Dai-Nihonjin

Plot synopsis:
Who knew, that being a modern Japanese superhero was this hard? It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it. In a way being extraordinarily gifted in one sense, leaves the hero extraordinarily burdened by the "thousand cuts" of postmodern Japan.Big Man (Sato) must be on-call 24/7 to the decrepit ministry of monster prevention, a sub division of the defence ministry, who arrange for him to physically transform into gigantic proportions when needed. This has taken it's toll on his mental balance. He is not paid anywhere near what he feels would be just compensation for this government job. Sadly forsaken by the Japanese public, deeply estranged from his own wife and daughter, he is reduced to earning extra pay by offering advertising "spots" on his body during his bouts with the monsters. However his ennui and frustrations with his station in life leave him constantly arguing with his talent agent, as the "ratings" of his monster bouts dip on T.V. Sato, also has aspirations of being financially successful enough to provide personal care for his aging and senile grandfather, who was also quite the monster slayer in his time, and from whom Sato's father and himself have inherited the ability to physically transform. The story is told from the perspective of a biographical documentary-in-the-making about his life, for Japanese TV.In his career, Sato succesfully dispatches the tossing monster, one-legged leaping monster, and the evil-eye monster, but accidentally kills a rather harmless monster baby provoking a mass outcry against his cruelty. Each monster encounter is carried in a separate episode live on TV as part of a reality show. Also he proves incapable of getting rid of the stink monster who actually mates with another monster on his live telecast bout, upsetting public morals of decency. To make matters worse, his senile father, bulks up one day and busts out of the senior care hospice where he lives, in order to have a fun, solo "night on the town (Tokyo)", reliving his glory days, but disrupting the busy city's efficient civilian life. This entails more bad press for Sato, portraying "his kind" in mock hues, and making it even more difficult to sell his TV show and body advertising.During one of the encounters, a "foreign" gangster type monster actually overcomes Sato, breaking his nose, while stomping on him, and scaring Sato enough to run away from the battle. His reputation is now vulnerable. This professional challenge in addition to his other personal problems proves most burdensome until he meets "Justice" Family, who turn up like guardian angels to kick the heck out of the foreign red monster.

Tags: bleak, boring, satire

Review:
but what's odd is he has the power to grow to the size of a building and fight monsters ("baddies").The comedy during the interviews and daily life of Dai is very subtle.
The monster scenes are hilarious, and the last 10 minutes made me laugh so hard.If you are very open minded with comedy, this is for you, but don't expect a typical giant monster movie..
BIG MAN JAPAN is a very clever spoof on 'The Super Hero Genre'.
Although a comedy, BIG MAN JAPAN, is not as funny as it is poignant, and this fact makes it a cut above..
The camera's focal point is Masaru, a soft spoken middle-aged loser with a going-nowhere life and zero self confidence, who nonchalantly moonlights as the fifteen-story tall, nearly naked hero "Big Japanese Man." Despite saving the city from a series of rampaging monsters, public interest in his work is waning and he's beginning to find it difficult to make ends meet.
That tension makes for a glorious release when classic Matsumoto moments do appear, such as standing in front of giant purple underpants, or the edit to his pixel-ated daughter in a bunny hat declaiming her indifference to her father, in contrast to the sentimental speech on her he has just given.Many Japanese geinojin seem fettered by the jimusho system that controls their creative output, and you feel sympathy for the truly talented ones who seem capable of so much more than the usual prime-time foolishness (Takuya Kimura, take note).
This is such a bizarre absurdly funny movie especially the last 30 minutes of the film...I think I was in the minority of the movie viewers since most of the people there were of Japanese or Chinese decent..
Both movies share some superficial similarities, but at the same time they couldn't be any more different.It must be said that the Kaiju (big monster) genre in Japan never really lost its popularity.
When we finally see his cute little 8-year old daughter with a distorted voice and a mosaic in front of her face, the film had completely won me over.The fight sequences are incredibly silly but amazingly funny.
It's just plain weird to see a big guy arguing with a farting squid/flower monster because he's apparently blocking the traffic.Visually, the film does what it needs to do.
Every monster is memorable, and while the technical side of things might not be perfect, it gives the film a distinct look that will defend it from bad aging and will keep the scenes attractive in years to come.
it really does a good job of making fun of monster movies, especially the last 10 or so minutes.
