Densha Otoko (film)
Encyclopedia
is a 2005 Japanese film, starring Takayuki Yamada
and Miki Nakatani. It is part of the Densha Otoko
franchise. The film was a big success at the box office, making the story of Densha Otoko popular. It was directed by Shosuke Murakami. The screenplay was written by Arisa Kaneko, and was based on the original book by Hitori Nakano.
, with the lead protagonist saving a young woman from a drunk on the train. The young woman sends him a set of Hermès
tea cups as a thank you.
Atsushi Itō
and Misaki Ito
who respectively played Densha Otoko and Hermes in the television series have a cameo appearance
after the end credits in the movie. Incidentally, Yamada also appears in a brief cameo in the first episode of the TV series. Miho Shiraishi
who had a brief minor role in the movie also appears in the TV series as a different character.
, through its Viz Pictures arm, gave the film a limited release in the United States
on September 22, 2006, and the DVD
was released on February 6, 2007. An accompanying manga series followed.
In the United States, the film premiered at the Imaginasian Theater in New York City, New York on September 22, 2006. It was also screened in Portland, Oregon
, Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington
.
3,532,525,613 as of January 2006. It grossed over $35 million since its release. Metacritic
gave Densha Otoko an aggregated score of 60%. Pop Culture Shock's Erin Finnegan comments on the Densha Otoko movie about its ASCII art, which made the "strange transition from computer monitor to silver screen". She continues, "you might be familiar with emoticon
s in English internet-speak, but the Japanese use totally different emoticons. Thankfully, these symbols are clarified in the film. The bowing man art is usefully overlaid with an image of Densha Otoko bowing." Manga Life's Michael Aronson criticises the film, saying, "It’s understood that he lacks all social grace when he trips and falls in the train in the beginning, but he does so over and over throughout the film. Furthermore, the length could easily be cut by twenty minutes if Train Man could keep from stammering all the time and actually spit out a word or two. His inadequacies translate into a crippling experience for the audience who just wants to see him get the girl and call it a day. Lastly, the characterization of the girl is so bare-bones that it’s bewildering why she would be attracted to him at all." San Francisco Chronicle
's G. Allen Johnson comments that Train Man "fable ups the ante on depicting modern communication". He also comments on the chat-room messages, saying "chat-room messages are texted right onto the screen, sometimes narrated in voiceover, with such frequency that a real person saying something in his real voice to another real person can be startling". The New York Times
' Jeannette Catsoulis comments on Train Man: Densha Otoko, saying, "though its appeal may be limited to the socially awkward, the movie is unusually perceptive about the attractions of online communities while gently insisting on the superiority of flesh over fantasy. “Train Man” wants us to get off our computers and get out of the house; in a country as technocentric as Japan, the suggestion that it may be time to replace the cyber with the real is not just subversive, it’s downright revolutionary." The Village Voice
's Drew Tillman criticises the film for its "annoying split screens" when "[Train Man] turns to his chat room buddies for advice on how to win [Hermess] over". TV Guide
's Maitland McDonagh criticises the film for its ending that "drags on, and the fantasy sequences are bluntly obvious (though Train Man's nightmare vision of meeting Hermes' parents is pretty funny)". However, she commends the fairy-tale romance [that] is grounded in authentic detail.
Takayuki Yamada
is a Japanese actor and singer. He has two elder sisters and one son. At age 15, he was discovered by talent agency and made his debut in his acting career in the TV drama Psychometrer Eiji 2 in 1999....
and Miki Nakatani. It is part of the Densha Otoko
Densha Otoko
is a Japanese movie, television series, manga, novel, and other media, all based on the purportedly true story of a 23-year-old otaku who intervened when a drunk man started to harass several women on a train...
franchise. The film was a big success at the box office, making the story of Densha Otoko popular. It was directed by Shosuke Murakami. The screenplay was written by Arisa Kaneko, and was based on the original book by Hitori Nakano.
Plot
The film follows the basic sequence of the dramaDensha Otoko (drama)
is a Japanese television drama that aired on Fuji Television. It is based on the Densha Otoko story, which has also been portrayed in other media.The drama's 11 episodes were aired on Fuji TV from July 7 to September 22, 2005 . A two hour long TV special, Densha Otoko Deluxe, aired on September 23,...
, with the lead protagonist saving a young woman from a drunk on the train. The young woman sends him a set of Hermès
Hermès
Hermès International S.A., or simply Hermès is a French high fashion house established in 1837, today specializing in leather, lifestyle accessories, perfumery, luxury goods, and ready-to-wear...
tea cups as a thank you.
Filming
The film was filmed in only 25 days and released in 35 days.Atsushi Itō
Atsushi Ito
is a Japanese actor, He started acting at the age of three in education programs. He is currently studying at Hosei University Business Faculty. He is frequently cast as geeky or otaku characters...
and Misaki Ito
Misaki Ito
is a Japanese actress and model. Her real name is .-Career:In 1999, Ito became the Asahi Beer "image girl" and a model under an exclusive contract to CanCam magazine...
who respectively played Densha Otoko and Hermes in the television series have a cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
after the end credits in the movie. Incidentally, Yamada also appears in a brief cameo in the first episode of the TV series. Miho Shiraishi
Miho Shiraishi
is a Japanese actress from Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan.-Filmography:* Shiroi Fune * Swing Girls as Yayoi Itami* Densha Otoko cameo* The Harimaya Bridge as Kayo Takeuchi-TV dramas:...
who had a brief minor role in the movie also appears in the TV series as a different character.
