Big, original, visionary films are rare in today's Japanese film industry, which overwhelmingly prefers sure bets developed from hit manga, anime, TV dramas, novels and other media properties.
Kazuaki Kiriya's 2004 post-apocalyptic fantasy "Casshern" may have been based on a popular manga and anime, but it was madly ambitious in the style of silent-era folie de grandeurs, while borrowing much of its alternative-future look from early 20th-century art and design (and realizing it with early 21st-century computer graphics.)
True, the story was a hash, but Kiriya, a fashion photographer and music-video director who had made "Casshern," his first feature, for the Hollywood equivalent of spare change, was definitely a talent to watch.
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