By Mark Schilling
Japanese summer films often target the same teen-and-under audience as the Hollywood competition -- and often hold their own quite well. For years the king of the summer box office in Japan has been , not George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, but Hayao Miyazaki. This summer, Miyazaki will be absent, but several local films aim to fill the gap. One is Shining Boy and Little Randy, a vehicle for rising teen star Yuya Yagira (Nobody Knows) as a Japanese boy who becomes an elephant trainer in Thailand. Fuji TV's Chihiro Kameyama (Bayside Shakedown 1 and 2) is executive producing and Toho is distributing -- a combination that nearly always spells box office gold.
Meanwhile, Shochiku hopes to hit the summer jackpot with Junji Sakamoto's Aimless Aegis, among the most highly hyped of the current spate of Japanese war movies. Based on a novel by Harutoshi Fukui (who also wrote the book for the hit submarine thriller Lorelei) a crew captures its own ship -- a Marine Self-Defense Forces escort -- to battle North Korean terrorists threatening Tokyo. One film, in other words, that Hollywood probably has no precise comeback for, unless it plans to update Mutiny on the Bounty, with Osama Bin Laden standing in for Captain Bligh.
In August Shochiku will also release Takashi Miike's The Great Goblin War, a fantasy about a boy's adventures among goblins -- the Japanese, not the Halloween, variety. In other words, Harry Potter meets Miyazaki's Spirited Away. A combination that, in Japan at least, ought to make even George Lucas run a bit scared.
