The previous post in this series just focused on American dramas and films, for today will just feature movies from Japan and in the next post South Korea will be in the spotlight. Not sure if that rotation will continue after these three posts and I prefer not having too many things planned out. Such as this post for today and know the first four things I'll be discussing is a movie series which has nine in all. Think there will be a fifth movie(wasn't) but unsure of what that one will be and whatever decision I make will end up being correct.
In the last four posts in this 'My Current Watches' series talked about my favorite women whose name begins with the letter M. There's so many women I post about whose name begins with that letter and in future posts may look at the letter Y, names in America beginning with that letter are so rare but not in Japan. But for today am starting off with Nene who is my all time favorite gravure model but she also does many other kinds of activities. The last ten months have been her most quiet since 2020 and I'm wondering if she silently retired from gravure modeling? There's been a few magazine spreads and digital books that have been released since last July but I think the pictures were from older photo shoots and could this somewhat tragedy(retirement) have occurred without any of us realizing it?
At least twice a week for the last few years have visited Nene's X page or agency site to see what's new with her and what'll be happening in the future. She'd often let us know when a book or magazine spread would be coming out and also have some scorching pics from photo shoots. However these days Nene has had zero news of those things and that's been going on for at least two months which is what makes me wonder if she's retired or is about to from the world of gravure modeling? She's been doing that since mid-2020 and in March of 2022 Nene did graduate from college, she does seem like a very intelligent woman along with having a figure that's so close to perfect! This July 15th her 28th birthday will be happening so she's at that age when many models start slowing down with gravure work and if Nene has least she's left us with so many thousands of ultra dazzling photos and of course if she does make a return you know I'll have that info asap!!!!
What's been very positive for this 'My Current Watches' series is that I've been watching so many dramas and films I had never seen before. Most have been very good, especially the American TV shows and older Japanese movies from the 1950's and 60's. But I don't want to totally ignore the movies I've enjoyed so much over the last decade so for today will have four movies I've seen from a film franchise. Think there's eight movies and one TV special, will talk about four or perhaps five today. The first two will be a pair of films I've seen at least a twenty times each but not for over a year, it does help taking breaks from things I've seen a lot of. But the next two will movies I've only seen once each and those watches took place at least five years go so it'll be like watching them for the first time, it's not a well liked series of films but ones I love to no end! EDIT: The fourth film is not one I had seen and .it did turn out to be just so-so. When I first got into Japanese films I started off with the "Ringu" four film box set and then watched the pair of "Ju-On" movies. Then I bought a boxset of five films that cost only $20 and I had never heard of the film series but I was hooked from the first film! That's enough of an intro and lets get to these movies, the last few posts in this series have been the longest to date so will try to make this one much shorter.
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There will be four mini reviews today and there was going to be a fifth but of all things the second in the movie series "Tomie: Replay" kept saying Bad Disc on my DVD player and perhaps it is so for I bought the boxset back in 2009!!!! But that's okay as to an extent every Tomie movie and manga story is the same, she gets killed a few times and often by being dismembered yet keeps coming back to life.... with new limbs! So for these reviews will keep them at two paragraphs but also have a trailer for that film, the first two reviews are of films in the boxset so have viewed them over twenty times each. The other two are films I have seen but only once each and that was years ago so it'll be like watching them for the first time again. At this point have viewed the first two movies and will also have an extra small feature for the second movie. The writer of the Tomie series is Junji Ito and I have a few other mangas from him plus another movie titled "Umazaki" which is so terrific. I have that manga and the three for Tomie along with the two for the "Gyo" story plus a few other Ito mangas so about ten in all. But in such a shock my local library has another fifteen of his mangas and many are shorter stories that had been in magazines. All are hard covered and have around 400 pages, I've read them all and it's coming close to reading them again!
The first Tomie movie was released in 1998 and is my favorite of the nine, one is a TV movie. This series is not a popular nor respected one with horror fans so that's one reason I've called it my guilty pleasure. Such an underrated thing about this movie is the music which is so creepy and eerie, it really adds to the 'horror atmosphere'. Miho Kanno is an actress many of you may have heard of and she's still popular to this day. She played the first ever screen version of Tomie but we never saw her adult version until the halfway point of this 91 minute movie. That's because Tomie had come back to life and each way is different than previous reincarnations, this time she began from day one as a baby! Tomie was being raised by an ex-classmate named Yamamoto and within weeks she was almost at the age of seventeen, that's the age Tomi will be at for eternity! Like every man Yamamoto was transfixed at the sight of Tomie and would do anything to remain with her, often she makes these 'Romeos' murder many innocent people and he did so in this film. Three years prior Yamamoto had gone to high school with Tomie, she had been killed and then dismembered by a boy named Mizuguchi who then disappeared. It just so happens his girlfriend at the time Tsukiko witnessed and is currently living in the apartment above the one Yamamoto rented out for the 'baby' Tomie to grow at in private. To make a long story short Tomie seduced Tsukiko's boyfriend Saiga who worked as a cook and one neat scene was of Tomie becoming a waitress at his restaurant and having the employees kill each other!
