Wonderful character development!

The Age of Commercialism

Excellent but underrated film

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Hiyori is the subject of experiments that look more like torture than anything else. She escapes from the lab early on, and tumbles across the young doctor Koichiro. A squad of men show up and hustle Hiyori into a van.Koichiro's wife Sayoko tells him she is going on a business trip. As it turns out, she works for LIS, which is doing the experiments on Hiyori. These experiments involve a mental resonance which allows for a bit of personality transference.Yeah, sure, right, everyday. Perhaps one should keep going if one can still suspend disbelief.Hirori escapes again, this time with some of Sayoko's personality. She seeks out Koichiro, her most trusted ally.It is no surprise that they are soon on the run. There is a bit of fighting action involved. Eventually, they have to go back and fix things up with the sleeping Sayako.Will our heroes accomplish all their goals? -----Score-------Cinematography: 2/10 Poor, VHS quality or worse. Grainy, pixelated images, washed out appearance, camera shake.Sound: 6/10 The incidental music sucks rocks.Acting: 2/10 There was acting? Poor fight choreography.Screenplay: 2/10 Enough of the girl fighter PC nonsense. Very little story spread over 84 minutes.

Although not high budget, this movie has high quality contents that are very thought provoking.Koichiro Kiba (Masato Hagiwara) is a doctor who was leading a happily married life until one day suddenly he loses his wife. There's a mysterious research organization called LIS which Koichiro's wife was scheduled to be transfered to. He meets a strange girl (Mami Yamazaki) that appears to be insane, but correctly identifies him as Koichiro without prior introduction. She gets taken away by a van that has LIS' marking on it. Suspecting that this is not a coincidence, he goes to see her at LIS. She's supposed to be a mental patient there, but something is not right. On his way out she calls to him saying "Chashu Wan tan men, i told you to keep the kitchen clean" which was his wife's favorite food, and what she said to him before she died. She turns out to be a woman that was implanted with her wife's memory. This was the result of research at LIS that transfers person's memory into another person's brain. As a side effect, the bodily strength and speed increases to super human level. The researchers called this "Persona". Koichiro goes to LIS during night time and the girls jumps off the window and escapes with him. When he asked her "How did you know I was coming ?", she replies, "Your wife told me." They go on the run, but LIS is on their trail. It turns out that Koichiro's wife Sayako's mind is implanted in the girl's brain, and also Sayako's body is still in suspended animation at LIS. They attempt to retransfer Sayako's mind back to her body, but will they succeed ?A science fiction movie that is somewhat low key but with intriguing plot and good acting. This is one of the better low budget science fiction to come out of Japan. it also shows urban culture of smaller cities in Japan, and interesting to watch as a culture piece as well. Worth watching if you're an Asian movie fan.