1992 ‘地下幻燈劇画 少女椿’ Directed by Hiroshi Harada
After losing her parents, young flower selling Midori is put up by a fairground group. She is abused and forced to slavery, until the arrival of an enigmatic magician of short stature, who gives her hope for a better future.
Chika Gentou Gekiga: Shoujo Tsubaki, La jeune fille aux camélias, Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freakshow, Shōjo Tsubaki, Shoujo Tsubaki, Chika Gentō Gekiga: Shōjo Tsubaki, Maiden Camellia, Shôjo tsubaki: Chika gentô gekiga, Shoujo tsubaki: Chika gentou gekiga
The TikTok community has once again ruined my night with their film recommendation and while I can say that this is much more disturbing than Megan is Missing (2011), I still don’t understand, like what was the reason? Graphic and sensitive imagery without substance. Watch at your own risk.
There is nothing else quite like Midori. It is unsurprising that Suehiro Maruo's work has dodged being adapted into a film, let a lone an animated one. His work is grotesque, sometimes almost seemingly without much purpose to shock. But Maruo's work has grown over just being a simple freak show of bizarro images. Midori is a successful adaptation on those accounts. It is violent, ugly, and very grotesque while still having the nerve to bare it's heart. Some may not be able to see past the imagery alone, others who delve into the transgressive part of cinema or animation may find something to appreciate.
To tell you the truth, I no longer expect anything from traditional, commercial animation. The situation in Japan makes it very difficult for films like mine to enter the mainstream. Hayao Miyazaki is well-known in Japan, and his films are seen abroad. If his stories represent the official story of Japan, then Midori is a counter-story of Japan, one the Japanese State and powers that be have suppressed and tried to hide away. It is important to understand that this is not considered a major film in Japan.
There's no way to critique or really even say anything about Midori without trivializing it because it's aesthetically uncomplicated and talks straight to your amygdala. Midori is like Sen/Chihiro, orphaned and then…
absolutely depraved and disturbing but i can appreciate the artistry of it,, somehow existing as both a half star film and a 4.5 star film at the same time,,,
the fact i was able to watch this on youtube is baffling as it violates so many guidelines...
Needlessly ugly, pointlessly cruel, almost completely without artistic merit
The animator spent all his life savings on this, took him five years to make, and is illegal in many countries. Complete bruh moment.
Midori has to be the seediest, slimiest, grimiest anime ever made. No surprises there — it is, after all, from the twisted mind of Suehiro Maruo, king of guro manga. Sure, there's anime that is gorier and more sexually explicit, but none come close to the bleak tone of Midori. The animation is stilted, often it simply cuts between still images, but the artwork is fantastic. There are a few moments where animator Hiroshi Harada (who animated this by himself) goes all out. A particularly brilliant moment is when a crowd at a circus freak show are deformed by a furious dwarfed magician. Midori is a sick, sick film filled with rape, eyeball licking, and puppy murder. Proceed with caution.
a good account of how misogynistic commodification and consumption of vulnerable girls and their bodies is as much in force at the margins as it is everywhere else, a counterpoint to the fantasy of community in the presence of other freaks which is as bluntly miserabilist in its narrative momentum as possible but whose moments of abstraction are so rapturous that the monotonicity of the rest is forgivable. great gowns, beautiful gowns....maybe pair it with Katherine Dunn's Geek Love? idk
If you possess even the vaguest notion that you're a somewhat decent human, your best bet is to NOPE.avi.exe the fuck away from this thing.
But -
But if you're some sorta degenerate, some sorta gutter rat who subsists solely on acts of cinematic self-flagellation, who isn't afraid of experiencing shit that's just unacceptably depraved, well, well well well, meet your new god.
This shit was straight up heinous..
Nah I have no idea what to write, this is wrong on so many levels.. Seriously why??? You sick fucks 💀 I do like the animation though.. very colorful 😚
All of these 4 and 5-star ratings have me seriously gaslit, lol. Did I watch a crappy bootleg by mistake?
Im sure this film’s curious production history as a one-man horror show passion project would make it an interesting addition to some kind of college syllabus on exploitation film, but I couldn't really find anything in the film itself worth writing home about. If you disregard the notorious shock value, there’s not a lot of substance, narrative or stylistic, to this 50-minute OVA about an underaged girl suffering abuse as part of a circus troupe. It feels wrong to call this an animated film when actual animation is so sparse (you could charitably call it montage, and uncharitably, PowerPoint). As…
