Year:
2003
Length: 97min
Role: Jubeh
Director:
Yudai Yamaguchi
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Average:
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Battlefield
Baseball
First Impressions
I had no idea this
movie existed. I was still working at Hollywood Video at the
time and, while putting away movies, I spotted the box from ten
feet away and somehow instantly recognized Tak on the cover. How
I recognized him is still a mystery to me. He is standing here
with his back turned and only part of his profile visible. I
guess it must have been obsessive intuition. Either that or the
fact that his pose is identical
to the pose on the cover of Versus. Anyway, I was very excited
to find another movie with Tak. A movie that stated on its cover
"This film has not been rated. Contains scenes of baseball
carnage, blue faced zombies, and musical numbers. Viewer
discretion is advised" had to be good, right?? Well, I
watched it, and was severely weirded out. Perhaps I was not in
the mood for the kind of over the top silliness the movie
consisted of. Scary looking women, people dying and resurrecting
for no apparent reason, characters changing actors in mid movie,
pointless special attacks, a random rubber dummy for a zombie...
I had no idea what to make of it, no idea at all. My painfully
rational mind was sorely traumatized and repressed the whole
experience from my memory.
Return to Battlefield
Baseball
Three years later,
after watching Death Trance, I decided to go ahead and just buy
Battlefield Baseball because it was the only movie besides Death
Trance and Versus where Tak was the main character. I hoped that
after being more exposed to Japanese movies, I would now be more
prepared to handle it. I also reminded myself that this was
based on a manga, and though actual humans acting in manga ways
seems bizarre, if I looked at it from a manga context it would
be completely normal. This new attitude worked wonders, and I
found myself enjoying the movie better and better every time I
watched it. The jokes were genuinely funny, the silliness made
perfect sense... it was still one hell of an acid trip, but a
very enjoyable one! It
was directed by Yudai
Yamaguchi, the assistant director of
Versus.
Him and Tak are good friends, but I think he's kind of a bad influence on Tak. The making of has Tak teaming up with him to playfully
bully a zombie cast member about his lines. Amusing to watch,
not sure if it was staged, though. There's several things in the
featurette that I write off as either staged or inside jokes.
Because, damnit, Tak is sweet, innocent, and shy and I'm
sticking to that! He can put up an attitude when needed, though. To
prepare for the role of Jubeh, Tak trained in the mountains...
or not. During
the filming of this movie, Tak had a tendency to say
completely random things... all the time... to be funny, I
guess. It certainly was fun but confusing as hell. It's thanks
to the audio commentary that some people cite Tak as being
Christian. He did indeed say "I'm Christian," but
given the context, tone, and the fact that he could say "Me
and Sakaki (arch nemesis) were lovers in Versus" in the
next breath, it's really hard to tell. The extras do show him
volunteering to play Santa Claus for a church, but you don't
have to be Christian to do that either. I guess it's in the
spirit of the movie to be outlandish in the extras, such as
saying with a straight face that he never uses a stuntman when
there was a stuntman sitting right next to him. Odd movie. Very
odd extras. Gotta love it. Tak
doesn't use stuntmen for any fight scenes or anything truly
dangerous, though. His flashy Super Tornado special attack, for
example, was probably the most dangerous stunt in the movie. In
order to create the right amount of wind for the scene, they hovered
a helicopter a few feet over his head! I guess they
couldn't afford a fan or maybe it just seemed like the best idea
at the time. O.o;; But the funny part is... after demonstrating
the awesome might of Super Tornado, he never uses it again. Ok,
he throws it once in the general direction of the zombies to
initiate a fight, but he never actually uses it in a dramatic
scene against a head villain.
It is noteworthy to
mention that Hideo
Sakaki (Tak's epic rival in Versus) plays the bandaged
zombie Hoichi here, and that Yukihito
Tanikado ("FBI-trained" cop from Versus) plays the
Gedo zombies' coach.
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