Cast and roles
- Takayuki YamadaTakayuki Yamadais a Japanese actor and singer. He has two elder sisters and one son. At age 15, he was discovered by talent agency and made his debut in his acting career in the TV drama Psychometrer Eiji 2 in 1999....
- Train_Man/Densha Otoko - Miki Nakatani - Hermes
- EitaEitais a Japanese actor from Tokyo, Japan. His birth name is . He has appeared in many Japanese television dramas and movies; most notable is the TV series Water Boys...
- Hirofumi (hikikomoriHikikomoriis a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive people who have chosen to withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement because of various personal and social factors in their lives...
) - Tae Kimura - Michiko (housewife)
- Ryoko KuninakaRyoko Kuninakais an Okinawan actress and singer. She hails from Naha City in Okinawa, Japan and currently works for Vision Factory.-Biography:Ryoko Kuninaka was working part-time at a Zenzai store when she was discovered by a talent scout. In 1998, she entered the "Idol High School" for aspiring female...
- Rika (nurse) - Kuranosuke Sasaki - Hisashi (business man)
- Yoshinori OkadaYoshinori Okadais a Japanese actor. He has starred several TV series such as Atsuhime and Nobuta. O Produce as well as movies such as Densha otoko . He is a high school graduate and does not have a college degree...
- Yoshiga (geek 1) - Hiroki Miyake - Tamura (geek 2)
- Makoto Sakamoto - Muto (geek 3)
- Naomi NishidaNaomi Nishidais an actress. She won the Best Supporting Actress award at the 2001 Yokohama Film Festival and at the 25th Hochi Film Award for her performance in Nabbie's Love.She married a Japanese shoe designer in 2005, and gave birth a girl on April 7, 2008...
- Hermes' friend - Momoko Shimizu - schoolgirl
- Ren OsugiRen Osugi, born , is a Japanese actor. For his work in Cure, Hana-bi and other films, Osugi was given the Best Supporting Actor award at the 1999 Yokohama Film Festival...
- drunkard
Release
VIZ MediaVIZ Media
VIZ Media, LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, is an anime, manga, and Japanese entertainment company. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ Media LLC, which is jointly owned by Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha, and...
, through its Viz Pictures arm, gave the film a limited release in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on September 22, 2006, and the DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
was released on February 6, 2007. An accompanying manga series followed.
In the United States, the film premiered at the Imaginasian Theater in New York City, New York on September 22, 2006. It was also screened in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
.
Reception
Densha Otoko movie was ranked 14th top movies in Japan in 2005, staying on in the box office's top 10 movies for 10 weeks, grossing ¥Japanese yen
The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the U.S. dollar, the euro and the pound sterling...
3,532,525,613 as of January 2006. It grossed over $35 million since its release. Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
gave Densha Otoko an aggregated score of 60%. Pop Culture Shock's Erin Finnegan comments on the Densha Otoko movie about its ASCII art, which made the "strange transition from computer monitor to silver screen". She continues, "you might be familiar with emoticon
Emoticon
An emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, usually to express a writer’s mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau word...
s in English internet-speak, but the Japanese use totally different emoticons. Thankfully, these symbols are clarified in the film. The bowing man art is usefully overlaid with an image of Densha Otoko bowing." Manga Life's Michael Aronson criticises the film, saying, "It’s understood that he lacks all social grace when he trips and falls in the train in the beginning, but he does so over and over throughout the film. Furthermore, the length could easily be cut by twenty minutes if Train Man could keep from stammering all the time and actually spit out a word or two. His inadequacies translate into a crippling experience for the audience who just wants to see him get the girl and call it a day. Lastly, the characterization of the girl is so bare-bones that it’s bewildering why she would be attracted to him at all." San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
's G. Allen Johnson comments that Train Man "fable ups the ante on depicting modern communication". He also comments on the chat-room messages, saying "chat-room messages are texted right onto the screen, sometimes narrated in voiceover, with such frequency that a real person saying something in his real voice to another real person can be startling". The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
' Jeannette Catsoulis comments on Train Man: Densha Otoko, saying, "though its appeal may be limited to the socially awkward, the movie is unusually perceptive about the attractions of online communities while gently insisting on the superiority of flesh over fantasy. “Train Man” wants us to get off our computers and get out of the house; in a country as technocentric as Japan, the suggestion that it may be time to replace the cyber with the real is not just subversive, it’s downright revolutionary." The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
's Drew Tillman criticises the film for its "annoying split screens" when "[Train Man] turns to his chat room buddies for advice on how to win [Hermess] over". TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
's Maitland McDonagh criticises the film for its ending that "drags on, and the fantasy sequences are bluntly obvious (though Train Man's nightmare vision of meeting Hermes' parents is pretty funny)". However, she commends the fairy-tale romance [that] is grounded in authentic detail.