For my A2 independent study I have chosen a Japanese action martial art film ‘Azumi 2: Death or love’. I have decided to write my essay on this text, because I have special interest in this genre.
The film is set in the past and the narrative follows story of a young working class girl ‘Azumi’ who an assassin with one of her old friend. Azumi and Nagara are the two that’s left from a group of five. According to Claude Levi Straus’s theory the film has binary opposition ‘good VS evil’. Throughout the plot the two young assassins are trying to protect their master and kill their enemies to protect their country from civil war.
The film has powerful representation of women, female killers and female assassins. Azumi being the hero has a powerful representation and is quite capable of taking an army of hundreds at a time without being hurt.
‘Azumi 2’ starts with conflicts, Azumi and Nagara are being chased by their enemies, and Nagara is being stabbed. According to Roland Barthe’s theory this create action code. It puzzles the audience and make them think that; is he going to die or not? The film has some flashbacks of Azumi’s past life’ when she had to kill her best friend ‘Nachi’. Later on in the film Azumi meets a boy who looks exactly like her best friend ‘Nachi’. Kozue who has joined the assassins betrays them and sends Azumi with Kinkaku, and she kills Nagara. The mission can not be continued without Azumi. In the end Azumi nearly dies from poison, but Kinkaku saves her life and gets stabbed at the back. This brings the ideology of love and relationship in the film when Azumi says, “why does everyone I love has to die?”
‘Azumi 2’ also has intertextual references to other martial art and word fighting films. When Azumi fights with the Black Spider, they are flying on the bamboo plants, and having a sword fight that links it to the ‘House of Flying Daggers’. The way that the women are presented powerfully in ‘Azumi 2’ connects it to ‘Crouching tiger, hidden dragon’. The reason they do this is to hold their audiences interest by giving them familiar hints. ‘Azumi 2’ is aimed at both male and female audience aged 18 and over in the UK. The fights are more realistic in the film.
In ‘Azumi 2: Death or Love’ Shusuke Kaneko has brought up a lot of wider issues that includes war and terror which reflects to real moral issues and what is recently happening in the world. Everyone is trying to stop the war from their country and fights against evil. The film also contains violent and murder; Azumi and Nagara killing their enemies. It also brings up the ideology of economical issues, the orphan children whose parents have died in the war.
In conclusion I think this is a very interesting media text to analyse, as it projects lots of moral issues. I will also discus the positive and negative representation of women in a powerful way.
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2 comments:
This is a good start, Weeda. So that I can help you further, you need to lend me a copy of the film. You might want to research the role that women play in Japanese society to find out whether it is similar or different from in this country.
hey heres sum constructive feedback as instructed by tamsyns post.
your I-S looks interesting.
just wantd to let u know about an anime calld 'Princess Mononoke'.
the sound track i thought was very similar to the 1 for your text and i thought that there myt b sumthin u could say about influence bet ween japanese animation and japanese film.
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