Tuesday, January 13th - 12:51 am
Update - Jay Navok

DVD Review Part 1: Sawai Miyuu's "You"

 

Oh no.

For whatever reason, the sales people behind the Sawai Miyuu idol film decided that it was too much for anyone to take for a full hour, and they had to split her "movie" into two parts. We took a look at the first disc in the Sawai Miyuu DVD boxset in early January, and if you missed it, its highly recommended that you read those articles first. Part 1 and Part 2.

This page may take a while to load because of the sheer amount of images involved in the review. Due to the heavy load I've put the pictures on the image server we've been given courtesy of Bill Heineman. Please be sure to visit his site as this would have been impossible to do without his help!

A brief note before we get started. There was some substance to the "Me" DVD in that we actually learned "about herself" at some point in the disc. It was meant to sell her image, and she put an image out there of a young, naive girl with typical girlish aspirations, although she also played sports and did modeling work. These parts were okay, although I was left wondering why I should be interested in a complete stranger's family history, hopes and dreams, etc.

"You" has none of this. As staff member Bruce Clark, who took all the screencaps you see below, put it to me, it's boring. There were only so many times he could watch the thing to take screencaps.

The disc is pretty much a half hour long music video meant to sell her 14 years old body. I'm pointing this out because you're going to be wondering, looking at the screencaps, if I've given you a skewed impression by choosing certain screencaps. So I'm telling you in advance, this is actually what the disc is.

Disc stats:

Region: 0
Release date: 08/21/2002 [She's 14 at the time]
Official length: 30 minutes
Languages: Japanese
Subtitles: None
Creepy level: Off the charts

Like the "Me" DVD, "You" is split into 9 chapters, each of which is only a few minutes long. Unlike the "Me" DVD, "You" uses a gimmick to move from one chapter to another. It starts off before the opening credits:

Yes, the filmmakers, clever rogues that they are, decided that we need to see Sawai Miyu being bored in a hotel room of sorts. I don't know why the hotel room had a box of dominos in it, but I guess it made sense to them. So between every chapter we're going to switch back to this room and see her being bored. Oh, sitting in a hotel room, the model's life is so tough!

When the dominos fall (so sad, after she spent all that time setting them up!) the phone rings. What ever could be the matter?!

We don't get to find out now, because the scene cuts away. The anticipation's going to kill you. (Keep in mind how short this DVD is while reading.)

The actual opening sequence to this disc is a series of odd clips. First she's bowling, and while she has impressive form, that's about all she has. She misses a number of pins. I have no clue why we were watching that.

Next a creepy montage of her with a mirror and playing with the mirror and rubbing it against her face!!!!!!!!!!!

And riding a bicycle while looking at a camera! And sticking her head outside of a car window!

There's lots of smiling and focus on the fact that she's smiling because apparently the fact that she has fairly straight teeth is something that needs to be highlighted over and over. Also this:

After various pointless shots, we're back to bowling- we see her get a gutterball.

It's important to note that there's Engrish background music playing this whole time. You wouldn't believe the Engrish in this song, I wish I had written down what parts of the lyrics I could actually understand.

Let me sum up the rest of the chapter after the gutterball:

more bike riding down a hill and she's jumping
smiling
the bad music plays.

In the notes I took while watching the chapter I have the following written down: "This sucks so badly."

The scene shifts back to dominos (what happened to the phone call?) This 5 second clip consists of her looking bored while she's putting the dominos together again. I figured that, since the filmmakers thought it important to show me this, I would inform you about it. And provide you with a picture so you could sympathize with her boredom plight:

Keeping in the tradition of using their extremely odd English phrases book to find chapter names, chapter two has the well thought out title of "Green Yellow Rendevous" as well as Engrish beatles-type music. (I'd actually be interested in the soundtrack to this disc because the songs are so funny.)

Essentially, she's in some tropical garden wearing pacific island cloths and an oversized bandanna as a dress.

This entire segment is a music video of her walking around the potted plants of some hotel "tropical garden."

I suppose they realized that this might be dull so to spice it up:

THEY SHOW THE OPENING CREDITS TO THE DVD AGAIN.

I would like to meet the person who gave the following drunken presentation at whatever after work bar meeting decided the way this disc would turn out:

"You know, my fellow filmmakers, with chapter two there is a distinct possibility that the person who is watching this work which we are producing may have forgotten the fact that this is Sawai Miyuu's first movie, and in fact may not even realized that he has placed the You disc into his DVD player, despite that he saw the opening credits four minutes prior. Furthermore, we should insert the fact that this is chapter two about thirty seconds after displaying the chapter two title, because it is important that he realize that he is watching chapter two."

To summarize the next half minute:

The scene switches (note that this is the same chapter) to her playing basketball. It doesn't matter why it all of a sudden changed to her playing basketball, just go with the flow.

Is it just me or is that shirt one or two sizes two small for her.

Photos of her in her basketball uniform are interspersed with shots of her dribbling around the court on her own.

The cuts in this scene are kind of awkward, as she gets the ball passed to her but we never see by whom because the camera is always focused on her. So imagine you're watching a basketball game except the camera always switches to the same person, over and over.

Remember how in "Me" I said she wasn't very good at basketball, despite the fact that she's been playing it for so long? Maybe you didn't believe me. But even the filmmakers make fun of her, and write the following text on the screen:

In fairness to Miyuu, the net was probably higher than the 5 feet she's used to.

During her one-on-no-one game she smiles and waves at us on the court.

