ACTOR: Masanobu Ando + Battle Royale

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Lucifers Angel
King For A Couple Of Days
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January 21st, 2007 at 06:46pm
i was watching battle royale last night and i was struck by this person, so i decided to look up on him further, he's amazing. here is a bit more about him.

Masanobu Ando (安藤政信, Andō Masanobu?, born May 19, 1975 in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese actor and director.

For his second film, in 1996, he won the Film Academy of Japan's Best New Actor Award, starring in Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return.


Masanobu Ando as Kazuo Kiriyama in Battle Royale.Ando has extensive experience in both Japanese television drama and film and has played a large variety of different roles: mentally challenged (Ao no jidai, Innocent World), bank robber (Space Travelers, Drive), doctor (Transparent), ninja and samurai (Red Shadow), even a corpse (Monday). Out of all of Ando's characters, he is best known for his role as Kazuo Kiriyama, the heartless, psychopathic killer in the controversial film, Battle Royale (2000). He also played an art forger in the low-budget Battle Royale parody Tokyo 10+01 (2003). He has been called Japan's answer to Johnny Depp [citation needed].

As well as acting, Ando has been in Japanese ad campaigns for the popular Japanese snack food, Pocky, Toyota, and for DoCoMo mobile phones.

In 2003, he directed his first film, Adagietto.Schhr langsam, starring Japanese actress, Kumiko Aso. The short is included in a collection released by Peacedelic called Short Films. In it, he also stars in the short, 県道スター (loosely translated to "Prefectural road star"Wink.

In his spare time, he enjoys photography and shopping.
here is a link to a picture of him: http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/8413/194wv.th.png

Battle Royale is based on the shockwave novel by Koushun Takami, which is a bestseller in Japan, and which has become very controversial in a very short time (and it is really easy to understand why). The plot is relatively simple (a class of junior high school students are forced to kill each other on a desert island, the last survivor wins and can go back home), but it is this simplicity that makes its strength. No need for a very long prologue before we enter the main act. Each of the 42 pupils involved in this "game" are not volunteers (no one would be..,), and of course they are forced to kill their best friends /girlfriends in order to survive this horror. The personalities and characteristics of each of the participants are of course very contrasted and even if there are some cliches, well, the worst has been avoided. There are even quite "realistic" (even if it is very difficult to judge what can be realistic with such a plot) moments. The transcription of the inner thoughts of the characters, which is one of the strengths of the book, is averagely well retranscripted. Takeshi Kitano plays a "teacher" (whose name is ...Kitano), leading the operation of surveilliance of this "game". It is very difficult to give an objective comment on this movie. Violent. Ultra-Violent. And bloody. This is for sure. The book has to be read for a more complete description of the hesitations and fears, but the movie restranscripts very well the book is the sense that it is all "absurd". There is no real meaning to this violence. The students know this, but it can not be avoided. It is quite sad that the movie dropped an essential background element of the book (the story in the book takes place in an imaginery Japan which would have not lost WWII, and the movie takes place in a slightly modified modern Japan), but I guess that making this happen in the "real-world" shows that there is no need to go to an imaginary world to see to what extreme behaviors humans are capable of.

so what do you all think of the film?
Ashtray Heart
Shoot Me, I'm A Newbie
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January 24th, 2007 at 05:10am
The film is amazing. and Masanobu Ando is hot! lol! one of the top 5 sexiest japanese people ever!
Ashtray Heart
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January 24th, 2007 at 05:15am
Takeshi Tsukamoto is even more amazing though (plays mimura in BR)
Ashtray Heart
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Ashtray Heart
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January 24th, 2007 at 05:16am
Kou Shibasaki is beautiful......and....why am i going into how attractive the actors are?!?! lol She's amazing as Mitsu. Its a hard part to play/
Ashtray Heart
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January 24th, 2007 at 05:18am
Image *drool*
Ashtray Heart
Shoot Me, I'm A Newbie
Ashtray Heart
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January 24th, 2007 at 05:20am
and by the way, in the manga, the Teach is called Yonemi Kamon. And in the novel he's called Kinpatsu Sakamochi
Ashtray Heart
Shoot Me, I'm A Newbie
Ashtray Heart
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January 24th, 2007 at 05:22am
Its just in the film that he's called Kitano. They had to change the name of Yukiko so that it didn't look like they were related. They changed Yumiko to Yukiko and then used Yumiko's last name for Yumi= Kusaka
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