Lost and found... and dead!

2006-08-13

Lost and found... and dead!

Coming soon to a theater near me: Otoshimono, a horror movie whose title means "the thing somebody dropped"* and whose tagline is, "You mustn't pick it up." ("拾っては、いけない。").

As I write this, the trailer remains unreleased. So how are we to decide if we want to see it or not? Simple: we can refer to the survey results the producers have helpfully included on the Otoshimono flier!

According to these pie charts, 86% of schoolgirls (n = 200) thought that the movie was either "good" or "very good". 83% thought it was "moving" or "very moving", while 81% thought it was "scary" or "very scary".

I suspect that this information was gathered for use during the distributor-hunting process and just got thrown onto the flier because they ran out of pictures of WAKATSUKI Chinatsu looking tense, but it's still fun to imagine other high school girls being swayed by it. "Yuka-nyan! What is the meaning of this proposal? You expect us to go see a movie that only 63% of those surveyed found 'exciting' or 'very exciting'?!" "But fully 90% said that their heart was warmed and/or touched!" "We've already seen three heart-warming movies this quarter! Get it together, woman, or I'll bust you back down to popcorn research!"

* Of course this is much more inelegant than the Japanese, which is a perfectly normal compound word derived from otosu (to drop) and mono (thing), exactly the same pattern as nomimono (drink-thing, beverage) and kimono (wear-thing, kimono or [very rarely, in MJ] just clothing in general). Anyway, since the direct translation is awkward, I imagine that if this sees an English-language release, the title will probably be Lost Property or something non-literal like that. Keep your eyes peeled!

Popularity factor: 10

amida:

For some reason that reminds me of the tagline from an old horror movie called "The Lift": "Take the stairs, take the stairs--for God's sake, take the stairs!"

James:

I've always felt like the use of V-i-mono where mono is the object of V is similar to the use of -able found in English nouns like collectible or potable or even variable. This leads me to propose the title "(The) Droppable(s)". I think it's a winner.

Geoff Richards:

Yuka-nyan? I haven't seen -nyan used on names like that before. Is it like -chan but for cats?

donkeymon:

I have always found it to be more like the -ings on words like nokorimono, "leavings." So I propse it be titled, "Droppings."

By the way, I can't believe you made it through that whole post without mentioning SAWAJIRI Erika.

Matt:

Amida: That tagline is best read in a grumpy old man voice, for sure.

James/Donkeymon: Heh, I like how you guys are bringing together the two main wellsprings of English. You got the French nobleman saying "Fetch me my drinkables and wearables!" or the Germanic clan lord saying "Bring me my drinkings and wearings!"

Geoff: Yeah, pretty much, but sometimes young women will use it to be cute...

Derek:

The ad execs assume that people will base thier decision to see the movie based not on the story, content, etc., but on what other people think of it? That seems so... Japanese.

Maybe it's my western independence, or maybe it's the fact that I include Ninja Death Squad and Quest of the Delta Knights (before it was MST3K'd, I might add) as two of my favorite movies, so my opinion of movies probably doesn't overlap too much with the average population.

Matt:

Just think of it as an outsourced, Web 2.0 version of film criticism!

Wyatt:

Unless there are two Japanese horror films about picking up junk one shouldn't the trailer for the film plays here in Korea.

You can check it out here.
http://www.yusilmool.co.kr/

John:

How can you talk about the -mono's without bringing up wasuremono??

I only lived in Japan for a year, but one phrase that was burned into my brain was, "wasuremono ga nai you ni..."

Matt:

Wyatt: That's definitely it! Let me know if you find any survey results. I have long wondered which country had the most nervous teenagers. (Uh.. no reason.)

John: Wasuremono! That's another good one that doesn't really have a parallel noun in English. ("Forgotten thing", i.e. something you leave behind on the train etc., for those who came in late.)

2006-08-13