the lover of our only remotely attractive female character that he takes a two-bit underpaid assassination job to... abort her pregnancy... which, I guess is supposed to feel more plausible because there is a stigma against bomb survivors, who were exposed to radiation, having children. Nope, sorry. Absolute cuck apocalype is all this is! The absurdly bloody catharsis of the ending seemingly takes a note from the goofy madness of Taxi Driver's finale (similar to Penguin’s Memory: Shiawase Monogatari, which is definitely a better movie about a protagonist coping with the aftermath of a war), as the Japanese bartender and the returning "AMERICA NEVER LOSES" thug (I think it's the same guy... they're caricatured and only serve as disposable villains, so it's hard to recognize them) get into a brawl, spouting insults and airing their grievances, their microcosmic encounter being symbolic of the feud between America and Japan. There's even some subtext about the American arms industry because the schizophrenic nature of this encounter appears to have the American pressuring the Japanese at the barrel of a gun to buy the weapon, suggesting not only that the Japanese are expected to dance to the tune of a foreign power but can be used for world policing purposes (the arms buildup and military ventures of Japan are not nationalist in nature but are rather as a cuckolded vassal state). Enter the prostitute, freshly healed from surgery to remove her scars, lamenting how the dying man promised to marry her. Can you get any more maudlin? The whole thing is made preachier by the afterword, denouncing war in a crude, aggressive missive: "War is bad, I'm smart, and you should buy my manga in the name of world peace." Apparently, this film wasn't meant to be a comedy but instead an earnest attempt at a traumatic drama or tragedy, yet the most tragic response you're bound to take away from this will be a stomach ache from excessive laughter. Or sheer boredom. Either way, the film's intention wasn't met and the outcome is a colossal failure, looking like an embarrassment for anyone who appreciated Barefoot Gen. Other than that, it's one of those rare, angry, political films brimming with shame, defeat, and a yearning for vengeance that I seldom see from Japan other than in older live-action films. Honestly, I don't mind moe and waifu culture, but more "anti-American" content like, "get your bases and soldiers out of my country and quit telling me what to do" would be nice to see in anime, but it's easier to sell the latent sexuality of CGDCT and a box of tissues. Nonetheless, the film travels to a dark underside of Japan to explore pain in a unique, incendiary way, even if falling pass-out drunk upon its face, cracking the empty skull open on the concrete in the process.

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