Except for Saiga and he did kill a few innocents on behalf of Tomie who never dirties her hands and the the men under her 'spell' do all of the evil deeds! In the end Tomie was killed by Tsukiko who blew Tomie up with a stick of dynamite but is she truly dead? Of course not and as the movie ended we saw Tsukiko look at a mirror and wonder where did that tiny mole come from? For a mole just below the left eye of Tomie is her trademark and as I mentioned there is no way to ever rid the Earth from the Curse of Tomie! My favorite part(s) of the movie was of the detective Haruda who was played by Tomoro Taguchi and he's one of my favorite actors. Haruda was so obsessed with finding Tomie and he had never seen her but had done so much investigating about her life, the trail went all the way back to 1870! By the end Haruda still hadn't found Tomie but did find a photo of her and it was the first time ever. That may have been neat seeing Haruda in a few of the sequels and he was kind of a Tomie expert but he also realized who would believe him saying Tomie wasn't human! I forget if Tomie's origins have ever been explained, know they weren't in the five films in the boxset. Here's some pictures from this first film and after them is a trailer which is really just a so-so one, then have three more films to look at. But the segments won't be nearly as long as this one where I needed to explain what Tomie was all about. That first photo shows all those who have played the role of Tomie, my faves are number's two and six who you will be seeing more of in this post.
Did mention that my DVD for the second regular Tomie movie wasn't working and what is the lifespan of a DVD? That film "Tomie: Replay" was released in 2000, the above movie in 1998 and in between a TV movie aired in December 1999, right above is the DVD that was in the boxset. There's also a picture from Ito's manga and you can also pick up a statue of Tomie, I've never seen it before but if I did at the store would scoop it right up! This TV movie titled "Another Face" was decent but only lasted for 73 minutes, the DVD cover is wrong. But on the plus side we get a triple helping of Tomie as there were three mini stories and while none were must watches(unless you're a Tomie fan) I enjoyed them all quite a bit plus it had Runa Nagai as Tomie. She wasn't the best actress to portray the demon but did a solid job and to me was the best looking of all the actresses to play Tomie! After this segment will have a mini one for her and will try to have only one more paragraph for this TV movie plus a trailer. As the second pic above shows Tomie can can split into more than one creature but the only time we've seen that happen is in this TV movie, what I mean is that there are two Tomies living at once! That happened in the second story where a photographer returned to his hometown after being away for ten years and recalled the seventeen year old Tomie from his past. There's another version of Tomie still in that city and the photographer wondered if she was the daughter of the woman he remembered? No she wasn't and at the end of the story is when we saw the two Tomies together as they ended up killing the man!
That photographer had discovered that Tomie was a demon for when you take a photo of her it comes out looking like there's a spirit rising out of Tomie but that didn't happen in the first movie. The third segment was of Tomie looking like she was 25 instead of seventeen and was on the verge of getting married but that had been thwarted by the man wearing the eye patch which was courtesy of being stabbed by Tomie! The marriage didn't take place but her potential husband was so obsessed with Tomie he ended up killing that man with an eye patch and as mentioned all men will do anything to remain by Tomie's side! My favorite of the three was the first segment where Tomie was a high school student and what a demon she was in this story which I wish had been a movie. A classmate of Tomie's and also ex-boyfriend Takashi ended up killing Tomie twice and the second time his prior girlfriend Miki had helped Takashi bury her body deep into the ground. But in the final pic below there is no way you can kill Tomie who at the end of the story made a return to school and that story gets a high recommendation from me. I can understand to a slight extent why others may not enjoy these movies but if you've been reading these posts you know my favorites are older B Horror flicks and especially ones in B&W. The trailer is after the pics and it's subbed in English.
Once again there's the actresses who have portrayed Tomie in this nine movie series, there's two extra as the 2007 movie was "Tomie vs. Tomie" so there were two actresses. The final Tomie is from a 2023 movie which I didn't know about until now, I will review another movie or two in the series so will find out more info about it. The TV movie "Another Face" starred Runa Nagai and she was the most alluring of the actresses who played Tomie but there is one other who I also like quite a bit. The character of Tomie is supposed to be quite stunning and magnetic but also very seductive and can't say that about too many of the other Tomies but all the actresses still did a superb job. Runa did a lot of gravure work around the year 2000 and had at least four gravure DVD's plus just as many photobooks. Runa was born in June 1982 so will be hitting the age of 44 this year and I don't know what's become of her. In 2008 Runa retired from show biz but two years prior had graduated from college with degrees in English and American literature so perhaps she became a teacher or professor. Her height is listed as 159 cm but in the movie she seemed much shorter
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The pair weren't close friends in school but along with their other 35 classmates shared one thing in common, a connection to Tomie. One of the reunion attendees was a woman named Reiko, she's 28 in age and had been Tomie's only friend at school but Tomie doesn't have 'true friends' as she just gets close to females so she can use them for her own benefit. The male also was 28 and his name was Yamamoto, both are in some screenshots below. Yamamoto was in the first "Tomie" film and he also wore an eyepatch then, it was self inflicted as while in a asylum Yamamto had stabbed his right eye out due to missing the enchanting Tomie!!!! So at this very mini reunion the pair reminisced about their high school days and 100% of the conversation was about Tomie. Who was a transfer student and Tomie has to constantly move for she never ages and of course that would look suspicious or creepy. That second word is definitely true about Tomie and she befriended Reiko within a day of entering school, every other female has always hated Tomie because of her beauty and how their boyfriends swoon over her. Boys swooning over Tomie did happen at this new school but a problem is that it always leads to a male killing Tomie if he can't have her, that was tried by a trio of boys below. That scene shook up Reiko badly for one boy had cut off Tomie's right ear with a sword and Reiko watched the ear scoot away as though it was alive!