Hitoshi Matsumoto's wonderfully deadpan "Big Man Japan" ("Dai-Nihonjin) is a brilliantly hilarious send up of Japan's giant monster movies of yesteryear.
A postmodernist at heart, Matsumoto flips the genre conventions, grounding the beautifully weird world of "Big Man Japan" in reality through a dry mocumentary style that mixes interviews, archival footage and computer animated fight scenes with a razor's wit.Masaru Daisato is the latest in a long legacy of men who grow to mammoth proportions when juiced with electricity.
But when strange monsters attack (and believe me they are strange), Masaru is hooked up to a power plant and juiced with enough electricity to grow into a purple underweared giant.Not that any of this endears Masaru to the citizens of Japan.
Masaru is an outsider in a country of insiders, a colorful anachronism in increasingly bland times.Perspective is a central theme in "Big Man Japan"'s giant monster weirdness.
When not attacking giant monsters with a large pipe, Masaru sits in his graffiti-covered home eating dehydrated seaweed ("It only grows big when you need it.") while neighbors throw bricks through his windows.
Forced to live among the very people he fights to protect, Masaru became the biggest oddity in a hegemonic society based on Confucian values.The world of "Big Man Japan" is one of dashed hopes and squandered potential, a world where Masaru's senile grandfather, made so by repeated exposure to high levels of electricity, zaps himself giant and wanders through the city.
Masaru dispatches the beasts by clubbing them once in the head, not through a long drawn out fight, and their souls ascend to heaven in a campy 8-bit video game fashion.And by the end, when Matsumoto drops the mocumentary cameras and the computer animation for a ridiculous symbolism-heavy homage to cheesy rubber suits and miniature sets fare like "Ultraman" it hardly makes sense but is hilarious nonetheless.
Big Man Japan tells the tale of Masaru Daisato also known as Big Man Japan, the giant 30 foot tall super hero that defends Japan from invading monsters..
Big Man Japan is one of the weirder films I've seen from Japan and anyone who's passingly familiar with Japanese cinema knows what a statement that is.
Starring, written by, directed by and produced by one man comedy auteur Hitoshi Matusmoto, Big Man Japan tells the tale of Masaru Daisato also known as Big Man Japan, the giant 30 foot tall super hero that defends Japan from invading monsters in a similar vein to Ultraman and other Kaiju films.The twist being that everything in Masaru's life, including his monster fighting, absolutely sucks and the people of Japan hate him and think he's terrible at his job.That's a brilliant high concept but it's not really the film that Big Man Japan gives us, and partly that's why the film is so odd.
It's actively boring at times but it seems to be intentional because the central gag is presenting the absurd and surreal monster battles in as deadpan and ordinary a way as the mundane aspects of Masaru's life.
Tolerance for this level of deadpan is likely to be low though so it's certainly not a film with wide appeal.People have moaned about the special effects for this feature but frankly on the budget this film had, and especially considering they're using motion capture technology I think they look great and even add to the humour since, again they mix the oddball and the deadpan.
Being able to see the actor's facial expressions is much more important than a good looking suit or smooth CGI when you're doing this kind of subtle comedy.One final note, the last ten minutes of this film are absolutely hysterical.
Having built up the threat of this unknown red monster with Masaru running away from it and finally having to face it again at the end we're all primed for a typical redemption story where Masaru overcomes his own incompetence and beats the big bad.
I love monster movies and while the idea that a man turns into a giant to protect Tokyo from the various monsters that attack.
Megalon) crossed with Apache Chief (Super Friends), seems like perfect Anime material.Big Man Japan is a live action mockumentary however.
(Ooh a giant hairy scrotum with an extended eyeball.) But at least the monster bits were trying to be funny and in their own way were well done, which is more than can be said for the rest of the film..
A dull guy gets zapped with electricity to turn him into a giant so that he can battle monster that attack Japan, there's a good idea for a film if ever I've heard one.
There's some funny bits at the start as we learn that the general public don't think a lot of him but from then on the film just disappoints again and again.I can take the poor CGI but it does look absolutely rubbish.
