The World Sinks Except Japan 日本以外全部沉没 is insane (and cheap)

Minori Kawasaki's The World Sinks Except Japan 日本以外全部沉没 is the parody of last year's Japanese blockbuster, Japan Sinks! 日本沉没 (aka The Sinking of Japan), which I recently reviewed. Definitely more lo-fi and audacious than the latter, watching The World Sinks Except Japan reinforced my opinion that there's no one crazier than the Japanese!



Unlike Japan Sinks!, which is rumoured to be the most expensive Japanese film ever made, The World Sinks Except Japan is a B movie (perhaps it's more accurate to categorize it as a Z movie...) that's so horribly bad that you'll either feel offended, or you'll laugh in disbelief at what you see on screen. It was similar to the experience I had when watching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.

At the beginning of the film, an American woman (the wife of one of the protagonists) slides into her bathtub for a blissful bath, protagonist's voiceover explains that America had sunken. Later in the film, there's a shot of a waiter dropping Chinese food into the sea, voiceover explains that China had sunken. Shot of woman accidentally dropping baguette into the sea too, bye bye France too. The entire world ends up sinking EXCEPT Japan, everyone has to move to Japan, English ceases to be the global language, everyone is forced to learn Japanese, the Japanese people become the most powerful people in the world while the 12.5 million non-Japanese refugees are left homeless (the economy collapsed so much that US$5000 was worth 500 yen), a Gaijin Attack Team (GAT) special force was formed to police the unruly foreigners.

Things become crazier, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis (note: like the book it is based on, there are numerous real-life figures in the film, just that their real names aren't used), have to perform tricks in a bar for money.




A Tom Cruise-like Hollywood superstar, Jerry Cruising, is forced to perform as an extra in Ultraman/ Godzilla-type shows as one of the foreigners who got trampled by the monster (to the audience's delight). American female celebrities are degraded to working as prostitutes (or act in hardcore porn). The leaders of South Korea and China follow the Japanese Prime Minister like lapdogs, the Bill Clinton-like US president selfishly saves his own skin by taking off onboard Air Force One, leaving his fellow citizens behind at the sinking American continent. After addressing the survivors via live TV (while groping the sexy air stewardesses), he breaks into a patriotic song about his hometown in Kentucky.



And then, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il makes a late appearance too, but I will not reveal his exact role in the movie :D



Over at nursing homes, Americans were hired so that old Japanese World War 2 vets could throw stuff at them and ride them around as horses, all these to avenge Hiroshima.

I really don't think there's much I can say about this film, except the fact that I don't think I've seen that many non-Japanese people speaking Japanese in a Japanese films (... some of them spoke Japanese better than English). Technically, this is a horrifyingly bad film, long expository dialogue, student film-like production values, wooden acting, cheap-sounding sound effects, bad special effects, my sister couldn't believe what she was seeing when she was watching the film with me, I couldn't either. When the film ended, I thought my mind had just been destroyed.

A must-watch. What I witnessed is beyond anything you people could imagine.

Would love to hear from anyone else who had seen the film too.

(image source: http://bbs.tiexue.net)

Related links:

Twitch's report about The World Sinks Except Japan

Kaiju Shakedown's entry about The World Sinks Except Japan

Film review at 10 000 Bullets.

Tags: japan sinks, japan, movie, film, review, sinking of japan, the world sinks except japan, arnold schwarzenegger, hollywood, bruce willis, bill clinton, politics, political, satire