Therein lies the main problem with this movie, which almost undermines the franchise as a whole. Namely, the driving thrust of “Who is going to save Japan and how?” is all but gone. The shadowy Mononobe walks around looking hard, staring down and sternly explaining his ambitions to Takizawa while the other remaining Selecao are stuck twiddling their thumbs, doing all but nothing. A few scenes here and there try to add cheap suspense, but they ring hollow and bring little genuine excitement.  Mr. Outside is still watching but his shadow doesn’t loom nearly as large as it has before.

At least, there are attempts of bringing emotional resolution to things and those come off slightly better. The true history behind Takizawa has some genuine pathos and is one of the few times that the movie manages to recapture the sophisticated blend of political and personal drama that made the series great, illustrating the divide between the increasingly selfish bubble-era Japan and Takizawa’s own message of post-war-style cooperation and reconstruction. Also, the few moments that Saki and Takizawa are together on-screen here are played perfectly. They’re sweet, funny and just a little awkward.

Otherwise, Paradise Lost is a disappointment. The cast is separated for much of the movie, so we don’t get much of the snappy back-and-forth banter outside of Takizawa’s unstoppable charisma. Even the social commentary feels lacking. The first movie had some fascinating insight in the commercial exploitation of human tragedy with Careless Monday literally becoming a brand name and Takizawa nothing more than a cultural icon. There is still some of that present, but the delivery feels half-assed. Truly, with all the scenes of people just sitting around talking with little in the way of organic story progression, it feels that the director had a list of all of his unresolved plot threads and sought to answer them in the most direct way possible.

The bluntness isn’t just reserved for the storytelling either. The visuals, which looked phenomenal on TV, just don’t quite hold up in the theatre. Even the choice of angles feels phoned in with a lot of close-ups and medium shots that play well on TV but feel pedestrian on a big screen. The action, in the few moments that it appears, also feels incredibly reserved to the TV series’ mayhem. A movie doesn’t need an explosion every five seconds to be entertaining, but considering the solid break-neck pacing of the series to this leisurely stroll, Kamiyama and company have little excuse. It’s been said that the movie was delayed to add 30 minutes to the film. It can’t be helped but to wonder if it would be a better movie without them.

Perhaps the biggest broken promise of the series is that all this craziness was going somewhere. Everything up to this point has some riddled with commentary on Japan’s culture and its place in the modern world. The ashes of World War II leading to the economic boom of Tokyo; the lush green villas of Kyoto hiding a disaffected college dropout; Saki’s sense of displacement in New York; the countless Biblical and Shakespearean allusions wrapped in a tasty Salinger shell. It all felt purposeful and inspired.

Instead, it’s shown to be an intellectual mirage. For the few changes that have occurred, it feels like we’re back to square one. Perhaps that in of itself is a commentary, but it lacks the catharsis needed in a modern day “fantapolitical” fairy tale like this one.  If you’ve been tuned in up to this point, you might as well finish it, but just brace for one of the biggest disappointments this side of Battlestar Galactica.

A leather-bound copy of King Lear, extensively quoted in the opening credits of the movie, features prominently in the movie. Makes sense, considering that the Noblesse Oblige phones have another Shakespeare quote, Julius Ceasar in that case. However, as the credits rolled and I tried to piece together the salad of formal Japanese and political pontification, I was instead reminded of another famous quote from the Bard: “It’s a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Overall Grade: C-
Written by: Fernando Ramos
Director: Kenji Kamiyama
Animation Production: Production I.G.