The Great Happiness Space
2006 NR 75 minutes
This compelling film explores the rarely seen world of Japanese host boys, men who are paid to entertain wealthy women in exclusive nightclubs. Almost but not quite gigolos, more akin to male geishas, the host boys of Café Rakkyo share their secrets with director Jake Clennell in his first documentary. The narrative focuses on Issei, Osaka's top host boy, but all the characters in this unique subculture are fascinating.
Recommended based on your interest in: My Neighbor Totoro
LOLwut
Holy mother of ..... that's such an
inappropriate thing to suggest based on liking
Totoro. Just because it'a Japanese I guess it's linked. BTW dsarker
My Neighbor Totoro is one of the Miyazaki films you could happily show to
pre-school age toddlers and adults alike.
@dsarker so you like 40K? I was under the impression you weren't into sci-fi etc, I guess I was wrong. In that case, u gotta watch
Macross (in my opinion). 1 kilometre+ tall transforming robot carrier/battleships which
punch other ships in the face. But it's probably one of the more complex mecha/sci-fi show ever created. There's lots of character drama, love triangles, romance, comedy, slife-of-life etc. And awesome music (which is integral to the plotlines, but you have to watch it to understand exactly). Also the heros fly transforming mecha originally based of F14 tomcats, which are probably the coolest mecha ever! The series director/mecha designer was actually the designer of many of the original Transformers toy-line (and Macross series 1 predates the Transformers TV cartoon by several years). He personally created the Optimus Prime model, which was known as "Battle Convoy" in Japan. Transforming flagships in
Macross also tend to bear the "Battle" prefix. e.g. in
Macross Frontier => Battle Frontier,
Macross 7 => Battle 7.
The first ever Macross series was combined into the American cartoon Robotech in the mid 80's, so you might have seen that back in the day without realizing it (BTW Transformers was animated in Japan too, as were a number of other 80's cartoons you might have thought were american). Unfortunately the US company Harmony Gold who adapted robotech got addicted to the $$$$ from the series and have sued the actual series creators ever since to try and stop sequels coming out (while attempting to churn out their own, shitty sequels), so most sequels have not been dubbed into English. Harmony Gold = my least favourite cartoon company as a result.