Fish Story (2009)

It's 2012 and it's doomsday. You look up and there are two suns in the sky, one menacingly larger than the other and fashioned by a long fiery tail. The asteroid is just hours away from impact and somewhere in Tokyo, three men in a music store listens to a song by an unknown punk band that was severely misunderstood the 70s.

This is the story about a song that might just save the world from its impending doom.

At first glance, Fish Story has a premise that treads the very fine line of 'Wow, how very original' and 'Get out of here'. Try and generalize this film and you'd get sci-fi, action, romance, comedy, drama and music all rolled into one. But this film is first and foremost, a very entertaining comedy.

Based on the novel by Isaka Kotaro and scripted by Hayashi Tamio, the story begins in a deserted Tokyo area where an aging man roams alone in his automated wheelchair. He stops in front of a music store, where he sees a welcoming sign flashing with lights. He realizes that the store is, perhaps, the only store left in Tokyo to resume its business hours as the world rattles to an end. Confused by this odd discovery, the man in the wheelchair stands (!?) and walks inside, finding two young men quietly enjoying music, apparently unperturbed by the world's upcoming end.

The elder one thinks they are insane. The world is coming to an end, and yet here they are listening to music? How juvenile! They should be hiding in the mountains like every other sane person in the city! But these young men are firm believers that a hero will come in and save mankind at the very last minute. Maybe it's Bruce Willis. Maybe it's a group of five, like the Go-Rangers. Or maybe it's a song.

The old man scoffs. An old record is played and unknown music engulfs the room. The story starts to spin its wayward tale.

Fish Story explores a number of characters spanning across four decades, seemingly unconnected. We start at 2012, hours before the end of the world, and end up in 1975 where a band tries breaking into a scene that has yet to learn and appreciate their music. Somewhere in between all that, a mistranslated American novel, a cursed cassette tape, a hijacked ship, a doomsday cult and a person raised to be a 'Champion of Justice' fall neatly into place. It sounds like a mess, but maybe that's what Fish Story really is - a beautiful mess, in which director Nakamura Yoshihiro did a really wonderful job of doing. A film like this could have easily been tiresome but the story is extremely well-told, and characters are engaging and each of them well-acted.

The last ten minutes becomes the most crucial part, as it gives you the understanding on why you've been forced to time-travel back and forth in the past hour. With an outrageous storyline that goes in all directions, the thread that sews every little piece together shows itself at the very end. Everything is revealed in a miraculous domino effect, a whirlwind of cleverly placed plot tricks, and it makes you think to yourself that perhaps yes, you are a believer in fate after all.