Review for Quirky Guys and Gals (Review)

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Introduction
I really ought to pay closer attention to what I read, as just skimming a press release can make me jump to some unwarranted assumptions. Not that I wouldn't have reviewed Quirky Guys and Gals anyway, but I would have approached it without certain preconceptions. I'd gathered that it was an anthology movie, and that Gen Sekiguchi, director of Survive Style 5+ was involved. I adore Survive Style 5+, which certainly deserves the 'quirky' descriptive. It too is an anthology of stories, but stories that intertwine and bounce off each other in unexpected ways. That led me to expect something from Quirky Guys and Gals that just isn't there. Quirky Guys and Gals is a proper anthology, in that it is a collection of four short films, made by different directors, only one of which is Gen Sekiguchi. There is a common theme, that of the quirky directness of their respective characters, but these stories are completely separate from each other.

Quirky Guys and Gals is also a low budget student film, although not the sort of student film that you would expect. The directors are established professionals, so are the cast and the crew. What the New Cinema Workshop that financed and distributed this film is doing is educating the new wave of movie producers, there are 26 of them listed on the PR material, and the exercise behind Quirky Guys and Gals is to get these short films into production. I never knew that producers had to go to school. I thought all they had to do was get the money together, light the blue touch-paper on the director and retire to a safe distance, where they spend the rest of the shoot fending off the bean-counting studio execs, while the creative stuff happens.

Anyway, the four stories in Quirky Guys and Gals…

Cheer Girls (dir Yosuke Fujita)

Chiharu leads a cheerleading team in college, but they don't cheer any sports team. This trio of cheerleaders have a mission in life that is far more important. They bring hope and enthusiasm to the downtrodden in life. Like a superhero team, when they spot misery and despair about to strike, they change outfits and leap into action with carefully choreographed routines tailored to boost an individual's self-esteem. Whether it is a boy who can't tie his shoelaces, a restaurateur unable to open a jar, or a guilt-ridden businessman, there's always a cheer to bring a smile to their faces. But maybe Chiharu needs the cheer the most.

Boy? Meets Girl (dir Tomoko Matsunashi)

Konosuke is the typically shy, introverted high school student. He shrinks into invisibility, is unable to put himself forward, which makes nursing a crush on classmate Kaori all the more painful. She's a photographer who looks for beauty in all things, but never seems to look his way, and Konosuke can't work up the courage to talk to her. Then one day, in a fit of despair and contemplating ending it all, his friend puts some makeup on him to prepare him for the next world, only he goes a little too far. The odd thing is that as a girl, Konosuke gets more attention than he ever did as a guy. And in Miyu, Kaori has found her perfect model.

Claim Night (dir Mipo O)

Coming home to darkness is troublesome for Mayuko. She's been looking forward to a special meal, but the power cut isn't good for her perishables. Her blood pressure only rises further when she calls the electricity company to get the supply reconnected. One tirade later and the call centre manager pays a visit to personally apologise. Mayuko isn't going to let him off easy though. She's going to give him a piece of her mind, and claim as much compensation as she is entitled to. And as the poor man grovels and apologises and rushes to satisfy her every whim, she notices that he's kind of… cute!

The House Full of 'Abandoned' Businessmen (dir Gen Sekiguchi)

It's a tale for our times. Mrs Okada is walking through the park, when she sees the forlorn figure of businessman Mr Hirata sitting alone under a tree. An awkward conversation with a lot of excuses ensues before the truth comes out. Hirata has been fired, and he's keeping quietly to himself all day before going home, to make his wife think that he still has a job. Seeing him getting a tan that will quickly give him away, Mrs Okada takes pity on him and takes him home with her. She even tells him that he's welcome everyday while her own husband is at the office. Then the next day she finds another unemployed businessman in the park…

Picture
Quirky Guys and Gals gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer on this DVD from Third Window Films. It's an NTSC-PAL standards conversion, but a damned good one. The image is clear and sharp throughout, a smooth and artefact free representation of the digital video source, with no issues with judder or ghosting. Only when I paused the film and skipped back or forward a few frames did I notice any blended frames, and I was still unconvinced until I checked the runtime online. The image itself is bright, exceptionally colourful, and rich in detail. That detail does slip a little in darker scenes, while fine texture does exhibit moiré on at least one occasion. The only real oddity was one scene in the final film where the image suddenly became soft, as if of a lower resolution, otherwise the transfer is most acceptable.

Sound
In terms of audio, you get a fairly pedestrian DD 2.0 stereo Japanese track, with optional English subtitles (although you'll have to turn them on and off directly with your remote control). These aren't films with complex sound design, so the audio works just fine in this context. The subtitle font did appear a little chunky, but more worrying were the odd grammatical flubs, the sort of typo that spell checking misses, "loose" instead of "lose", or "week" instead of "weak". There's also an odd word choice in the second film, the gender neutral "crotch" where direct reference to male genitalia would have made more sense in the story's context.

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