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Shinjuku Triad Society

Within the range of Artsmagic's new R1 DVD titles there is Takashi Miike's Black Society - Trilogy. It's first part, Shinjuku Triad Society, is a favourite among Miike-fans. Personally, I had mixed feelings about it, but it is by no means a bad film. It is an intelligent Yakuza-thriller with the usual provocative Miike-themes like violence, gore and sex, but also drama. Read the DVD review to find out if the DVD is worth a purchase.

DVD Menus

The main menu is not really animated. It is an image which changes in colour. The music playing is the same which plays during the end credits of the film. Not a special menu, but it is enough for a simple and easy navigation.

Picture Quality

The DVD presents the film in its original aspect ratio 1.85:1 and it has been anamorphically enhanced for widescreen TVs. Just like many other Miike-films that were shot for a video release, the picture is a bit blurry. Black levels are at times disturbingly bad. It still looks a lot better than VHS and is still very watchable as it is almost free from grain and scratches. I can not imagine that anyone would stop watching this film due to the picture quality.

Audio Quality

The disc comes with a 2.0 Dolby Digital track in its original language which is a mix of Japanese, Mandarin and maybe Taiwanese as many different people appear in this film. The track is free from scratches. Don't expect anything special. It is a simple audio track and I think 5.1 or even DTS would not fit to the film's video style.

Subtitles

Subtitles are available in English. I spotted a spelling error at one place and also one or two grammar mistakes. Apart from that, those are fine subtitles.

Special Features

Tom Mes, reviewer of Japanese films at the Midnight Eye-website, provides another audio commentary for Artsmagic. Being an expert on Japanese films he has a lot of information to share. He explains the Yakuza society a bit and also a bit about Miike's and the actors' backgrounds. He often explains what is happening on the screen which can be annoying at times. Apart from that, this is more of an informative commentary than an entertaining one.

Next we have biographies and filmographies for cast and Miike, the director. They are text-based biographies and for the following people:

Takashi Miike

Takeshi Caesar

Shinsuke Izutsu

Kippei Shiina

Ren Osugi

Eri Yu

Tomorowo Taguchi

Then we have the original movie trailer with optional English subtitles. It runs for 1m 25s.

Apart from three cover artworks for this film and the next two parts of the trilogy, there are 3 interviews. Two of them are with Takashi Miike and last for 29m 49s and 4m 58s. The other interview is with cinematographer Yasushi Shimamura. Its running time is 6m 29s. The English subtitles are optional and not obligatory.

Conclusion

As for the first part of the trilogy, this is probably the version to go for. It is not perfect as picture and sound quality are not up to nowadays standard, even if the picture is anamorph. And although it might not be Artsmagic's fault, but the fact that the material they got to work with was bad, the blurry image can be disturbing to some viewers. It is a good film and it is also supposed to be the most action-laden one of all three with in my opinion the most impressive scene to be a fist-to-fist fight between two brothers. So if you are a Miike-fan and have not watched this film by now, it should be worth going for this disc.

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The US website is located at:

http://www.artsmagicdvd.com

Written on September 5th 2004

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