Ever find yourself sitting at your computer looking for something interesting to watch, but you can’t find anything good?

What’s that? You want something with witty dialogue, epic special effects, beautifully choreographed fight scenes and rocking music? Well, faithful reader, look no further! This is Driftjunky’s Top Five Japanese Movies, and they’re all guaranteed to make your eyeballs explode with greatness.

Well, either that or you’ll just walk away with the experience of having just watched a great movie…

First up is Summer Wars, directed by Hosoda Mamoru. Summer Wars is a beautiful animated feature about a math whiz named Koiso Kenji and the girl he likes, named Shinohara Natsuki. Natsuki asks Kenji to go out to the country with her for family business. Initially they’re only there for her family reunion. Something outside of their control causes a crisis for both the family itself and on their in-universe form of the internet called OZ. The events that happen throughout the movie force Natsuki’s large family plus Kenji to come together to fight and resolve both dilemmas.

Crisply animated, Hosoda chose to go with a style similar to one of his previous works, the movie Digimon: Bokura no War Game, due to the similarities between the stories and situations within. The animation style is very fluid, and the visuals of the virtual reality OZ is amazingly created through a combination of stunning CG graphics and wonderfully drawn characters.

My favorite thing about the movie is the amazing visuals it delivers as well as the pacing and sequencing of the story and Kenji’s growth as everything moves forward. From being the meek OZ system administrator to the brave and wise commander of the Jinnouchi family “army” against the movie’s antagonist, the rampant AI “Love Machine”. Summer Wars shows the growth of a boy in the face of crisis, and it does it well.

I honestly love costumed crime fighters, especially ones who henshin, or transform. This next movie takes the old school animated series and brings it to (literal!) life. Taking the fourth spot in the list is live action version of Yatterman. It’s basically the live action version of the 1977-1979 animated series by Tatsunoko Productions, with an extremely modern (and dark) twist to it. While adapted from a 108 episode series, it still runs true to the origins of the story, as well as retaining the original humor and colorful characters that made it popular, in addition to giving it a darker and bleaker outlook to the fights, instead of the colorful and fun skirmishes that the characters originally had.

Yatterman follows the eternal battle between the Doronbo gang (Doronjo, the ultra-feminine leader, Tonzra, the strongman who speaks in the Kansai dialect, and Boyacky, the perverted tech genius) and the Yatterman duo (the mechanical genius Gan-chan aka Yatterman-1 and his girlfriend Kaminari Ai, aka Yatterman-2). Helping the Yatterman duo is Gan-chan’s creation, Omocchama and their powerful dog-styled mech, Yatterwan.

I love this movie because Miike’s translation of a very colorful and lively anime series to a dark yet hilarious live action film really blew me away, from the choice in actors (Japanese boy band Arashi’s Sakurai Sho as Gan-chan/Yatterman-1 and Fukuda Kyoko as Doronjo!) to the very robust musical score composed by Fujiwana Ikuro and Jinbo Masaaki. Sakurai Sho even shows off his musical talent at the end with the movie’s theme song, “Believe”. The CG is also amazing, as brazenly displayed in the first fight scene of the movie, where the landscape is broken and full of debris from the Doronbo gang’s destruction.

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