Giants and Toys immerses the viewer in business, Japan-style, at a time when the whole culture seems to be emulating an American model. "America is Japan", one executive says, just advanced a few years - rocket and space station toys that are old hat in the U.S., are big news for Japanese kids (who were presumbably indoctrinated with pictures like Chikyu Boeigun (The Mysterians) just the year before.) The candy companies battle for market supremacy, going at each other like armies. Executives hand down edicts to their advertising directors as if they were generals telling their officers to succeed or die. Nothing's ever good enough, no sales level is acceptable. The misfortune of a rival company is the cue for the competition to close in for the kill; the advice of an elder exec to show mercy and pull together is dismissed out of hand. That the companies are selling a product that's not even particularly good for people is irrelevant. There's a consumer base, a mob that can be induced to buy. And with the right campaigns, buy more and more and more.

Giants and Toys tells the very American story of the recruiting of an eager slum girl to become World Candy's spokesperson-model, a opportunity that Kyoko Shima devours like the candy that's rotted her teeth. Naturally, the qualities that make her appealing, such as her impudent smile and raucous humor, disappear as she learns to sing and dance and gets her teeth straightened. She starts out ignorant of business ways, with young assisant Nishi pretending to be infatuated with her to secure her cooperation. The relationship continues through her star-making phase, with photographer Harukawa (Yunosuke Ito) putting her on every magazine in the country. Nishi and Kyoko soon learn that anything resembling a traditional Japanese virtue is extinct. Her family grabs up her money, eager for material goods behooving the blood relations of the "World Caramel Girl." Her adored tadpoles, symbols of the transformation Kyoko might achieve, are allowed to die from inattention, one after another. Her supposed boyfriend Nishi is really in love with an ad girl from one of the rivals (Michiko Ono), a sweet young thing who nevertheless is total calculation. And Nishi's college pal stabs him in the back as well, stealing Kyoko out from under them.

Instead of just talking their case, Masumura and Shirasaka show this world in a whirlwind of glitzy montages. Goda's attempts to get his cigarette lighter to function (an odd symbol) is used as a background for montages, of candy production and Kyoko's rocketing trajectory to fame. The crazy advertising buses bombard us with the noise of their screaming loudspeaker ads and numbing ad jingles. Accustomed to serene scenes of tea ceremonies and stylized theater in Japanese culture? Here, ray-gun toting babes in Space suits share the stage with ballerinas, in a clashing jumble of the worst of Western Kitsch Kulture. Kyoko's big star breakthrough dance number makes her a cannibal queen among a horde of spear-throwing natives, singing about killing enemies and spilling 'rivers of blood.' It's an apt metaphor for the savagery of the business-show biz combine. The more 'sophisticated' a media-run country, the more barbaric it becomes. The pounding title theme ends with a Punk - like strangled scream ... in 1958!

All of this is played out at the frantic pace of something like Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three, and is both convincing and entertaining. The story is easy to follow (for being so complicated) and the characters very accessible - they could have walked out of The Apartment, or Patterns. The screen is constantly being bombarded with mass-produced images celebrated for their Pop-Art qualities - years before Pop Art hit American culture. Even the titles look ten years ahead of their time, with a snapshot of Kyoko Sushi multiplying into rows of Warhol-like repeated images. Reams of colorful magazines (all opening backwards, of course) and cheap tin toys are everywhere. Savant remembers getting some of those toys as gifts straight from Japan - especially a spaceship that flashed lights and changed direction when you tooted on a whistle ...Giants and Toys connects all these ideas with Toho's toy-celebrating outer space movies.

Chuck Stephens' printed text essay on the DVD insert stresses the fact that Masumura had the unique benefit of a classy Italian film education before embarking on his very sophisticated, very un-Japanese movies. When subversive ideas show up in a Japanese fantasy film, they're practically buried within the context; Masumura's in-your-face, nothing's sacred social criticism is certainly not mainstream activity. He's a one-of-a-kind, agitating social critic. As I said above, he's progressive even by American standards. One thinks of Billy Wilder, Frank Tashlin and MAD magazine. But MAD was forced to become more conservative by the Comic Book Code. Tashlin's so-called anarchic messages have to be decoded by film critics. And Wilder, after receiving a bloody nose for his uncompromising Ace in the Hole (The Big Carnival), learned to layer his messages within zany comedy or romantic melodrama. Giants and Toys is up there with the likes of The Sweet Smell of Success. It's the very definition of the Refusal to Compromise.

This is the most interesting political movie Savant's seen in a long time.

Fantoma has presented Giants and Toys in a spiffy presentation. The 16:9 picture is very good-looking, with muted colors in the 'business' scenes and blaring hues whenever toys, neon, or the glitzy TV shows take over. The music varies from latin Mambo rhythms, to a savage Gorath-like march that enforces the relentless, breakneck pace of the advertising machine. A Japanese trailer stresses the fact that the movie is a serious adult offering; excellent liner notes and biographical information help clue a gaijin like Savant into the picture. The clarity of the removable subtitles is also a big help, considering the pace of this audiovisual juggernaut.

Under normal conditions, one takes their chances getting excited by a positive review of a marginal DVD, because the enthusiasm of a reviewer such as Savant might not correspond to individual tastes. In this instance, I feel confident that if you respond to what I've said above, Giants and Toys will be a DVD you won't regret tracking down.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Giants and Toys rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: trailer, photos, biography, filmography
Packaging: Snapper case
Reviewed: February 5, 2002