Many anime films are adapted from manga and Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction is no exception. Usually, a film will cover a single arc of the greater plot—giving the story on screen a solid beginning, middle, and end. However, this is not the case with the first Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction film. Clocking in at 120 minutes, this film covers two arcs. And given that these arcs differ wildly in both tone and story, it feels like two, tangentially related one-hour movies rather than a single cohesive one. That said, both arcs in this movie are fantastic in their own rights.

The first half of the film is basically District 9 meets O Maidens in Your Savage Season. There is a UFO in the sky, and things are happening in the background as the military ups its aggressiveness toward the unseen aliens but this is of no real concern to Kadode and Ouran—a pair of high school seniors getting ready to graduate.

This is a story about a group of teenage girls entering the world of adulthood. The life they’ve known is about to change. In a few months, they’ll either be in college or working—their normal school life will be over and they won’t see each other every day. On the one hand, this makes them worried for the future. On the other, it makes them want to stop coasting through their senior year and make every moment count.

But as much as this is a coming-of-age story, it’s also a thesis on how people can get used to anything—how our myopic problems still fill our worldview. Kadode has lost her father and the military attacks against the aliens keep causing collateral damage—regularly killing an innocent civilian or two. Even when her mother decides to move out of Tokyo with a new man to escape this life, Kadode doesn’t seem to see the bigger picture. It’s all just “normal” to her and she has no want or need to change things beyond the changes she is already being forced to make simply by growing up.

The second half of the film, couldn’t be more different. Rather than focusing on high-school Kadode and Ouran, we get a flashback to them in elementary school. The pair of unlikely friends, the bullied-yet-stubborn Kadode and shy-yet-somewhat-popular Ouran find and befriend an alien—years before the arrival of the UFO.

This becomes a dark deconstruction of Doraemon as the alien gives the two girls one gadget after another—ranging from an invisibility cloak to a sonic screwdriver. After all, what does a bullied girl with a strong sense of justice do when suddenly given superpowers—and with no adult oversight? It’s depressing, disturbing, and psychologically horrific—even more so in contrast to the much more lighthearted tone of the first arc—and it leaves you with a lasting impression for days following.

While both story arcs shown could easily be separate, unrelated films, there is a simple theme that ties the two together: humans are the true monsters. In both parts, we never see an alien harm a human. Rather, it is always the humans unilaterally attacking what they don’t understand—what they have no interest in understanding in the first place.

The military wants the nationalistic ego boost that comes from defeating the “invaders.” The scientists thinking up new weapons look forward to the fame and money they’ll soon receive. The people in the media and online keep drumming up fear—normalizing the idea that killing the aliens is the “right thing” to do—for their selfish reasons.

And this isn’t just directed towards aliens. Kadode in the flashback story has no problem attacking anyone and everyone she deems as “evil.” Everyone is the hero of their own story. In the absence of objective good or evil, even the most horrible actions imaginable can be rationalized away.

It’s a heartbreakingly pessimistic (though all-too-realistic) take on the nature of humanity. But in the face of it, we have the counter-example in Ouran. She’s not perfect nor is she some beacon of virtue. However, she does try to avoid directly harming anyone—even if she fails a bit at times. If the whole world were like Ouran, we’d still have our problems but we wouldn’t be dead set on genociding a race of aliens for no reason other than that they parked their ship in an inconvenient location.

On the visual side of things, Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction doesn’t look like most anime—especially in the character designs. None of the main characters have the typical pretty anime face and hourglass figure. Some characters have buck teeth, others are permanently blushing, and still others have perpetually watery eyes. Yet, despite these exaggerated character designs more commonly seen in anime aimed at young children (or perhaps because of them), the whole story feels much more grounded. The fact that the backgrounds and sci-fi technology are highly detailed also contributes to this.

As for the music, the only thing that truly stands out is the ending theme song. It starts cute and generic but eventually devolves into something harsh and discordant—much like the film it’s attached to. It’s a spot-on choice.

All in all, this first Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction film is simply fantastic. While it doesn’t feel like a single movie due to its two separate, vastly different stories, the stories themselves are told beyond well. And lurking behind them is a constantly explored theme about the darker side of human nature and our obsession with the idea that, no matter what we do, we are the ones in the right. Honestly, I feel blessed that I only have to wait a month for the second film to come out.

We went and saw The Long Game today. It’s an adaptation of a true story about the golf team from San Felipe High School in Del Rio, Texas, set in the 1950s. I’ll keep spoilers out of it, but they’re a group of Mexican-American boys who all caddied at an upscale private country club in their community. They aspired to play golf themselves but weren’t allowed on the course except to caddie, so they built their own crude practice course in the middle of the South Texas desert. They’re brought together as a golf team under their coach (JB Peña), who has just taken a job as an Assistant Superintendent at the high school and is an avid golfer. He also aspires to membership at the (all-white) country club where the boys work, but is denied because of his ethnicity.

