Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

The Japanese movie Check It Out Yo! is being shown here exclusively in Cineleisure, and I went to see it with the girlfriend because both of us like Orange Range a lot. The movie was supposed to be about 3 young men from Okinawa who make it big in the Japanese hip-hop/rap/rock scene. That is a pack of lies. Instead, what we got was a shallow love story with the band being a mere subplot, set in an intentionally-Champuru Shangri-La-like Okinawa, with Orange Range songs playing in the background.

Orange Range is made up of 3 vocalists, a bassist and a guitarist. The drummer, Kat-chan, quit. The 3 vocalists (I hesitate to use the word MC as it’s bloody pretentious) each have a particular pitch range they are responsible for, with Yamato doing the high-pitched parts and harmonisations, Hiroki doing the middle range and most of the melodies and Ryo with an ultra low bassy voice. In karaoke, I get to do the Ryo parts because I also have a manly voice. Orange Range’s latest single, O2, the OP for Code Geass R2 is mainly Yamato’s voice, which explains why it doesn’t sound too much like their other songs.

Most people got to know OR through Asterisk, at least here in the anime scene. The Bleach 1st OP was also how I got to know about the band, though it was not until I heard their most popular song, Hana, that they got added to the favourite bands section. They are quite good live, as can be seen from the videos. Speaking of which, the girlfriend’s favourite movie is Ima, Ai ni Yukimasu (Be with You) which features Hana as its theme song. I liked Hana without knowing about the existence of the movie, so it’s quite the destiny isn’t it? The show isn’t that good, despite what she thinks.

But I digress. This review is about the movie Check it Out Yo! But I already summarised the entire plot way up there in the first paragraph. But in the interest of learning, let us divert our attention to learning about Okinawa.

The Ryuukyuu islands have always been a hotpot of cultures, due to their geographical location. The culture on Okinawa is one which heavily emphasises on Champuru, that is, a mix. The people of Okinawa mix mainland Japanese, Chinese, American (due to the occupation) and Pacific cultures into one unique hybrid, particularly evident in their music, which is called Uchinaa Pop. Due to this willingness to blend musical styles and a strong livehouse scene, this relatively poor province produces a disproportionately large number of successful musicians and artists, the two most prominent recent ones being Orange Range and Namie Amuro. The people here also speak a dialect, which has sort of but barely withstood the efforts of the Japanese government to quash it in the name of homogeneity. Though they still speak funny.

The island is mainly dependent on tourism for income, not unlike Hawaii. In fact, Okinawa is the Hawaii of Japan. The movie plays up this image significantly, having the female protagonist Yui’s sister marry an extremely large Hawaiian named Andy. The locals readily accept Andy (except the dad) and he loves to play the sanshin (the 3 stringed Japanese guitar) too. Throughout the movie, people of difference heritages can be seen in the background, particularly at Andy’s cafe. Beyond the presented openness and hospitality of the people, there are also beautiful scenes of the white beaches and clear blue seas and skies, the traditional dances and other touristy attractions. But we all know Okinawa is overrated and polluted these days. Damn tourist advertisements masquerading as movies.

The main plot goes like this. 3 high school boys and 1 high school girl are good friends. The girl invites them to a live, by a local rock/hiphop band called Workaholic. The 3 boys learn there that women dig band members and decide to form a band. The main character, Toru, works at an aquarium part time and meets this old chick with a hot body, Nagisa. We all hate the name Nagisa right? But anyway, this Nagisa chick is flirty and sultry, swimming in a see-through white bikini in the shark tank. Toru goes to save her but drowns instead, and she gives him CPR. The lad is charmed.

The high school girl, Yui, is secretly in love with Toru despite the fact that he’s a dunce. Oh, the other two guys are called Tetsuo and Akira. The former is a straight As student who looks like a young Takashi Sorimachi, and the latter is a slitty-eyed Park Ji Sung lookalike. Tetsuo loves Yui secretly too. Akira is gay. So they form a band, with the help of their family and community of old people. Since this is a family-oriented teen movie, everyone’s all happy and the old people love hip hop too. The parents are nice and encouraging, the classmates instantly love the band and blah blah. But their first live performance, opening for Workaholic, is a HUGE SHAMBLES. You have to see it to believe how bad they were. The audience beats them up and they quit playing music for a while.

Then sultry Nagisa reveals that she is the girlfriend of the leader vocalist of Workholic but is breaking up to return to Tokyo as she is old and they are all young. Toru is shocked and decides to organise one final proper gig for her. So he suddenly gets some awesome inspiration and comes up with a professional sounding song. Wow, that’s quick. Meanwhile, Akira, from a hopeless drummer, suddenly gains supreme musical talent from nowhere, and becomes a 2nd vocalist, doing harmonisations as easily as ABC. Tetsuo, being smart, becomes a DJ and they dump all their guitars, bass and drums for just one sampling machine and a turntable. Wow, this really shows how much talent is needed for DJing eh?

All 4 build a makeshift woodenstage on the beach and invite everyone to come for the live. But on the day, it rained like mother fucking Hawaii and everyone was sad. But no, Toru the brave hero, wraps plastic bags on his speakers (doesn’t that muffle the sound?) and charges into the rain. So, so brave. They start playing this really professional-sounding song, which makes a mockery of their previous performance just a while back. Everyone joins in as though they knew the song beforehand, and Nagisa is touched. But then leaves with the lead singer of Workaholic, ie her ex, to have babies. So this is the climax of the show.

You know those typical coming-of-age music shows? School of Rock, Beck for instance. They’ll always have an awe-inspiring finale performance which brings you to tears at the sheer magic of music. I was expecting something like that in Check it Out Yo! but the finale turned out to be more low-key. I suppose it’s in the name of realism, since what they were aiming for was just a little gig, in the end.

Finally, Yui and Toru sit on a pier gazing at the sea. Yui kicks Toru into the sea. He climbs up, hugs the girl from behind, and acts as though he’s going to confess his love. AND GERMAN SUPLEXES HER 10 FEET INTO THE SEA!!! Ok that was quite awesome and totally a fitting end to this little movie.

Oh, the above 6 paragraphs all take place while Orange Range music plays in the background. The ending song is Walk On, which is rather nice.

The acting is above average for a Japanese live action. Japanese can’t act, we all know that. But these guys are OK, they didn’t do the usual pretty boy act-beautiful poses too much. But there was one scene where Toru fell into the water and his makeup got washed off, rather obviously. Men with makeup, only in Japan.

Overall, I had rather wrong expectations for this show. I thought it was a lot more like Beck. The main focus turned out to be on the old chick and Toru, unfortunately. We need more shows like Beck. Japanese live action movies are seriously inferior to anime.