If ever the dilemma arises where you are torn between watching a musical, teenage mutant ninja turtles and soft porn, say hello to Underwater Love. Seriously.
So I was playing DVD roulette, to my surprise, I ended up watching Shinji Imaoka's 'pink musical'.
Japanese pink film, hentai and porn are rather well known for being, for want of a better word, 'tentacle-y'. The current interpretation of Article 175 of the Japanese Constitution translates to the prohibition of certain male-only organs. Underwater Love circumvents this, because the protagonist isn't technically a man; he's a zombie-mutant-turtle come mythical creature. Which means fellatio and intercourse with him is totally acceptable, even when he appears dead.
Apart from the stress of trying to explain the plot to my father who walked in mid-film, I can see the films admirable points. Then again, I rather enjoy being baffled, and I haven't been this baffled since Dasepo Naughty Girls. It sure blows Just Like Heaven's forbidden love boundaries out of the water. Moving past the musical elements, the cinematography in some places captures the stagnation is Asuka's life. She's surrounded by grey water that blends seamlessly into an equally grey sky, broken only by the small wooden piers that Aoki fishes on. The real-world becomes a dreary haze, contrasted by the remote forest world of the kappas. It is in this place that Asuka discovers her desire to live on and preserve her life, to the point of wrestling a Death God and putting the Anal Pearl... yea. You get the picture.
There's something endearing about the kappa Aoki; he is peculiar, playful, and has a penchant for cucumbers. The awkward feelings he harbours for Asuka are naively touching and yet outside our grasp, as he says to Asuka's fiance, "I've died and come back and I'm not going to lose her to you" (or something to that effect). I'm a sucker for first love romance stories, although that would be one of the many genre labels you could apply to Underwater Love. Taking fairy tales for instance, imagine a horrible chimera of Snow White and the Princess and the Frog, and you get somewhere near the ending.
On the other hand, this could just prove the film is beyond my comprehension and I'm trying to piece it together using limbs of genres I am comfortable with, and joining them together to make a Frankenstein's Monster. Perhaps one day, the world and I will be able to appreciate Underwater Love for what it is, and not see it through our happy-genre-pigeonholing-tinted glasses.
Verdict: Watch it for the T-shirt, otherwise avoid.
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