Credited cast: | |||
Ebizô Ichikawa | ... | Koji Namiki | |
Yûsuke Iseya | ... | Katsuya Kita | |
Juri Ueno | ... | Minako Narumi | |
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Shun Shioya | ... | Nobuo Ito |
Teruyuki Kagawa | ... | Kashima | |
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Yûko Kotegawa | ... | Mitsue Namiki |
Tomokazu Miura | ... | Toshiaki Namiki | |
Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
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Sei Hiraizumi | ||
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Hiroyuki Hirayama | ... | Gouhara |
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Kyôta Inoue | ||
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Mitsunori Isaki | ... | Hiroyuki Okita |
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Shûji Kashiwabara | ... | Yasukichi Sakuma |
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Yûki Kuroda | ... | Satoshi Obata |
Toshiyuki Nagashima | ... | Baba | |
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Tsubasa Nakamura | ... | Chihara |
Koji Namiki, a talented young pitcher, who had won the National High School Baseball Championships enters university, but soon afterwards injures his elbow. He and his teammates work hard to get back on the field placing all his hopes on a new slow-ball, "the magic pitch." However, the outbreak of WWII wipes out the baseball ambitions from everyone. They join the military and in the navy undergo the severe training that prepares them for death. Death awaits them in a "kaiten" (special attack submarine or "human torpedo") within the gloomy ocean depths, but Koji never gives up his dream of the "magic pitch." Written by Anon
What comes out on the Dutch shock label I watch and mostly those flicks are pure horror or arty flicks but this flick is one exception. The title do make you think you are ready to watch another over the top horror with a title like 'human torpedo war' but be advised. This is not a horror this is just a pure drama telling the story from what happened at the end of WWII.
Not that many people did knew that while Japan was losing the war they chose to come out not only with kamikaze fighter planes, which are common known for everybody but they also decided to make torpedo's with humans in them. In fact, one person controlled the torpedo while moving towards a battleship. They were big enough and full of ammunition to sink a ship with one human torpedo or better known as Kaiten.
The flick here shows how young men decided to join the army especially the navy to fight for their country. Once they were into the Kaiten division they became hero's. But this flick isn't about the hero's but about what they felt and what they did to become a Kaiten hero. It's not like the old American war flicks full of hero's, this is about what really happened and even what happened if you couldn't succeed your mission.
For me the acting was sublime and even as I'm not really into drama's I kept watching until the end to know what would happen once the captain agrees to fire the Kaitens. There's no cruelty shown or even gore attached, a thing that's common for Japanese flicks. And even a s a big horror fan I would recommend it because it really happened and the idea of knowing that you are a human weapon is in fact the real horror. Some situations are maybe again hard to understand if you aren't into Eastern culture.
It's an outsider for the shock label but I'm glad I haver seen it. I never heard of Kaiten before but by now I know they really existed.
Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 4/5 Comedy 0/5