His Motorbike, Her Island

Director - Nobuhiko Obayashi (House, Turning Point)

Starring - Kiwako Harada (Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, The Drifting Classroom), Noriko Watanabe (Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., True Horror Stories), and Riki Takeuchi (Battle Royale II: Requiem, Tokyo Tribe)

Release Date - 1986

Genre - Romance/Drama

Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     It was about 10 years or so ago that I found myself binging as many Japanese splatter films that I could find on Netflix.  I had always knew that Japan had releases a lot fantastic genre titles over the years but I never ventured into them until then.  Now, I'm always on the lookout for an Asian horror I can find but I rarely take the plunge into other genres because of my obsession with horror.  A few weeks ago my friends over at Cult Epics sent over the 1986 Japanese romantic drama His Motorbike, Her Island to review on blu.  I knew it wasn't a horror release but I was still curious if I would like it or not so I added it to my watch list.  I want to thank Cult Epics for sending this one over.  I really enjoyed this one and look forward to checking out other Japanese non-horror titles.

     The film follows a young man who breaks up with his girlfriend and uses his motorbike to travel around Japan.  He finds himself on a small island where he meets a young woman who is very much different than his ex.  He falls for her but soon worries that she may be more interested in his motorbike than him.  

     I went into this one completely blind not knowing what to expect and was greeted with a beautifully shot film that may not be a movie that I would typically watch but enjoyed it just the same.  I know a lot of my readers will quickly skip over this review but fans looking for something a bit different will not be disappointed.  The acting in this one is a bit inconsistent at the beginning but as the film progresses we get some great performances from the cast.  I didn't care for the characters, to be honest, but the cast did the best with what they had and delivered some grounded performances.  The story for this one is more of a drama than anything but the romance aspects do show up from time to time.  The film has great pacing and with the story we have we get a lot of dialogue heavy scenes that does work for the most part.  However, my lack of interest in the genre mixed with the unlikable characters made a few of these scenes feel like they were a lot longer than they were.  Finally, this is not a bloody one for you looking for the red stuff.  This character driven romantic drama is more about the story than anything else.  Overall, His Motorbike, Her Island is not something I would normally review but Cult Epics was nice enough to send it over and I was interested in checking it out.  It's not horror but I enjoyed it and the blu from CE looks great.  I highly recommend checking it out.