For modern live action Japanese movies I always feel the acting and directing are either subpar or just follow different aesthetics as western ones. the actings, plot, dramatic progressions all feel forced and relies on very shallow pathos. it has scenes that assume you’d “get it” and force you to laugh, or scenes that force you to cry. kinda like how ineffective most hollywood movies are. urobuchi ‘s stuff bores me and feels insincere and unoriginal. so is everything from nasuverse.Too much charade, moralising sympathy and too little about naked human nature which is not good or evil and evoke hope or despair but entirely enigmatic and makes you question instead of “getting” an answer. I havent watched my fill of modern japanese live action media but I can say Kurosawa’s movies have the right idea on how to film something that are both Japanese and original, and reveal something deep about life that isnt “how to be a hero” “how to win the fight” “how to feel in this and this situation, and how to feel in this and that situation” “why havent you become good yet?” “you are bad, why are you so bad?” “do you like sex? yeah sex is good / no sex is disgusting” “human history is all bad / all good / some bad some good, human do bad things / good things / do both. we need to do more bad things / less bad things / do bad things that no one cares and do good things that people care and pay you money and aspire for good / evil / just something in between and live like a medieval Bauer.

I think it might have something to do with different cultures’ percetion of denouement (both artistic and philosophical / metaphysical). For some cultures ( generally cultures influenced by a kind of decayed transcendental values and influenced by capitalism or liberalism which is just another form of social capitalism, denouement reveals Truths, that benefits, regulates the existence so it brings justice and evaluations of life’s worth, and brings comfort and solace to the ugliness and things out of the power of humans. Denouement from what I have learnt in a Canadian high school is about the resolution of conflicts not the happy end ( a force that denies and assrts certain values). But in Japanese literature they translate denounement to 大団円. which is not the transcendental denies the mundane and affirms transcendental values but the mundane affirms mundane values based on perhaps philosophical and aesthetical inclinations towards emotion more than reason. but Japan is also obsessed with cheap detective novels, which perhaps it means they also crave for something related to transcendental values and reason. but maybe they want philosophical Truths at as a cheaper commodity as detective fiction is essentially rejecting scientific and philosophical thinking in order to play a game with limited logic structure that is not about discovering new things and improve understanding of reality and oneself, but more about winning the fight. Maybe it mirrors the “l(fā)ife as an escalator “ morals in Japan where living your life is basically about getting good education, good job, good sex, good spouse, good children, good education for children and it goes on. And they are trying to express the disgust for this kind of life bound too much by things in the earth through detective fiction, or even isekai genre which is another
form of seeking newer and jollier values in the adventure in another world that seems almost like you have reached through the dramatic interplay of reason against ignorance, and the destruction of old values, being represented in the isekai as “unelightened” with the values you hold from your old world “enlgihtened”. in other words it is trying to break out from the tethers of their society and culture and only affirm what they think are good and beautiful in an almost blank state or a state that is devoid of any meaningful values by being “underprogressed” that you can “enlighten” and bring out great force to do great work.
And in the west, for most of us being so influenced by French revolution and its legacy America. We cannot help but separete the sensisbility and belief from the objective, state-operated, Truth-thinking that is, frankly makes money and drives life and livehoods. the separation of Church and State in a sense. like when people warn you “you are confusing the fictional with reality” even if fiction is also undoutably the product of the hard, objective reality and is as valuable even if it does not carry truths that can make money — it is human truths. Lies perhaps. But lies can also be studied philosophically and lies can also contain truths. Above all the spirit of the era is that when it is not making money move it cannot be treated seriously as money feeds your stomach, keeps you healthy and safe and sustains your spiritual life in the form of accessibility to cultures, ideas and obviously stuff like CDs, game softwares and books you must buy with money (and they are expensive). It is almost to make a conjecture that Money is the actual transcendental metaphysical object / thing-in-itself that have dominated human evolution, and when humanity is no more it will still exist and move the motion of particles in the universe (I think there was a sort of materialist part pseudo-pilosophy, part psuedo-religion that subscribes to that).

Infinity series actually makes sci-fi mystery fun in comparison with most other mystery VNs (for example that LONG one where almost nothing salient happens on that ruddy leper’s colony of an island) . and it is masterful in bringing out the sensibility and themes without turning to cheap moralisations, platitudes and negation of human truths in order to establish truths meant for the mass and affirmed by the mass, in order to think deeply and profoundly — -poetically and almost philosophically . Born and bred perhaps through the legacies of the better part of Japanese history — which is when their national identity and culture were almost destroyed and everything must be evaluated when they encountered the western powers. It gave birth to good books. and good anime and games. no longer the boring thinking for prolongation and security of small islanders but something relevant to the entirety of humanity and themselves — my applause. (for mass culture only though. Japan had good poets, musician and writers long before modernisation. but maybe they were not treated as seriously as military conquerers and farmers. “Seven Samurai” hits hard. Good gracious Kurosawa.)