It is not so fair for the term ‘Offbeat Japanese comedy’ to be used for ADRIFT IN TOKYO. The term is firstly haphazard. Mainly due to teh film not being as off beat as it is set up to be. Nor is it strictly a comedy. Being as it is about the places and power of searching for yourself. When demotivated student Takemura (Jo Odagiri) is in debt to a loan shark Fukuhara (Tomokazu Miura). He is an enforcer for a local loan shark and not a nice guy. Laziness means that Takemura is unable to earn back anything like the 450,000 he has spend gambling on losers. After initially roughing Takemura up, Fukuhara appears again and this second visit to see the student brings some odd news. He wants a companion on his last trip around his home city. Takemura merely accompanies him and will walk off with a million yen to call his own. The walk might take a few hours or a few days but at the end of it, he will turn himself in to the police station for murdering his own wife.
Cruching the numbers, ADRIFT IN TOKYO is Satoshi Miki most straight play film. It refuses the absurdity of INSTANT SWAMP and the weird purticulars of TURTLES ARE SURPRISING. Surplanting it all instead with a skewed series of pieces that link the two leads in ever more dumbfounded realism that they are finding something about each other, most unexpected. Its his easiest entry to his work. With not so much assualt of the crazy ruptures and more of a little drops of weird. The disc hasnt served the film very well in honesty though. The transfer is nice enough, if not a little heavy in light and tonal balance. Interview with director Satoshi Miki, is short and he is a bundle of energy. Joe Odagiri talks a little of this and a little of that. Stage Greetings with cast and director adds nothing. The longest feature is the Making of, that feels like a slice of promotion over anything really interesting.
- Making Of (70 mins)
- Interview with director Satoshi Miki (18 min)
- Interview with actor Joe Odagiri (12 min)
- Stage Greetings with cast and director (11 min)
- Original Trailer