What happens when the high-art/low-art contemporary artist Takashi Murakami tackles the high-art/low-art film genre of…outcast kid moves to a new town but then find a magical creature who he fights against other kids in formulaic Pokémon-esque battles in order to discover the true meaning of friendship?  Well, it turns out you kind of get a film using it’s nostalgic fantasy format to grapple with a nation’s collective trauma following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.  Kind of.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Nagisa Ōshima‘s Empire of Passion (1978).