This week, at my anime club, we watched a live action movie, about which the club put a warning on the fan page. They warned us about it at the previous meeting, and finally, the club leaders were warning people at the door.
“Do you know what this movie is about?” they asked, again and again.
Fair warning is fine–and the anime was quite something. There was partial nudity, inappropriate use of underwear, a lot of questionable humor. It’s not for everyone. But shouldn’t people give things a chance?
What do you think? Do you try things you might like or might offend you? Or do you stay away?
Me, I like to try. You never know unless you do, right? Sometimes I’m sitting in silence during a comedy routine that just doesn’t speak to me, but other times I get to laugh. And laughter is a great thing, in the end.
So I tried the movie, and yes, it was terrible. (Some of it is the differences in cultural senses of humor, I think, which is why some people don’t like anime. And that’s fine, because no one has to like anything.) But if you don’t take the movie too seriously, it was also terribly funny.
The kind of thing that you probably shouldn’t be laughing at, perhaps, but still hilarious. The whole theater was laughing, and if anyone was offended, they kept it to themselves. All the shouting at the screen was the usual jokes.
There’s a lot of stories out there. Some weirder than others. Image from WikiMedia by Klibbnisse.
(The movie was Hentai Kamen, by the way. DO NOT click on the link at someplace like your job. Google it at your own risk.)
caitlinsternwrites 
I’m all for trying new things … within reason. For example, I am very well aware that I dislike Western movies. As in, cowboys and the old west. I don’t know why, I just do. Always have. So if someone suggest a cowboy movie night and says “come on, try something new!”, I’ll politely decline. As long as I find the subject matter interesting, though, I’m down!
You’ve already tried the Westerns, so it isn’t something new. Now, some kind of Western-fusion thing, perhaps…
You laugh, but I once watched a Japanese Spaghetti Western and it was ten kinds of phenomenal. Probably because it was totally ridiculous. I do enjoy ridiculous movies.
Ridiculous is awesome. I’m not too fond of Westerns, either, but I loved Firefly, which is a great space Western.
Yeah, I watched Hentai Kamen. But then, I am from Singapore and that kind of humor doesn’t really offend us.
Underwear jokes are actually rather common in anime/manga. When I was in secondary school, my classmates and I were reading Ranma 1/2 and there were plenty of underwear jokes going on. One of the super strong kung fu master was a thief who went around stealing underwear if I remember correctly.
Then there was City Hunter and a few other titles which I can’t recall at this time.
Anyway, what I am trying to say is, a whole generation of Asian youths grew up reading manga and watching anime. So by the time Hentai Kamen came out, we were pretty desensitized already. 🙂
I can’t speak for how much anime or what kind everyone there had watched–I know stuff shown on tv tends to be censored–but I felt that a lot of the humor went for shock value.
So, was HK funny to you?
Yeah it was funny. But I just laughed once and that’s that. I am not watching HK again, because there isn’t really a plot to it. Just one funny scene after another.
I don’t think I will watch it again either, for the same reasons.