Thanks to Japan’s record-breaking temperatures and humidity, going outside currently feels like showering with your clothes on. There are some upsides to it, though, like having a great excuse to stay home and veg out with a streaming service of your choice. If that choice includes Netflix, here are some recommended shows and movies you can binge throughout July.
Drawing Closer
Life is all about perspective. Being told you only have one year left to live because of a tumor may sound bad, but it’s twice as good as being told you’ll be dead in six months. Unless, of course, two people with both diagnoses fall in love with each other, which, unfortunately, does happen in this new movie from director Takahiro Miki. While the setup sounds like a parody of Japanese tearjerkers, Drawing Closer is saved by its protagonists — portrayed by Ren Nagase and Natsuki Deguchi — being artists. Some of the best art in existence translates pain and sorrow into something beautiful, which works on two levels here with Nagase’s character channeling the sweet tragedy of his doomed relationship into art while the movie itself transforms a bunch of cliches into a touching celebration of life.
My Love Story!!
Originally released in 2015 and only arriving on Netflix this month, My Love Story!! is a very surprising tale about masculinity of all things. On the surface, the film does focus on the romance between the hulking high schooler Takeo Goda (Ryohei Suzuki) and the demure Rinko Yamato (Mei Nagano), but underneath it all there’s a refreshing look at what makes a man a man.
Takeo is extremely popular among the boys at school because of his massive size and monstrous strength, but at the same time, he’s openly kind, gentle and brave, which a lot of people overlook because of his rough outer appearance. Takeo doesn’t seem to care, though, because a true “man among men” doesn’t do good for praise; he does it because that’s who he is inside. Mixed with some endearingly ludicrous displays of physical strength, My Love Story!! makes for a very fun and action-packed romance.
Viral Hit
Having recently concluded its run on Fuji TV, the Viral Hit anime — based on the South Korean manhwa by Taejun Pak and Kim Junghyun — is coming to Netflix in mid-July to teach high schoolers how to become YouTube stars by beating up bullies. Thankfully, that’s just the first layer.
The Japanese series kicks off with the weakling Kota Shimura (Yoo Ho-bin in the original comic) finally having enough and attacking his bully, an incident that gets uploaded to “NewTube” and makes him an overnight online sensation. Tempted by the money he made from his viral hit, Kota learns to fight from a NewTube chicken (it … makes more sense in context) and starts filming more fight videos where he acts as a sort of street vigilante.
There is a strong “underdog power fantasy” angle to the series, but it’s accompanied by a heavy emphasis on hard work and using your head when it comes to physical fitness. Bruce Lee famously said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times,” which is, basically, Kota’s entire shtick. Plus, for better or worse, YouTube (or NewTube) is an integral part of the lives of modern young people, and it’s probably good to have a show that acknowledges the powerful impact of online streams.
While not always having the best message, Viral Hit is, at least, honest at its core and has some nice animation that makes it all the more fun when bullies get the absolute snot punched out of them.
Tokyo Swindlers
(Premiering July 25)
About 70–80% of Japan is made up of mountains. That makes flat coastal land incredibly valuable across the country, with Japanese real estate prices being some of the highest in the world. Writer-director Hitoshi One focuses on that world in Tokyo Swindlers, a story of a group of land scammers involved in a massive ¥10 billion job that pits amoral conmen against equally amoral developers.
The result is akin to a Japanese Ocean’s Eleven — only with less superficial charm and more self-awareness. After watching it, you won’t be able to walk by a Japanese construction site without wondering what kind of violent skullduggery went on behind the scenes there.
Gun x Sword
(Premiering July 20)
Gun x Sword (2005) is a high-octane celebration of the most B-movie cliches of modern anime. The series follows Van, a man dressed in so much black, he should be constantly passing out under the scorching sun of Planet of Endless Illusion, a place that’s part the sci-fi Western of Trigun and part the desert dystopia of Mad Max.
Thankfully, there’s very little logic in Gun x Sword, allowing it to embrace the silly and the nonsensical, like giving Van a gun-shaped smart cloth that can become a sword, a grappling hook or a kind of spinning shield. It can also summon a giant sword that transforms into a giant robot from an orbiting satellite because anyone who said, “But this doesn’t make sense!” during the production meeting for this anime was unceremoniously kicked out of the building.
Gun x Sword does not suffer from a surplus of original ideas, but it has a refreshing lack of shame when it comes to loving things that kick ass, and it shows through in every episode.
