Takashi Miike tries to make ‘God’s Puzzle’ more accessible for us dummies

Takashi Miike‘s new film, God’s Puzzle (Kamisama no Puzzle) opens in Japan this Saturday and I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around what it’s actually about. That puts me in good company, however, because apparently Miike didn’t understand the plot himself when he first read it. The script, based on a novel by Shinji Kimoto, is rife with physics jargon and theoretical science. Knowing how important it is for a director to understand the material he’s trying to interpret, Miike came up with a clever solution - split the original lead role into twins. The thinking behind this decision was that Motokazu (Hayato Ichihara), the new main character that was not in the original novel could explain principles of physics in simple terms that an audience could easily understand. Hopefully that method of simplification combined with a whole lot of CGI-created visual representations will help bridge the gap between entertainment and a 2+ hour science lesson.

So what exactly is the plot, anyway? Here’s what we know so far, more or less:

When a physics student goes on a trip overseas, his identical twin brother Motokazu offers to sit in for him during a lecture. Motokazu, a wannabe rock star, is the complete opposite of his scholarly brother. The plan is just to sit there and answer the professor’s roll call. However, when the professor calls in a genius 17-year-old dropout named Saraka Homizu (Mitsuki Tanimura) to participate in the lecture Motokazu suddenly discovers a reason to get involved. The seemingly absurd question eventually arises, “Is it possible to recreate the universe?” With the use of a particle accelerator and Saraka’s superior intellect they set out to give it a shot.

Here’s the teaser:

And a mini featurette followed by a longer trailer:

And yet another trailer. As logboy pointed out on Jason Gray’s blog, that sure looks a lot like a Riki Takeuchi impersonation:

Sources:
ILC NewsLine
Official website
Toei

Further reading:
God’s Tour Bus
Kadokawa Haruki on the verge of solving “God’s Puzzle”: part one
Kadokawa Haruki on the verge of solving “God’s Puzzle”: part two

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Tags: gods puzzle, haruki kadokawa, hayato ichihara, jun kunimura, kenichi endo, mitsuki tanimura, physics, takashi miike, university