Results tagged “Macoto Tezka”

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A pedigree goes a long way with me. Black Kiss was written and directed by Macoto Tezka*, none other than the son of Osamu Tezuka himself, but it has as about as much to do with the work of Tezuka père as Tezuka’s work has to do with Masamune Shirow. Kiss seems to me more of the sort of thing Edogawa Rampo might have written, had he lived to the present day and fused his conceits of “erotic grotesque nonsense” with modern serial-killer stories. I admit to being horribly burned out on serial killers — I blame Thomas Harris for starting that whole mess — but Black Kiss brings enough twists to the core idea to remain just this side of interesting.

Black Kiss is set in modern Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, all gutter sleaze and love hotels and trashy dive bars. Life is cheap; sex is even cheaper. Through the neon and glitter strides wide-eyed Asuka Hoshino (Reika Hashimoto), a girl with ambitions of becoming a model. She’s pretty and photogenic, but gutless: the other models treat her like dirt, and she acts as though some part of her believes she deserves it. Without a place to stay, she manages to couch-crash at the apartment of Kasumi Kuroki (Kaori Kawamura) — the sullen, tattooed, half-American down-and-outer who works in a neighborhood junk shop, lives with her pet turtle in an apartment filled with clutter she probably filched from work, and doesn’t seem to think much of Asuka and her clean-scrubbed ways. (Give her time.)