ALL OF A SUDDEN THIS FLASHES ACROSS THE SCREEN:

What the f@#k?

The rest of the minute or so left in this chapter she's playing with her hair and smiling at the camera.

Just as with chapter one I will summarize the finale of chapter 2 for you:

ass shot
smiles
more smiles
clapping
belly button
running
hip swaying

By the way, worthy of note is the fact that now, eight minutes into this second part of her "movie," she has not spoken a single word. Like I said, its just been bad Engrish music playing the entire time. Oh, occasionally she laughs and giggles. But we never got to hear dem verses she wuz cappin'.

Before we start chapter 3 it is necessary to bring back the gimmick.

A room service guy comes in, speaks French, she responds in Japanese; neither understand the other and the result is it's pretty fake and pretty dumb. She has received a bowl of fruit.

"Mew" Cinema Paradise is the name of this chapter.

She's in a theatre wearing 'theatre black' and she has on lipstick. Miyuu stands around staring at the theatre and looking 'theatre angsty.' HOW COOL SHE IS. If only she had on a black beret and was capping some verses, my life would be complete.

As is to be expected, the bad engrish music is back. This chapter consists of her sitting in a theatre- staring. She looks at the theatre. She walks up and down the aisles. She inspects the chairs. She sits around looking bored. This, my friends, is truly an artistic masterpiece. I feel the art just oozing out of every frame of this screen, there's just so much meaning to it all.

As you can see they tried to make it more interesting by using effects such as "blur."

At one point she stares at the camera. Do you think that by her looking at it, it is as though she is looking at us? HOW CREEPY IS THAT? That blows my mind, man. Whomever thought of doing such a thing for this film was a cinematography genius.

If that's not enough for you, guess what's back? Someone thought that between when it last occurred in chapter 2, and at this point 3-4 minutes later, we might have forgotten what movie we were watching.

And did you know that we were in a theatre because if you didn't the people who are making this film would like to remind you via special effects of a "film camera roll" during further shots of her sitting in the theatre staring at various objects. (Sometimes they're not even new scenes of her staring, its the same few second clip of her staring being repeated.)

Count to twenty while looking at this:

Congratulations, you've just gotten a good feel of what this chapter is like and have wasted nearly half a dollar. Given the cost of the DVD, every second of this video is worth about two cents on the dollar. Comparatively, if you go see a two hour movie in the theatre for $9 you're paying about an eighth of a cent per second. (Credit to Lunar Archivist for doing the math, for numbers scare and confuse me.)

I wish I had more adjectives to describe to you how incredibly amazing, extraordinary, staggeringly mind-blowing, and unbelievably fantastic this sequence is. Here my notes on this chapter: "It's so DUMB."

Hold on, it's make up time! She brushes her nose and people walk in back of her. Some guy comes and does her hair. This is really interesting! I'm glad they showed it!

After the makeup people leave, we see this text appear on the theatre screen: "defense de fumer." Lunar Archivist tells me it means "No smoking" in French.

Thankfully the next piece of text is:

Dat be one phat verse yo.

Cut back to the hotel room- she's on the phone with the bowl of fruit she got from room service and is asking the person on the phone if she can eat it. The plot sure is thickening huh?

Before we know the exciting conclusion to this call there's a quick cut- 

IT'S BATHING SUIT TIME AND CLASSIC MUSIC PLAYS IN THE BACKGROUND! YES HER IN A BATHING SUIT DANCING AND SPLASHING IS REALLY APPROPRIATE FOR BACH'S 4TH SYMPHONY. (Note that I have no clue whether Bach had a 4th symphony or not, but it is some famous piece by some dead composer. Its not the engrish music, though, and that counts for something.)

Ah yes, its the fabled chapter 4, promised to us in chapter 2 as having more... bathing suit? I'm not exactly sure why they said that something would be continued. Maybe the title having a color in it. For chapter 4 is, "Nothing is blue."

The following is going to be important for your understanding of this chapter, so pay close attention. Face, boobs, legs, face.

As long as you understand this, you will get past this chapter fine.

For those who can't read I have provided it in picture form:

Now that we're filled in on the background, what's going on in this chapter? Essentially, she's sitting at a table on the beach, in the Hawaiian clothing we saw in chapter 2 (note that it is not the same outfit as when she's dancing around the ocean to orchestral pieces.) She's just relaxing, stretching, drinking, and eating the bowl of fruit she got. Honestly, that's all she's doing.

In addition she goes fishing. She catches: nothing. But text flashes "You" on her face, and I guess that's progress because it generally means we're halfway through a chapter. It doesn't in this case though.

Fishing of Miyuu is very exciting and in it the following occurs: zoomin of her face smiling, waving, waving more, smiling, and acting surprised. For some reason, this too:

At this point two scenarios cut back and forth- her on a dock and her in the ocean. In one she's in the Hawaiian clothes, in the other her bathing suit. Classical music plays the entire time, and hardly unexpected, "You Chapter; 4" is shown on screen.

Summary of  the rest of the chapter:

running slowly and awkwardly toward the camera in her bathing suit
splashing the camera
ass jiggles (FASCINATING)
more splashing. (I wonder if splash fetishes exist in Japan?)

At this point she loses one of her slippers and throws it toward the director. The director then asks her, "How was it?" She responds, "I'm tired!"

My notes on this chapter consist of the following line: this scene was so devious.

 

That's all for this part of the review. It'll be a few days before we reach the exciting conclusion to the Miyuu movie, as I'm waiting on screencaps, but it should be ready by the end of the week.

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