Nemuri Kyōshirō 1: Sappocho (1963)

SEoD1 - Sleepy eyes indeed.

I was really excited for this one, but was quite let down. The entire production felt very cheap, and reminded me of old TV movies. The story wasn't anything special, and I think the actors agreed, because none of them seemed very enthusiastic about their roles. The worst offense, I think, is that the protagonist is pretty insufferable all throughout. He's basically everything you don't want your hero to be.

I could go into detail about all the things that went wrong with this movie, but there's not much point. It's just a very low budget and forgettable film overall. While it does have a few interesting pieces here and there, the only thing that really grabs you and keeps you watching is the hope that the series gets better as it goes along, because this is a 14 film long series and became quite popular for the time.

A bit of history, there were earlier films based on this character and the novels he originated from. From my knowledge, they aren't available to be seen in English yet. This is the series of films that everyone knows about, however. While I didn't love this entry, the ending is left pretty wide open and does give a case for the protagonist to at least (hopefully) become a better person moving forward.

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