The Great Yokai War (Yôkai daisensô)

 Japanese folklore is rife with all sorts of spirits, ghosts and monsters. They range from objects that gain sentience after one hundred years of existence, to Llorona-like ghosts looking for their children, to weirder stuff like giant heads floating in the sky and nature spirits of all sorts.

  They're collectively known as Yokai, and pop up everywhere from comics to movies to videogames and more; they've been codified and illustrated for centuries, most famously and recently by Shigeru Mizuki, who produced a huge number of popular Yokai comics since the 1960's and is responsible for how many people visualize them these days.

 The Great Yokai War is Takashi Miike's loose remake of a 60's movie known as Spook Warfare. Shigeru Mizuki was a consultant, and even has a small role in the film, so it makes sense that the movie does its best to recreate Mizuki's designs.

 It follows the adventures of a little boy (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who is bitten by a radioactive ritual parade float, which marks him out as the destined Ki-Rin rider, a warrior for peace and stuff. The kid, Tadeshi, has other problems - his parents are recently divorced and he was sent out to a small town in the country. His mother is never around, so he needs to look after his senile grandfather.

 But the wheels of destiny are spinning, and somewhere in Japan the ghost of an ancient warlord is mustering hordes of dissatisfied spirits in an industrial hellscape that doubles as his base and is also a giant flying monster(!) He's rounded up all the innocent yokai he could find, to throw them into a furnace and turn them into an evil robotic army.

 So... yeah, Tadeshi needs to fight the evil ghost. This involves a group of Yokai seeking him out, a magic sword, adventures and misadventures... it's a kid's film through and through, and to be honest, not a terribly engaging one. The effects weren't great for 2005, much less now, and while the Yokai are all charming and mostly creative costuming, the main opponents here -the machine-yokai hybrids- really aren't that much to look at, as well as being composed of the aforementioned bad CGI. 

 I am really not the target audience for this, despite loving Yokai lore. Miike's a great director, and manages some memorable imagery here, but the film is just pitched too low. To be honest I liked it the most while the Yokai haven't really made their presence known, as once they're in the picture they crowd out any subtlety or a hope for decent pacing; the early scenes of Tadeshi's daily life strike a lovely, wistful tone, and an early scene where he goes look for the sword on his own works really well, with some lovely natural scenery.

 After that... there's things to like, for sure. The main villain (played by Etsushi Toyokawa) cuts a striking figure, but the biggest impression is made by his #2, Agi (Chiaki Kuriyama,) a henchwoman with the obvious hots for her boss, rocking a white beehive hairdo and tight dresses. She fights with strings she swings around like whips, and is basically a lot of fun to watch.

 The Yokai themselves are cool to look at, but not so interesting to listen to. There are a lot of them, though, especially when they form a ridiculously large mob near the end - a seriously impressive bit of spectacle.

 So it's not really something I would recommend, except for babysitting purposes. There are a few touches that are pretty inappropriate for children -a severed arm, gushing blood, or multiple shots of kids lustily groping a Yokai's milky thighs- but nothing your typical kid can't handle these days. I've seen worse in other Japanese kid's movies, so I wouldn't really blame them on Miike.