They face a lot of obstacles and discrimination in the golf world and the community as a whole as they strive for legitimacy and acceptance, and deal with their own individual struggles in handling and overcoming it. Cheech Marin plays “Pollo”, a longtime employee of the country club who shares his (often humorous) outlook and serves as kind of a mentor to both the youths and Peña. They’re also helped by Frank Mitchell (Dennis Quaid), a former PGA Tour player who is a member at the country club but sees potential in the youths, so he takes on the role of teaching them the game and uses his influence as a country club member to get them into golf tournaments.

It’s a great story with some unforeseen twists and turns, a good mix of humor and drama, and some very touching moments. It’s a golf movie, but one that non-golfers can enjoy equally (my non-golfing wife was actually the one who found it and wanted to go see it, and she enjoyed it a lot). If you’re looking for a movie to go see, it’s worth your time.

“I can’t do retakes in my life”

The intense emergence of films about films that has been happening the last few years in Asian cinema is probably one of the most exciting concepts to be taking place in the region’s cinema. Yandy Laurens tries his hand in the (sub) genre, through an approach that provides one of its apogees.

The film shows its colors (pun intended) from the introductory scene. A script writer, Bagus (who is played by Ringgo Agus Rahman) enters the office of his producer, Yoram, who, once more, wants him to adapt another successful TV drama to a movie. Bagus, however, has another concept in his mind, of a black-and-white rom-com which is based on his actual experience, after meeting Hana, his old high school flames, and pursues a romantic relationship with her, even though it has just been 4 months since her husband died. As soon as he mentions black-and-white, the frame and the color of the movie change to suit his words, and the narrative changes to his actual experiences. Since the producer agrees, though, the shooting of the film actually becomes part of the narrative, which has it moving within and outside the film creating various meta levels, in a way that can only be compared with “One Cut of the Dead”, although in completely different, rom-com prism this time.

Yandy Laurens shoots a very ambitious project, with the aforementioned, meta-layer approach being quite difficult to implement in theory, but he manages to pass the ‘test’ with flying colors. The way the story moves inside and outside the movie is impressive, while allowing him to make a number of quite realistic comments, both regarding the shooting of movies and how the industry works in Indonesia. Regarding the latter, the discussions with the producer are rather indicative. Bagus wants to make an artistic black-and-white rom-com following the 8 chapter “rule” of the genre (which he also actually does in the actual movie). Yoram, on the other hand, having commercial success in his mind, wants him either to adapt a TV drama, or if the script is original, to at least be a horror. Another solution comes from having big names in it, either in the director’s seat (with the name of Riri Riza coming up) or in the cast. Lastly, the final solution if nothing else works, is to make the movie fast with the least possible cost, in a comment that essentially applies to the whole independent movie industry.

Furthermore, that two of the protagonists in the movie, Cheline and Dion (you get it, right?), a married couple who are Bagus’s best friends, are the editor and the main actor of his movie, allows Laurens to present how films work, both during the shoot and around it. The appearance of Julie Estelle as essentially herself adds to both this element, and the meta one we described just before, with the same applying with Dion Wiyoko who plays Dion.

This whole aspect, however, finds its apogee in the ‘racing scene” where an impressive Sheila Dara Aisha as Cheline dictates how the movie should look in the scene, with what we are seeing on the screen actually following her words. The drone shot that moves around and back to the bike she along with Dion and Bagus are riding is probably the most impressive in the whole movie, as is actually the whole sequence, where, additionally, Dimas Bagus Triatma Yoga’s cinematography and Hendra Adhi Susanto’s editing find their zenith.

The presence of the also excellent Nirina Zubir as Hana, on the other hand, and her interactions with Bagus, allow for more character analysis and a series of social comments having to do with relationships, essentially adding yet another level to the movie. The concept of grief and the possibility of finding true love at a later age in life is the most obvious one, but Laurens also talks about how people can become rather self-centered with their feelings, ignoring those of others in the process. That the one in fault here is Bagus could be perceived as a comment regarding artists and how focused (in a negative way) can become with their art, with the way his interactions proceed with Hana essentially maturing him as the movie progresses. At the same time, the value of communication and being truthful is highlighted too, adding even more to the rather rich narrative here. Lastly, that cinema can imitate life, but it is not the same as living and experiencing it, emerges as one of the most smart and accurate remarks Laurens makes.

Check also this interview

Through the aforementioned, the performance by Ringgo Agus Rahman also emerges as excellent, with his interactions with the rest of the protagonists, showcasing, additionally, the outstanding chemistry between them.

The film can be a bit too dialogue-heavy on occasion, and would definitely benefit from a tighter ending, but these are just minor issues here, with “Falling in Love Like in Movies” emerging as a film that is rather smart and intelligent, rather fun, rather informative, and rather entertaining in equal measures.