The monsters are supposed to be hilarious but just aren't funny at all and the whole theme of him being a bit of a loser wears thin quickly.When I read the gushing reviews for this film I really loved the concept and it sounded like something I'd really enjoy, unfortunately a lot of it is just plain boring and the wry dry humour is stretched well beyond the material.
It should be a great surreal comedy flick.Actually, Itao appearing few minutes as smelly monster in this film.
Only in Japan......Would something as obscure and crazy like this see the light of day!"Big Man Japan" ("Dai-Nihonjin") is about a rather plain middle-aged man named Masaru Daisatô (played by Hitoshi Matsumoto) who is capable of turning into a giant in order to fight the monsters that threaten Japan.
Some very bizarre creations here that you are guaranteed not to see anywhere else."Big Man Japan" has some good enough effects, although the CGI could be spotted a mile away.
And just when you thought you had seen it all...The good thing about "Big Man Japan" is that it is a spoof on the monster genre that has been making its way out of Japan.
And not taking itself serious, in the regards as monster sightings have been less and less in recent years, as they said in the movie.I didn't really enjoy "Big Man Japan" and found it to be somewhat of a struggle to get through.
The small thin man, then is taken where cameras can't follow, and then there's a power surge.Next thing you know the man is now a 50 foot tall CGI generated giant fighting the first in a series of bizarre looking monsters, whose soul interest is to destroy buildings.
In these giant sequences the film becomes what looks like a TV show instead of a documentary.
Sato, our hero, is the last of Japan's Big-Men, seemingly normal humans, breed to do battle with the giant monsters that appear in Japan periodically, by transforming into giants themselves after high voltage electro shock to the nipples.
The same way Kafka's metamorphosis, makes Gregor Sama's inner life manifest turning him into a insect, a pest in the lives of others, so does Sato's Big Man, and the monsters he faces serve as distortions of himself.
Films like "Jean Claude Van Damage", "They Call Me Bruce", and "ZebraMan"(another Japanese film about a faded super-hero in the modern world) and to a lesser extent "The Watchmen" deal with fallen heroes, myths descended into the grim and grit of modern life and humor, and "Big Man Japan" follows suit, but manages to balance it's self-deprecating realism with the wide eyed absurdity that made such heroes so interesting in the first place.It's largely a parody of "Ultraman" a Japanese super-hero franchise, later imitated in North America by the Power Rangers in 90's, and also there's some gentle fun poked at the loss of traditional culture (the sacred growth ceremony once attended by geisha's and crowds is now performed like an old habit, by Sato and a priest in a storage room), the non conflict oriented post-war Japanese(Sato tries to talk to the stink monster into just leaving the town instead of fighting it), and the flip side of such passive aggression, the obsession with violence (best illustrated in the final scene's surreal dues ex machina, which make the super-hero team up, look like a gang of bullies, degrading and humiliating their chosen "bad guy" target).In some patches it does become more dead than just dead pan, and the jokes fall flat, but the more quiet moments make the clever ones, all the brighter.
Hard to watch without you brain getting serious damage!Beginning was quite OK, but as the story moved more forward, it got just worse.Must admit the plot was original compared to Western production, but not at all compared to Japanese movies.As a fan of Japan movies, I'd expected much more from it.The final ending was totally bullshit and awful.
This is surely the case and I'd like to submit this review to spare some time for people who enjoy good movies.
Being a fan of director/star Hitoshi Matsumoto's Symbol (2009) didn't truly prepare me for Big Man Japan.
Watching any of his films is sure to give any casual viewer a case of cultural whiplash yet Big Man Japan is an entirely different beast.
Yet visually Big Man Japan is so f***ing bizarre; uncomfortably mixing the monster destroys tiny models, Power Rangers (1993-1996) aesthetic, while using computer generated kaijus that can only be described as Giger- esque.Matsumoto plays Masaru Daisato, a lonely Japanese man in his early forties living in a decrepit house in Tokyo.
As it stands, they're just kind of dull.Big Man Japan has all the makings of a cult film.
Big Man Japan stars its writer and director Hitoshi Matsumoto, but this is not a self- indulgent vanity project.
