ANDROMEDIA

Directed by Takashi Miike
Produced by Kazuya Hamana, Takashi Hisano, Makoto Nakanishi & Toshiaki Nakazawa
Written by Kurio Kisaragi
Based on a novel by Kozy Watanabe
Cinematography by Hideo Yamamoto
Cast: Hiroko Shimabukuro, Eriko Imai, Tsunehiko Watase, Naoto Takenaka, Takako Uehara, Hitoe Arakaki, Christopher Doyle, Tomorowo Taguchi & Kippei Shiina

1998/109 mins/Color/2.0 Dolby Surround
1.85:1 anamorphic/Japanese/Japan/NTSC Region 1

Review from the Pathfinder Entertainment DVD

Mai (Hiroko Shimabukuro) and her friends are about to start their first day at a new school. She encounters Yu who she knewn since childhood and always had a crush on. Like they did when they were kids, they spend the day by a cherry tree which brings back a lot of memories. They decide to meet again but that night she is killed in a tragic traffic accident.

Mai's father is a scientist researching artificial intelligence. He found a way to record the memory of a person and bring them back to life through computers. Its only a matter of time before he brings back Mai but an American company call Digital Ware want the software and will do anything to get it. Just before being brutally murdered, Mai's father send the digital version of his girl in the laptop of Yu... the chase begins.

With ANDROMEDIA, Takashi Miike made his more commercial film yet. This sci-fi, teen love drama was a movie vehicule for two pop bands, the all girl quartet known as Speed and their boy equivalent Da Pump. The movie is basically structured like any teen movie. The thing we can clearly see is that lots of money went into ANDROMEDIA. Sure the fx ranges from either very good to awful but that was without a doubt the biggest budget Miike ever got for a movie. Some elements of ANDROMEDIA reminded me of the strange and wicked anime called LAIN but a lighter version of the serie. Unfortunately the movie features an awful dance number which almost had me stop the whole thing. Not a bad movie but surely not your typical Miike madness, get it to complete your collection.

Pathfinder Entertainment's presentation of ANDROMEDIA is quite nice. The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and it is enhanced for 16x9 television. The colors are nicely saturated and rich but there's a little grain through the movie in darker scenes but nothing alarming. The 2.0 Dolby Surround Japanese track is clear and crisp but nothing spectacular. There's optional and easy to read English subtitles. We get a few extras like a film essay by Miike's specialist Tom Mes, a rather weird trailer, bios, gallery of screen grabs from the movie and trailers for GOZU, YAKUZA DEMON, MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE, JU-REI and THE MONSTER CLUB. The film is separated in 18 chapters, comes in a keep case with no booklet or inlay card and features static menus.

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Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2004. ©

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