We will be having our first meeting of the semester this Thursday at 5pm in Bate 1021! Next week we will resume our regular schedule of shows on Thursdays and movies on Tuesdays.
Here’s the line up for the semester:
Canaan
Love Shuffle
Shikabane Hime
Bate 1022, 5:15 PM
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女, Toki o Kakeru Shōjo?) is a 2006 Japanese animated science fiction film. The film focuses on a high school girl who inadvertently gains the power to travel through time and begins using it frivolously to fix problems. It was produced by the animation studio Madhouse and directed by Mamoru Hosoda. It is inspired by, and is a pseudo-sequel to, the 1976 novel Toki o Kakeru Shōjo by Yasutaka Tsutsui.
Critical response to The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was very positive, and it won numerous awards, including the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year.
From Wikipedia – Koichi Toyama (外山恒一, Toyama Kōichi?, , born July 26, 1970) is a Japanese street musician, an “anarchist-fascist” political activist who was a candidate for the governor of Tokyo in 2007. He was born in Kagoshima Prefecture, and lives in Fukuoka. He gained notoriety with his fervent election speech, which was posted on the American based website YouTube. Out of fourteen candidates in the election, Toyama placed eighth with 15,059 votes (0.27 percent of total votes cast).
Described by the announcer as an “Extreme Left Anti-Establishment” figure, Koichi began his controversial statement by denouncing Japan as a “horrible nation” and rejecting any possibility for reforms. Declaring most of the voters to be his “enemies”, Koichi calls upon a minority to rise up. He closes his speech by calling for the overthrow of the Japanese Government and making an obscene gesture toward the camera.
Another Koichi video, from 2008, saw him giving a monologue in which he claims as the United States has a global hegemony, it is an injustice that despite being a citizen of what he calls one of America’s “51st states” (“America”, he claims “literally encompasses the entire world”), he is not eligible to vote, let alone stand as a candidate, in the election.
A comedy about a sport that most people don’t take very seriously
Event canceled, Mendenhall canceled our room.
Ping Pong (ピンポン, Pin Pon?) is a 2002 sports film directed by the Japanese filmmaker Fumihiko Sori. It is based on Taiyō Matsumoto’s manga of the same name and is about the friendship between two high school table tennis players.
The film concentrates on these two friends, their two mentors, and three players who they encounter at high school table tennis tournaments. It explores the different motivations and philosophies that they have towards table tennis and tries to portray the excitement and subtlety of the sport.
Ping Pong was nominated for eight Japanese Academy Awards in 2003; Shidō Nakamura won the ‘Newcomer of the Year’ prize for his performance as Dragon.
The cast includes Yosuke Kubozuka (Peco), Arata (Smile), Sam Lee (China), Shidō Nakamura (Dragon), Kōji Ōkura (Akuma), Naoto Takenaka (Butterfly Joe, the high school coach) and Mari Natsuki (Obaba, Peco’s mentor).
