Casshern (film)

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Casshern
Directed byKazuaki Kiriya
Written byKazuaki Kiriya
StarringYusuke Iseya
Kumiko Aso
Toshiaki Karasawa
Mayumi Sada
Jun Kaname
Susumu Terajima
Akira Terao
Tatsuya Mihashi
CinematographyKazuaki Kiriya
Edited byKazuaki Kiriya
Music byShiro Sagisu
Distributed byShochiku
Release dates
April 24, 2004 (Japan)
October 26, 2005 (France)
July 14, 2006 (Italy)
April 25, 2005 (UK)
Running time
136 min.
LanguageJapanese
Budget$6,000,000 US

Casshern (キャシャーン, Kyashān) is a 2004 Japanese tokusatsu superhero film written and directed by Kazuaki Kiriya. It stars Yusuke Iseya as Tetsuya Azuma/Casshern, Kumiko Aso as Luna Kozuki, Toshiaki Karasawa as Burai, Mayumi Sada as Saguree, and Jun Kaname as Barashin.

Overview

The film is based on a 1973 anime television series, Shinzō Ningen Kyashān (translated as "Neo-Human Casshern" and known as just Casshan in the United States) from animation studio Tatsunoko Productions. Along with contemporary films Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Immortel: Ad Vitam, and Sin City, it was among the first feature-length live action films to be shot on a digital backlot, with the actors performing in front of a greenscreen and all but the simplest stage elements added digitally after the fact.

The Japanese release contains a 6.1 channel soundtrack (Dolby Digital 5.1 on the PAL Region 2 release[citation needed]) and English subtitles.

The theme song, "Dareka no Negai ga Kanau Koro", was written and sung by the director's then wife, Japanese pop singer Utada Hikaru.

Casshern debuted on April 24th, premiering in fifth place with a total gross of $1,530,216 U.S.D in 181 theaters. Staying within the top ten for five weeks, the film went on to make under $13 million. The production cost was estimated at $6 million.

In 2004, Go Fish Pictures, the specialty division of DreamWorks, announced they had acquired the rights to Casshern. Although the official U.S. website states it's coming soon to theaters, there has been no official date set since the announcement.

The DVD will receive an official Region 1 Release in October or 2007 and can be seen #REDIRECT [[1]] on Amazon.com.

Tagline: Reincarnated with an invincible body to fight an iron devil. If Casshern does not do it, who will?

Trivia

  • The helmet in the middle of the shelf in the scene shot in Dr Kozuki's lab is a reference to the helmet shown in the original Casshern television show, an integral part of Casshern's armour. Dr Kozuki's designs suggest that Tetsuya's battle suit was supposed to go with the helmet as it was in the anime but it was blown to bits by Saguree before Tetsuya get the chance to wear it. While it is never worn in the film, it is originally found almost constantly in the source material.
  • The bed that Midori remains in for much of the film is also a reference to the original Casshern source material. Tetsuya's mother was originally imprisoned in a robotic swan, which helped him somewhat in his quest to defeat Burai. Notice that the headboard of the bed is a massive metal swan with wings spread and neck craned.
  • Another point of note can be found when Luna enters Burai's locked room near the end of the film, and finds the small plants growing there. In the original story, the Neo-Sapiens (Shinzo Ningen), a race of androids, were built by Dr. Azuma to guard the plant life growing on Earth and defeat the prevailing pollution. However, Burai sees the easiest way to protect plants as annihilating the root of the problem: humanity.
  • The Eurasian Zone 7 Professor who shelters Luna and Tetsuya in the second half of the film owns a large dog, named "Flender", or "Friender". This dog, who plays a cameo role in the film, is named after Casshern's dog "Lucky", who is killed early on in the anime, and later resurrected as his robotic attacking sidekick "Friendar", or "Friender", a dog with a flamethrower in his mouth and with several modes of transformation.
  • Dedicated fans of the anime Bleach may notice some of the same music played throughout the movie (during the fight scene with the 1st Neo-Sapien, for example). This is because composer Shiro Sagisu worked on Bleach and Casshern at the same time.
  • Hisashi and Takuro from the band GLAY appear in a cameo.
  • The robots in Burai's army are designed faithful to the original material.
  • Various characters (Midori, Tetsuya, Luna, and the Neo-Sapiens) in the film wear blue contact lenses to represent blindness, disease, or resurrection from the dead. In an ironic twist, however, it can be interpreted that all of these characters are blind to the suffering they are causing.

Cast

External links

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