Later Reiko also saw the Tomie's bloody bandages transform into a second Tomie and all it takes is one small body part for this demon to regenerate. Want to make this the last paragraph so will zoom through the remining half hour of this 75 minute movie. Besides high school boys even older males become so infatuated with Tomie and that happened to her teacher Takagi. He's below in two screenshots and he even brought a knapsack of tools to cut Tomie into pieces(!), that happened after Yamamoto pushed Tomie down a hill and all thought she was dead. Her body was cut up into 38 pieces(!) and strewn everywhere in this smallish city but two days later who should make an appearance back at school than Tomie! Of course there's no way to kill her and wonder if even burning her to a crisp would work? After that return Tomie disappeared and that class was ruined, four committed suicide and fifteen had to go into an asylum, the others all left town. But Tomie did make a return and it was in the last five minutes of this film, most of what took place were in flashbacks of Reiko and Yamamoto talking about the olden days. At the end we learned that Tomie can transform or enter into the body of another female and that makes sense for in every movie she looks differently. So at the end Reiko has become the new Tomie and even though the last screenshot below shows her bloody body lying on a desk we all know that Tomie will be back more eviler than ever!!!! I had forgotten 100% of what had taken place in this movie so am very glad I viewed it again for it was such an enjoyable watch. It'll be a film that I will view a few more times and it's hard to explain how much magnetism Tomie has over me, maybe I'm under her spell! After the pics is a trailer for the film and following that is a mini section for the woman who portrayed Tomie in the film.
Once again there's the eleven actresses who have portrayed Tomie in a film and as said earlier "Tomie: Beginning" was the sixth. Playing the evil lead role was Rio Matsumoto and I've never mentioned her before but she was one of my early favorite gals from Japan! I've seen Rio in the 2005 drama "Tokyo Friends' and also the spinoff movie which were both decent. Rio was also in one of my top ten dramas of all time which was "Golden Bowl" from 2002, it was about bowling and she played a tomboy mechanic. But as you can see below she's anything but a tomboy and what an underrated beauty she was but Rio never made acting her FT career. She was more of a fashion designer and also had a brief singing career, on her 37th birthday in 2019 she got married and not as much is heard of her these days which is so common for that first wave of actresses who I really liked. PS: Just noticed she looks so much like Ayumi Kinoshita and that's a compliment, both were born in 1982 just two months apart.
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Of course it wasn't when there's a demon such as Tomie on the scene though as I mentioned above we viewers didn't know who or where Tomie was? Don't want to talk about this film much longer, it wasn't a bad watch but in a way I don't consider it to be a true Tomie movie. Luckily it was only 72 minutes in length and more seemed to happen in the final 10-15 minutes than in the first 55! Most of that action took place at that abandoned mansion we saw early on in the film and that's where Tomie had been holed up at but why didn't she leave? Tomie had one of those lost hikers doing her evil deeds such as kidnapping Yukiko and I also think Togashi's daughter Rei. This last bit was a bit informative for it did let us view Tomie transforming into a different body which happened in the final seconds, that's in the bottom screenshot and the body was of Yukiko. Her doctor friend Kazue watched the whole incident but was too frightened to react, Tomie needed a new body as the doctor Togashi had blown her old body away with a shotgun! So this film was no must watch and it may have been better if I knew going in that Tomie wouldn't be on screen too often nor was as important to the story as she was in every other film. But I will watch this again and often so-so movies such as this one are much better to me the second time but did learn more about Tomie's regeneration process so that was a positive.
The Junjo Ito scorecard: To date have watched seven of his "Tomie" films and just gave mini recaps to four of them. The film I just reviewed was number seven and have one other, just need to get "Tomie vs. Tomie" and then will have another movie post with those two. I also have Ito's "Umazaki" movie and have seen that a dozen times but not for a while, that'll be the third film in that next post. What I need to find out is if any other of his mangas have been made into movies and hope so as one would make the next post another quartet of his films.
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