Bloodtype Online

AnimEigo 

    If there is one thing you can be sure of, that is you never quite know what to expect from director Takeshi Miike. For a director that is as prolific as he is (he's probably just wrapped half-a-dozen more movies since I started typing) he certainly knows how to mix it up. And as such there will always be some movies that grab the public consciousness, such as Ichi the Killer, Audition or One Missed Call, and others that slip quietly under the radar. I'll admit that out of his 60 or 70 odd movies I have only seen a handful of them, and Big Bang Love, Juvenile A was probably the strangest to view, as well as possibly the most interesting. There is no real flash bang wallop here, just deconstructed cinema that engages the mind from start to finish. It isn't however easy viewing. 

    Set for the most part within a Japanese penetentiary the movie follows the relationship between two new inmates, Kazuki and Ariyoshi. Both start their sentence on the same day, however that is initially the only thing they have in common. Kazuki is an incredibly violent character that has served time before, whereas Ariyoshi is the archetypal new fish, so to speak. 

    Although their initially uneasy friendship eventually starts to grow, it is cut short when one of them is killed. The plot then follows two detectives as they try to piece together the events that led up to the death, who commited the crime, and any reasoning behind it. 

    This all sounds simple enough, but the manner in which the movies plays out managed to keep me thoroughly engaged, as     the pieces of the jigsaw slowly fall into place. The story jumps back and forth revealing little bits here and there, fleshing it all out with input from the other inmates as well as the warden, who is played by the ever impressive Ryo Ishibashi. 

    Big bang Love is an incredibly visual movie, the minimalist sets and sometimes outlandish imagery adding as much to the movie as any dialogue between the characters. It really was a most impressive spectacle. None of which would have made any difference had the performances here not been up to par. Fortunately they were though, and apart from the aforementioned Ishibashi, the majority of the movie weighs on the shoulders of Masanobu Ando and Ryuhei Matsuda (as Kazuki and Ariyoshi respectively). Both put in strong and very brave performances as the two inmates. 

    Overall I was most impressed with Big Bang Love, Juvenile A, it was certainly different and at times it did drag a little. However, as far as experimenting with the storytelling format Miike still manages to get a very coherent, sometimes violent and at times quite touching movie out of it all. It won't be to everyone's liking but as far as watching something a little different I wholeheartedly encourage giving it a chance. 

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- Jude Felton