Jellyfish Eyes

When you hear that the latest film canonized and released by the much-beloved Criterion Collection is a Japanese children's film wherein knock-offs of low-art heavyweights -- such as Pokemon, Godzilla, and Sailor Moon -- do battle on the playground, your response may be a brief one: "wait, what?" But then the opening credits arrive, bringing an answer to your question with them. "Jellyfish Eyes" is the first film directed by the pop-minded artist Haruki Murakami, who often reworks the hallmarks of gamer culture and genre cinema in his art. He's always had at least one foot stationed in the playground. And now he's playing along.

As for whose he's playing with, there are two main partners. But only one of them is human. Musashi (Takuto Sueoka) recently lost his father to an unnatural disaster. And since Murakami is working in the Spielbergian tradition -- aesthetic wonder abounds throughout -- that loss is soon compensated by a fantastical gain. Said gain has a name: Kurago-bo, meaning "jellyfish boy," which is exactly what he looks like. Kurage is a pocket-sized monster that Musashi adopts, and soon turns into his personal bodyguard. Seems special, right? Then he gets to his new school, and finds that every other kid has an otherworldly pet of their own. They all battle them out in the schoolyard, "Street Fighter" -- style. Murakami even outfits those combat sequences with the split-sided "vs. screens" you'll see when playing arcade games. All that's missing are the controller ports.

What's most fascinating is watching Murakami attempt to keep a skeptical distance from the pleasures of his multiplayer match. The narrative is gamed to ensure that we don't slurp down that imagery as easily as a sugar-filled soft-drink: we see that the monsters have been manufactured at a plant staffed by hooded figures, who are all determined to manipulate the populace into a docile state. We learn that the "negative energy" that the kids conjure up during their battles is actually essential to these beast's existence. And then we learn there's a reason and a rhythm to the deployment of these video game-derived beings -- one that involves the hooded figures "restoring the myth of absolute security" to the Japanese population. Murakami is positioning the hallmarks of his nation's pop culture as numbing agents; his characters constantly respond to external dangers and anxieties by further relying on their "pocket monsters." He's asking us to unplug.

Criterion's release of Murakami's feature debut starts off by setting you up for even more: there's a trailer for a sequel on this disc -- "Jellyfish Eyes 2," coming soon to a theater near you -- which might be a first for the venerable Collection. The rest of the special features are also focused on the filmmaker-artist, with an eye toward both his process and his philosophy. For the former, there are two separate documentaries: "Making F.R.I.E.N.D.S." (which runs about 15 minutes) looks at the production of the creatures themselves, while "Takashi Murakami: The Art of Film" (40 minutes) collects footage from various stages of the film's making (screenwriting, production design, costuming, and rehearsals, among others,) in an effort to give insight to Murakami's day-to-day working methods.

Finally, there's an interview with the man himself, where he discusses the film's history (it was once meant to be fully-animated,) its influence (a number of specific Japanese pop-culture totems are invoked directly,) and its sociological status (Murakami sees the picture, in one sense, as a response to a number of disasters that have recently befallen Japan.) Murakami's movie considers combat and pop culture within the frame of such events, eventually casting aspersions toward both -- even as it dances among them. So we may not even need to see the director wrestling with his own thoughts in an interview-he's doing the same throughout the movie itself. Perhaps by the time we see "Jellyfish Eyes 2," he'll have figured out his balance.

"Jellyfish Eyes"
Blu-ray
Criterion.com
$29.95