Main Theme (1984)
The best transfer in the Hiroko box set and the worst film. Oh well. This 1984 drama starring Hiroko and the lady who played Mayumi in Sailor-fuku mainly suffers from the total lack of originality. There just isn’t anything special about it. The story of a girl who develops a crush for a young magician has some potential but the results are mixed. The plot is mostly a mess and there’s some really dumb scenes here and there. It’s thankfully not overly emotional, instead it’s just emotionless. That might work if the director had more more artistic approach, which he doesn’t. As a whole, Main Theme differs very little from any average 80’s youth drama.
Then the good things. There’s an exceptional amount of incredible Hiroko beauty for display here. She even wears a swimming suit, haha… She was about my age by the time the movie was made so now I don’t even have to feel ashamed for drooling after her. She also performs 2 (!) songs during the movie. Aside Hiroko the cinematography is the best things about the movie. While nothing truly special it does capture the beautiful landscapes very nicely. The film tends to be at it’s best when the camera is kept moving and music is played on the background. These scenes, while perfectly mainstream, are solid and enjoyable work. I was slightly impressed by how steady the camerawork was even in moving shots.
Despite all the critisism I did get through the film rather painlessly. There’s a 15 minute segment around the halfway that is really weak, and then there’s these single bad scenes here and there but if you’re a big fan of Hiroko then it may be worth the effort. You’ll just have to settle for a little less than usual. The dvd by Kadokawa is excellent and the progressive transfer does justice to Hiroko’s beauty. The image is simply gorgeous and features next to none edge enhancement. The only extras are the theatrical trailer and a 17 minute begind the scenes featurette. The dvd is encoded with a high bitrate and the whole dvd file including the extras (19 min) takes 7,49 GB of size.
more screenshots cap 1, cap 2, cap 3, cap 4, cap 5, cap 6, cap 7