It's an excellent film that deserves your attention.(By the way, the plot revolves around a man who turns into a 100-foot giant, and whom the Japanese government deploys to defend the country against attacks from monsters.
it is a documentary-style story about an average , hard working, middle aged, divorced man, a father and ex-husband, who struggles for life every day, he is all alone and nobody respects his efforts for the nation, the country and his family.the only person who cares about him is his agent, an ambitious young woman, but she wants nothing but to make money of him.it was touching and sad.
the film has extremely strange and funny parts, in which the main character fights against traditional Japanese monsters.the director-writer has very good humor!the ending is very good, too.
I've never heard about the director(who plays the main character), but he is very creative and original, and has good acting skills.the style is may be strange for europeans or Americans but may not for Japanese people..
Big Man Japan is a film unlike no other.
At first it was refreshing and awesome, but then, all of a sudden, it got slightly boring and just too weird.Like I said, the best part of the movie is the fight scene with the Stink Monster and the bizarre ending which has a subtle, but important message within it.
Someone at the beginning of the movie, I'm not sure who, some Film Festival guy said "this man is the Howard Stern of Japan".
There is considerable novelty in this film, ranging from its pseudo-documentary (I guess they call it mockumentary) style of narrative with its low-key humour to its over-the-top Godzilla-style action sequences with CGI-animated pseudo-superheros and monsters - all of which contributes to this film being beyond bizarre.Without a semblance of character development or plot suspense, Dai Nipponjin (which translates "(The) Big Japanese") meanders from one event to another, tracing the goings-on of an unwitting superhero who has inherited from his parents and grandparents the unrewarding role as a saviour of Japan and Tokyo from various roaming "baddies" (rendered in blocky but pretty CGI).
Dai Nipponjin, as the "Big Japanese", stands for nationalism, TV-entertainment and commodity culture all rolled into one package.From an entertainment stand-point, the film is a mixed bag.
He periodically transforms into a giant (about 30m tall) and defends Japan by battling similarly sized monsters that turn up and destroy buildings.
Hitoshi Matsumoto (writer, director, and star of this film) is one of the countless legions of TV personalities who are extremely well known to most Japanese people.
The concept is genius; the film takes the form of a mockumentary about a Japanese superhero, Big Man Japan (Hitoshi Matsumoto), an ordinary man who can transform, via a massive electrical shock, into a hundred-foot tall warrior.
But the tone of the documentary is what really makes the film; it's exceptionally dry and somewhat dull, like following an average man of little financial means would be.
Big Man leads a wholly uninteresting life, until called upon to defend Japan from a marauding giant monster; then he rushes to the nearest electrical station to do his thing and fight whatever freakish thing is attacking (usually the other monsters are grotesque and stupid, more comic than scary).
It's a spoof of the giant monster genre in Japan, but it's also a very clever social satire as well, because most people hate Big Man; they graffiti the walls outside his house and leave angry messages on placards on the road to the electrical station (once or twice sitting around his house just talking for the documentary, windows behind Big Man break as people throw bricks through them).
Big Man's wife – no longer living with him – is somewhat ashamed of him, and insists that their daughter's face be pixelated on film.
The film is absurd in all the right ways, and is far, far better than any of the 'straight' superhero movies you'll see any time soon..
This idea of a mockumentary about a giant Japanese super-hero who fights giant monsters sounds like a sure-fire winner.
Hitoshi Matsumoto (who also directed the film) plays a depressed and totally uninteresting hero who fights mostly dumb and uninteresting monsters.
It's every bit as strange as "Big Man Japan" but consistently funny throughout.
Hey, come over to ma crib and we get high, watch some TV." Big Man seems all about popular opinion in Japan media.
Oh, yeah: let's all clasp our hands and bow our heads and thank Japan for movies like BIG MAN JAPAN.
BIG MAN JAPAN takes me back to them good ol' days, when movies was just plain fun.
"Documentary" about a man who can grow to gigantic proportions when ever Japan is attacked by giant monsters.
We watch as he tries to get along in his normal human form, where he is a poor schlub struggling to earn a living, dealing with a divorce and an kid he never sees and the public who love and hate him and the destruction he causes.Dry and witty comedy turns the idea of giant superheroes (even media created heroes) and monsters (ala Ultraman and Godzilla) on their head.
Its almost too much of a good thing and by the time you get to the end the film has close to warn out its welcome.Still in the right frame of mind this is both a hoot and a half and very clever pondering on things giant.Worth a look for those who like clever comedy and giant monsters.