Jellyfish Eyes
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Plot
Four cloaked figures conduct an experiment in a laboratory, resulting in the brief appearance of a wispy, monstrous head. They deem the test a failure, in need of more negative energy to succeed. A researcher berates them for carrying out the test without notifying him, and notes that they've set loose a F.R.I.E.N.D., a pink creature who watches the laboratory from afar.
A year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, two evacuees prepare to begin a new life in a rural town. Before long, young Masashi Kusakabe notices strange things in he and his mother's apartment: glimpses of a small figure's shadow and chee-kama (cheese-and-fish-cake stick) wrappers strewn about the floor.
The next day, Masashi returns home from a visit to his new elementary school to find it ransacked. Suddenly, a box of chee-kama launches itself towards him. He pins it to the ground and discovers the pink creature inside, who he names Kurage-bo (Jellyfish Boy). They quickly become friends, playing soccer and practicing martial arts at a shrine. That night, Masashi dreams about eating chee-kama and talking to his dead father, who made the snack as part of his job. They are interrupted by a tsunami shimmering with unnatural colors, a single eye at its center.
On the first day of school, Masashi brings Kurage-bo in his backpack, sneaking him chee-kama when he gets hungry. To his surprise, everyone in his class has a similar companion, who they call F.R.I.E.N.D.s. (Life-Form Resonance Inner Energy Negative Emotion and Disaster Preventions) Small rectangular Devices allow them to summon and control these creatures, who emerge en masse as soon as their teacher turns around to write equations on the board. A frog-like F.R.I.E.N.D., Yupi, menaces Masashi at the whim of its owner, Tatsuya, but Kurage-bo defeats it in a fierce battle.
Staff
Staff role on the left, staff member's name on the right.
- Directed by Takashi Murakami
- Written by Jun Tsugita, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Takashi Murakami (story)
- Executive producing by Takashi Murakami
- Produced by Mana Fukui, Chiaki Kasahara, Yoshihiro Nishimura
- Music by kz, Yoshihiro Ike
- Cinematography by Yasutaka Nagano
- Edited by Yoshihiro Nishimura
- Production design by Nori Fukuda
- Assistant directing by Jun Shiozaki
- Special effects by Kiyotaka Taguchi, Tsuyoshi Kazuno
Cast
Actor's name on the left, character played on the right.
- Takuto Sueoka as Masashi Kusakabe
- Himeka Asami as Saki Amamiya
- Asuka Kurosawa as Shizuko Amamiya
- Kanji Tsuda as Tatsuo Kusakabe
- Mayu Tsuruta as Yasuko Kusakabe
- Takumi Saito as Naoto Kozuka
- Masataka Kubota as Blue Dragon
- Shota Sometani as White Tiger
- Hidemasa Shiozawa as Black Tortoise
- Ami Ikenaga as Vermilion Bird
- Takehiro Otsuki as Tatsuya Kodaira
- Taiki Negishi as Juran Sagara
- Arata Ishikawa as Koh Nakagawa
- Masaya Fukumoto as Manato Hayashi
- Wataru Murakami as Toshida
- Eihi Shiina as Home Room Teacher
- Shoichiro Masumoto as Mr. Sasaki
- Kentaro Shimazu as Vice-principal
- Kentaro Kishi as Ichiro Kodaira
- Umi Yamano as Cultist
- Shin Ikeda as Cultist
- Makishi Suzu as Cultist
- Naoki Haga as Akira Shibata
- Tensei Matsuoka as Ryo Kokubo
- Kakeru Yoshida as Yusuke Kuwano
- Ruka Uchida as Hayato Yokosaka
- Keiya Inada as Shingo Noguchi
- Kazuki Hashimoto as Kazuya Hara
- Ami Fujii as Hisako Sawano
- Miyu Takagi as Kumiko Okada
- Mofuku-chan with Denpa Gumi.inc as Idol Singers
- Akiko Yajima as Kurage-bo (voice)
- Houko Kuwashima as KO2 (voice)
- Flamingo as Performance Group
- Shofukutei Riko as Rakugo Performer
- Arata Yamanaka as Manato's Father
- Ikuko Tsuruoka as Akira's Mother
- Nami Miura as Ryo's Mother
- Mieko Ishikura as Yusuke's Mother
- Masaki Hayashi as Naoto's Body Double
Appearances
Monsters
- Kurage-bo
- Yupi
- Shimon
- Luxor
- KO2
- Oval
- Naoto's Body Double
- Megarocco
- Pyonyon-Pyonyon
- Dozens of other unnamed F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
Weapons, Vehicles, and Races
- Black-Cloaked Four
- Devices
Production
Marketing
Gallery
Soundtrack
Theatrical Releases
- United States - April 8, 2013
- Japan - April 23, 2013
- Spain - October 12, 2013 (Sitges Film Festival)
- Canada - July 20, 2014 (Fantasia International Film Festival)
- Mexico - November 14, 2014 (Morbido Film Fest)
- Argentina - April 18, 2015 (Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema)
- Poland - November 19, 2016 (Five Flavours Film Festival)
U.S. Release
Box Office
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekly&id=jellyfisheyes.htm
Reception
Awards
Video Releases
Toho Blu-ray (2014)
Criterion DVD/Blu-ray (2015)
- Region: 1 (DVD) or A/1 (Blu-ray)
- Discs: 1
- Audio: Japanese (5.1)
- Subtitles: English
- Special Features: Leaflet, Jellyfish Eyes 2 trailer, interview with director Takashi Murakami (23 minutes), Making F.R.I.E.N.D.S. behind-the-scenes featurette (16 minutes), Takashi Murakami: The Art of Film behind-the-scenes featurette (40 minutes)
Sequels
The trailer, available on the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray, indicates that a significant amount of post-production work had been completed by 2015.
Videos
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Trivia
- The title Jellyfish Eyes comes from a misprint in a famous manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge, "Screw Style." It furthers a favorite theme of Murakami's: that "misinterpretation, misunderstanding, produces something new and interesting. As the title for my first film—because I didn’t have any idea what I was making, where it was going—I wanted the title to be something that can be anything."[1] He first used Jellyfish Eyes as the title of a piece in 2002.[2]
External Links
References
This is a list of references for Jellyfish Eyes. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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