Japanese Reviews Reviews

Film Review: From Today, It’s My Turn!! (2020) by Yuichi Fukuda

After taking on the live-action adaptation of “Gintama”, the director of “HK: Forbidden Super Hero” was bound to continue in the same, commercially successful path, this time dealing with another iconic manga,”Kyo kara Ore wa!!”. The initial story revolves around two high school students, Takashi Mitsuhashi and Shinji Ito, who meet each other at a salon, and when they realize they are transferring to the same new school, decide to reinvent themselves, and become the greatest delinquents in Japan.

“From Today, It’s My Turn!!” is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

In the particular story, Takashi finds himself antagonizing Katsutoshi Imai, another rather strong delinquent who has a thing for his sister, Riko. At the same time, another school full of thugs temporarily transfers to their own, and soon take over through their own two leaders, giant Shigehiro Otake and knife wielding Eiji Yanagi, who even force the other tough guys of their new school to buy relief papers from them, if they want to avoid getting beaten. Satoru, a weak student who has no clue about the methods of the thugs, finds himself in the middle of the violence, while his cousin, gorgeous, bokken-wielding Ryoko, is set on protecting him against even the toughest guys, while also drawing other kind of feelings from them due to her beauty. Inevitably, as the antagonism gets more and more intense, a showdown is inevitable.

The absurdity that usually dominates the adaptations of action comedy manga, could not be missing from here, essentially being one of the two main ingredients of the narrative. Starting with the absurd hair, the ridiculously extravagant grimaces, and the overall attitude of most of the cast, it becomes obvious that Fukuda has fully captured the aesthetics of the original, with the slapstick/filled-with-gags humor being the rule here.

The second element, and the one that makes the movie stand out is the action and the violence in general, with Fukuda coming up with a style that is much reminiscent of Miike’s “Crows Zero” (the second movie even more). The way the clash between the school gangs unfolds, with the eventual participation of former students of Takashi and Shinji’s school adds even more to this sense, as much as the coming together of different, former enemies, in order to face the common enemy.

In that regard, the action choreography is impressive, and the fact that, on a number of times, there is a direness involved in the fighting scenes, particularly since the chance of someone dying is present most of the times. The same applies to the editing and the music during those scenes, which accompanies the fighting excellently, adding even more to its appeal. Lastly, that a number of characters involved look rather cool and sinister on a yakuza-level even, intensifies the aforementioned aspects. Particularly the two bad guys, Yuya Yagira as the knife wielding maniac Eiji and Eishin as Shigehiro, embody this sense to the highest degree. Yagira is always great when he is playing the violent villain (as in “Destruction Babies” for example) and the fact becomes quite obvious once more in this case. Maika Yamamoto also embodies this sense, although in a more sexy approach, while Nobuyki Suzuki and Hayato Isomura as the two former students, provide two excellent rivals for the two villains, in the same style.

The cinematography also finds its apogee in those scenes, although in general follows the absurd aesthetics of the title, with sudden zoom-ins and intense angle changes, with the same applying to the editing, which retains a rather fast pace, fitting with the overall aesthetics.

“From Today, It’s My Turn” has some annoying parts, with its slapstick nature essentially being addressed to otakus exclusively, but the “Gang warfare” part is rather intriguing, and allows the film to remain interesting for the majority of its duration, even outside this group.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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