TheStarWolf Does a wonderful job of giving the viewer a look at what life in 1958 Tokyo was like. Likable characters, believable situations, and terrific recreation of a period neighbourhood.The atmosphere is spot-on as is the 'mood' of the people, and they must have raided every antiques shop, not to mention more than a few museums to produce several of the scenes. There's what has to be one of the most memorable scenes involving something which doesn't exist that I can recall. Won't say more for fear of spoiling it, but it worked beautifully in context.There's even mostly happy endings, though they do set up the possibility of a sequel and now that I know there is one, I'm very much looking forward to seeing it.

crossbow0106 This film has won so many awards and it deserves every single one of them. Set in Tokyo in 1958 at the time of the construction of the Tokyo Tower, the story depicts a few families in that neighborhood and the things they go through. It has both comic turns and, once in a while, sad references. It is also overtly sentimental at times, but the emotional power of the film never wanes, and it is just a feel great film. The acting is excellent. There are real glimpses into the meaning of family, love and caring, and just generally sharing your time together. If you think you are going to watch this film and promise yourself you will not be sucked in by its sentiment, you are missing the point. Its supposed to make you laugh and cry. Although Tokyo has demonstrably changed since 1958 (I went there in May 2008, you wouldn't be able to find traces of this existence), this is a period film which just works wonderfully. It was so successful, a sequel was done. I'm going to watch that, since, based on this film alone, I want to see what happens to these characters from here. That is how great the film is, that one film alone is not good enough to let these characters go. Simply a triumph that deserves all the success it has achieved.

D C I went from cautiously liking this film in the first 40 minutes to despising it in the last hour or so. The schmaltzy sentimentality accumulates and creeps up on you, until towards the end you feel overdosed on insincerity to the point of nausea. The emotion portrayed is utterly hollow and manipulative in its dishonesty. By apparently trying to copy/compete with Hollywood at its most disingenuous, this film surpasses the worst of Hollywood hypocrisy. There is plenty of style in the technical aspects of the film-making, but for all the "realistic" computer graphics recreating the city of Tokyo in 1958, no amount of vacuous slickness can give any honesty, reality or authenticity to the people and situations. The empty "rebirth symbolism" of the construction of the tower is an appropriate reflection of the empty film itself; is the film's soullessness symptomatic of the soullessness of the country's "rebirth" since the destruction of 60 years ago?

shusei I understand that some people love such retro film. But I think this film not at all a good example of the genre.There are good films in this genre--"The Sting",for example. In good retro films authors don't rely upon the nostalgic atmosphere,which is different by nationalities and which can not at all be the main problem of filmmakers. Good retro films have original, well-composed interesting stories and good actors, who can keep silent or simply walk around with absolute authenticity of the roles. And of course, director of this genre must understand that retro films are stylized genre in the end, because naive admiration of the past may easily turn into a conservative, nationalistic political manifesto(Really the campaign for this film's domestic sales,including DVD release, gradually have got such nuance, saying "We are happy to have been born in Japan"!). Not one of these important points was kept in mind or resolved by the authors of this film.As a results,this film seems very naive. The story is banal, actors are too easily overacting,and the worst of all, there are plenty of CG images, without which good directors could have told the same story more effectively.