100 Yen: The Japanese Arcade Experience
Brian Ashcraft's Head Looks So Punchable. His track suit tells me he was lazy when dressing up for this film or is just a track suit type of guy. A reason to punch him. I just want to punch him. Seeing his face you just want to punch him. Nothing about his reviews or writing style, just a basic sense of seeing his odd head. It's human nature to hate it or look onward at it as though you're meeting a cartoon character in really with the wrong proportions of a man
That was a thought in my head during 100 Yen: The Japanese Arcade Experience. There were plenty of lookers along side Ashcraft in the interviews if you like aging Japanese men. These aging Japanese men came together to tell us about the yesteryear of Japanese arcades. When games were played so much the 100 yen coin ran out in Japan or so they say.
Filled with interviews and shots of arcades and angles to make them somewhat interesting instead of Ken Burnsing photographs you have a film featuing the different development of arcade titles and different genres of games. You go from shooter to shump, fighter to crazy hard dance game in about the hour. Accompanying you are some nice visuals cgi cartoons and techno music that sounds like cats in heat. You will learn about what arcades were like when just starting out.
They crammed in some stuff about girls playing in arcades too, it seemed fake or a little to crammed in. Girls play games in arcades, who cares? Arcades are open to everyone. Did you know they could also read?
Then there's some sort of section on how the American government doesn't like arcades which is well out of this current era. There are hardly any arcades left for them to be motivated to hate, rather video games are up for grabs to get angry about. The talking head for that section bringing up the film Saw and arcades in the same breath is ridiculous. I wouldn't even consider the two in the same era in terms of popularity. Then arcade licenses are brought up, which after a little bit of research on-line seems to be based on the city your in's jurisdiction and not about hate, but just to make extra cash by the city. I'm not even sure if you need an arcade license for LA, but one to sell horse meat oddly enough. This part has little substance and is throne away after two minutes. It doesn't stop for some funny animated signs to pop up, "Don't Invade My Space".
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| I guess he really is a track suit dude |
There's never a big story here or a heartfelt moment, it's just a doc that teaches you about how deep the love of arcades stays in Japan. Talking heads throughout spotting some trivia or love for their quite nice looking coin shacks. The dude with the scarf and Ashcraft though, you just want to hit square in the jaw. You should be able to when you toss in some garbage about the girls in arcades scene or America hating arcades based on little evidence. If those parts were skipped I'd give it a full factual approval, but trying to invoke controversy at the last minute lowers it's score.
I don't really give scores because you can understand words, it's watchable and fun to see if it ends up on Netfix. At it's current price it's a bit high and no online distribution model I can tell so far make it odd to say to get. Wait for a online way to see it or a lower price.
