I realised I have half a dozen posts in the backburner for quite some time. Thoughts that took form, inspirations and ideas that manifested in the back of my mind: they never made it into coherent, much less cogent, prose.
Said realisation prodded me to publish
something that needs little mental processing.
Recently, I went to a screening of
20th Century Boys: Redemption, the third film in the trilogy. Having watched the first 2, I have had certain expectations for the third. I'm not sure if my expectations were met. This is a confusing film, make no mistake. The central thread of the plot is easy enough to follow, but sidetracks were mostly unnecessary, does not value-add, and usually contribute to the number of plot-holes. And
Redemption has such a huge number of plotholes, it's probably based on an 8 oz fresco weave of a rationalisation. If there was any sliver of suspense generated by the previous 2 installments, the third one renders it a gimmick at best, a Ponzi scheme at worst.
The mysteries of the series, most notably the identity of Friend, was revealed in this last film, but the revelation was pretty much nonsense. Basically, if you piece together the clues left by the entire trilogy before the final moment of epiphany, you'll get jackshit, and a far cry from the jackshit the film feeds you in the end. The penultimate segment of a concert at Mankind's brink of extinction is entertaining, and so are the parts where the film delves into self-parody (every 5-10 minutes). The peculiarity in mood and atmosphere and acting are all typically Japanese, and you can see its Manga roots.
The skinny: a work of skewered logic with a dash of coherence; an almost Proustian display of Manga Sprezzatura, executed with uncanny discretion and restraint.
Or more simply: a film that treads between the soporific and the cerebral, with a barebones yet rationally conceivable plot (within the realm of fantasy/sci-fi fiction) and interspersed moments of
this,
this and
this.
