Most fans know Mamoru Oshii for Ghost in the Shell or for directing the first-ever OVA, 1983’s Dallos. But the project closest to his heart is the Kerberos Saga, a passion he’s explored across anime, manga, and live-action film. Its centerpiece, The Red Spectacles, was. not well received upon release in 1987. But a 4k remaster spearheaded by Oshii himself has already been reintroduced to Japanese audiences and is now receiving a theatrical re-release from GKIDS on Nov. 21 in New York. One can only imagine a physical release is on the horizon of this essential curio. The Red Spectacles was the first live-action film within the saga and a first-time director gig for Oshii outside of anime. It was a disastrous production, according to Oshii, one that had him flying from the seat of his pants from beginning to end. It didn’t do well in Japan either, and has effectively become lost media, something for historically minded superfans to dig up on YouTube. That is, until now. The restoration is due to the support of fans who crowdfunded the project, which raised 59, 336, 002 yen ($377,769. 00) from 2, 953 supporters, making it one of the most successful film restoration crowdfunding ever. The Kerberos Saga unfolds in an alternate postwar Japan where Nazi Germany won World War II, later underwent denazification, and went on to occupy Japan under an authoritarian regime. The story centers on the Special Armed Garrison known as “Kerberos” a heavily militarized counterterrorism police unit stationed in Tokyo. Their operations put them at odds with a range of adversaries, from anti-government insurgents to rival law-enforcement and military factions. The saga is defined by its gritty dieselpunk aesthetic and its signature “Protect Gears,” Wehrmacht-inspired powered exoskeletons designed by Yutaka Izubuchi and worn by Kerberos operatives. The Red Spectacles follows Kōichi Todome, a former police detective who flees Japan after a failed uprising by his disbanded unit. Years later, he returns to Tokyo to honor a promise to his comrades, only to find the city transformed into something unrecognizable, warped, unsettling, and increasingly surreal. The anime film Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (which can be streamed on Crunchyroll) does a perfect job capturing this dystopian society, and what it means to be a soldier during these times. It also showcases why revisiting this society may be timely, as civil unrest throughout the world in modern day mirrors some of these scenes here. The uprising from the citizens who don’t want to live under fascist rule are really harrowing, as well as how the police force have militarized to take on the average citizen, and what’s become of the government as a result. However, The Red Spectacles, despite its pretty heavy subject matter, deals in more severe tonal shifts that many have altered the perception of it during its initial release. And according to Oshii in press notes for the re-release, the tumultuous production and failure of the film greatly affected him. “I was constantly filled with anxiety and impatience on set, working without much confidence or certainty, relying instead on the passion of the cast and crew, and moving forward on spontaneous thoughts and intuition,” he says. One of the only people who praised him after the first screening was the film’s producer Shigeharu Shiba, who took on several jobs and put his own production company at risk to create The Red Spectacles. “When the first screening ended and the lights came on (I don’t even remember if there was any applause), Mr. Shiba sprang from his seat, walked over, and embraced me without saying a word. ‘Good job’,” he says. “I’m sure those were the words he muttered-though perhaps I’m just fabricating the memory, which is somewhat of a specialty of mine-but that’s how it sounded to me. Those were the words I desperately wanted to hear.” Oshii goes on to explain that those words left him feeling weakness instead of happiness, thinking “It’s not enough to just say, ‘I’m sorry it turned out like this.’” But now that the film has been restored, he dedicates it to Shiba, along with cast and crew who have passed, as a testament to their legacy. The film, despite being mostly black-and-white, is “a fully color-printed film created from black-and-white negatives except for the beginning and end of the film,” according to Oshii. The lighting design of engineer Yoshimi Hosaka and Yosuke Mamia’s “prime lens only” camera setup, achieved the aesthetic. “This 4K restoration didn’t merely withstand degradation it revealed the film’s true potential.”.
https://www.polygon.com/red-spectacles-4k-release-trailer-mamouru-oshii/