Last Quarter (Kagen no Tsuki) review

Fangirls rejoice! Last Quarter is an angsty, brooding supernatural romance drama starring Hyde and Chiaki Kuriyama. I could pretty much stop the review right here and know that for many 14-15 year old girls, that’s enough. However, I’ve got nothing better to do right now, so I might as well keep writing.

By the way, please don’t mistake “supernatural” for anything even remotely horrific, eerie, or even mildly unsettling. In this case the ghosts in question are ultimately consumed with thoughts of romance and eternal love, so don’t expect any shrieks of terror when they show up.  This particular brand of haunting is more about heartfelt serenading and hugs.

In the film Kuriyama plays Mizuki, a fairly typical girl who’s in the midst of celebrating her 19th birthday at a local mod revival pub with her boyfriend, Tomoki (Hiroki Narimiya). However, her otherwise happy night is spoiled when her best friend drunkenly confesses her own recent fling with Tomoki. Mizuki takes the opportunity to throw a shoe at her clueless boyfriend and lopsidedly ambles her way home.

Along the way she hears a strangely familiar song coming from a creepy old mansion. Transfixed, she decides to go inside where she finds a mysterious man (Hyde) playing guitar. She has no idea who he is, but oddly, he seems to know who she is, going so far as thanking her for coming back. He calls himself Adam, and claims he’s from London. Mizuki doesn’t really question it—not that he ever answers questions anyway—and for some reason she feels completely comfortable around him. Already unhappy with her home life, she decides to stay with Adam for a while. “A while” ends up being a week, however, as he eventually informs her via a note that it’s time for him to leave. He adds that if she meets him at a certain spot before the moon fades, they can be together.

Of course Mizuki takes Adam up on his offer, and after jetting home to pick up her passport (she assumes she’s headed to London), she finds him waiting for her at the other side of a busy road.  Unfortunately, “being together” apparently has a different meaning for people in Adam’s current state, because Mizuki is promptly hit by an oncoming car. Seemingly dead, Mizuki finds herself in the afterlife where she meets a teenage girl (Tomoka Kurokawa) who’s frantically searching for her lost cat, but suddenly vanishes from the area. In case you were wondering, the difference between the afterlife and the corporeal world is that all the trees are TPed.

We later catch up with that teenager, Hotaru, in the real world. She had recently been hit by a car and had a near-death experience, explaining how she was able to see Mizuki for that brief time. While following a stray cat that looks exactly like her own, Hotaru finds herself wandering into the same mansion that Mizuki was drawn to earlier. She finds Mizuki inside, but she now has no idea who she is or how she got there. All she seems to remember is that she loves Adam and wants to be reunited with him.

Hotaru was followed by her friend from school, Masaki (Motoki Ochiai), who apparently can’t see Mizuki at all. But he’s finally convinced when she starts moving objects around the room and making them glow. At this point Hotaru and Masaki decide to do whatever it takes to help their new ghostly friend, who they dub “Eve” for her love of Adam, and set out to figure out exactly who she is. Is Mizuki dead? Where did Adam disappear to? And how did they even know each other to begin with? All these questions will be answered in excruciatingly drawn-out fashion as information takes a backseat to melodrama.

Particularly frustrating is the way this film overplays its mystery-factor. It’s a good hour before we’re given our first inkling of what the heck is going on, but by then it’s been dragged out so long the eventual revelations are fairly underwhelming. There’s simply no need for a supernatural melodrama to be this heady. Also, fans of Hyde should be aware that his appearances in the film are actually pretty sparse, with a large chunk of the story centering around Hotaru and Masaki’s detective work. They’re cute characters, but take far too much screen time away from the headliners for no other reason than to stretch out what probably amounts to 30 minutes of film-worthy material.

On the positive side, when Hyde actually is onscreen he broods a lot and plays the film’s theme song, “The Cape of Storms” over and over and over again. Okay, maybe I snuck in another negative, but fervent Hyde fans will probably enjoy that aspect. Kuriyama is relatively plastic in her performance, as it involves no violent outbursts or gruesome death scenes—her bread and butter. And since her character is clueless to her own identity for most of the movie her role seems to be about looking good and being framed in extended glamour shot poses whenever possible. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, I’ll leave up to you.

Watch trailer

Availability: I watched the Geneon USA region 1 version of "Last Quarter" which was released on July 4, 2006. Like most Geneon USA titles, this release is what I'd call "glorified bare-bones", meaning it's on DVD9 with nearly-flawless picture and very little signs of compression, but no features to speak of other than a few trailers. Unfortunately, Geneon pulled out of the US market last year, and this title is now out of print. Once retailers sell out their current supply, it'll be gone for good. For full specs, see this link.

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