Rating: B-
Dir: Toshiharu Ikeda
Star: Jun Izumi, Masahiko Abe, Kyoko Ito, Miiko Sawaki
Certainly the most eye-catching title of the series, this incarnation of Nami lives in an apartment complex almost entirely populated by sexual deviants of one form or another. She’s not exempt, of course: after she ends up modelling for the titular magazine, she finds herself having to deal with a stalker. This is a short synopsis, but at only 64 minutes, it’s a short film, and a large chunk, percentage-wise, is spent on sexual hi-jinx. Though, at least initially, most are the solo kind – we even learn how a woman can masturbate using a raw egg and a fistful of pencils. Never say cinema can’t educate.
The most honest of the set about its intentions, it has nicely self-referential moments: “There are perverts everywhere nowadays,” mutters Nami at one point, and she might as well be talking through the screen to the audience. The moral here is, it’s harder to be who we are, than who people think we are. By the end, Nami prefers to fulfill people’s expectations, rather than go against them, but it ends somewhat hopefully. And art is on its side: not least, one wonderful moment where her stalker is being harassed by the apartment manager. The picture freezes, and we see an overlaid montage of him raping her. As an indictment of evil fantasy, it’s chillingly effective, and nicely contradicts another line from the film: “Pornography in Japan is totally tasteless, isn’t it?”