The "Tomie" Series ... in Capsule Form

Tomie (1998)
Original Title: 富江
Translation: Tomie

Starring: Mami Nakamura, Miho Kanno, Yoriko Douguchi, Tomorowo Taguchi, Kenji Mizuhashi
Director: Ataru Oikawa

First film in a franchise of eight--nine if you count the mini-series that was later packaged as a film-- movies based on a manga by Junji Ito. The premise revolves around a girl, Tomie, who is both enchantingly beautiful and immortal, and whose mere presence (not to mention flirtatious manner) drives men to murder and madness. In this first film, we follow a college girl, Tsukiko, who is taking a photography class during her summer vacation. Tsukiko has some selected amnesia revolving an unexplained accident a few years before, and is seeing a psychiatrist in hopes of reviving her memories. Meanwhile, the new tenant in her apartment building is taking care of what appears to be a severed human head...

Whatever this film's pedigrees are, it's not a particularly well-constructed or even spooky movie. There are several parallel plot strands, most of which never come together in any meaningful way. This is especially true for the subplot involving Tsukiko's boyfriend Yuiichi having an affair with her best friend, Kaori. Detective-Inspector Exposition hangs around just to do that: spout off exposition, but never actually contributes to what's going on in the present. At first it looks like the Psychiatrist is going to do some investigating of her own, but in the end, she's just a non-entity. At no point before the climax does Tsukiko ever realize that she's in any kind of danger, so there's no gradual feeling of dread there. Lots of disturbing stuff happens offscreen and/or is completely unexplained: Just how did Kaori end up in Tomie's apartment? At what point did Tomie bewitch the landlord? What exactly were the circumstances involving the deaths of Yuiichi's co-workers? And where is Tsukiko's mother, whom she is always talking about?

Tomie: Another Face (1999)
Original Title: 富江 アナザフェイス
Translation: Tomie Another Face

Starring: Runa Nagai, Akira Shirai, Chie Tanaka
Director: Toshiro Inomata

Second entry in the franchise is actually three episodes from a TV anthology series edited into a single film. In the first story, Tomie (the gorgeous Runa Nagai) shows up at school after having been found dead by authorities some days before. She tries to get back together with her former boyfriend, but his ex-girlfriend stands in her way... In the second story, a photographer who's in a creative funk meets Tomie, who's working as a go-go dancer of sorts at a bar. She reminds me him of a girl he was infatuated with years before. She agrees to be his muse, but when the photos are developed... Finally, a businessman is about to ask his girlfriend, Tomie, to marry him. But then a mysterious man, a former autopsy doctor, shows up and tells him the truth about his love...

Most people dismiss this on account of its production values and acting. As beautiful as Runa Nagai is--especially when she dons a yipao in the second episode (yowza!)--her voice is high pitched and kinda annoying. Like a parody of the stereotypical child-like Japanese girl voice. My main problem is that the finale of the third episode, which is framed as a huge twist, goes against the "rules" for Tomie as established in the other films and Junji Ito's manga. And if you consider it for more than a few seconds, you'd have to assume that she would have Grey Goo'd the world decades earlier. I do like that it establishes Tomie as being the personification of narcissism, as if Pandora had opened her box and the demon of narcissistic behavior took the form of a hot Asian girl with a mole below her left eye.

Tomie Replay (2000) 
Original Title: 富江 replay
Translation: Tomie Replay

Starring: Sayaka Yamaguchi, Mai Hōshō, Yōsuke Kubozuka, Kenichi Endo, Shun Sugata
Director: Fujiro Mitsuishi

The second follow-up--following a 3-part anthology series that was packaged and released to theaters--to Tomie is more of a horror movie than the first and fifth entries, beginning with a horrific opening scene of a medical team trying to remove a tumor from the stomach of a young girl, only to discover that said tumor is the living head of our titular character (played this time by Hôshô Mai)! In the following days (or weeks), the surgical team goes crazy and the head surgeon/hospital director disappears. From there on out, the director's daughter, Yumi (Sayaka Yamaguchi) investigates her father's disappearance with the help of Fumihito (Yosuke Kubozuka), whose friend went insane after brings a fully-grown Tomie back to his pad

The first film was a badly-structured mix of mystery and teen drama, with Tomie's face being obscured until her seduction of an important male character in the third act. There isn't much mystery about who Tomie is or why she's dangerous, so new director Fujiro Mitsuishi plays up the horror elements (and interestingly enough, plays down the sexual ones) this time. There is a bit of a mystery in terms of what exactly happened to Yumi's father, which leads to a number of creepy moments. The film suggests that Tomie is the J-horror equivalent of Drexler's Grey Goo, although I don't think that angle will be explored until later installments. But it does explain how this movie could be set in the same universe as Tomie while having nothing to do with the events from that one. IMDB reviews suggest that this is the best entry in the franchise.

Tomie Re-birth (2001) 
Original Title: 富江 re-birth
Translation: Tomie re-birth

Starring: Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Masaya Kikawada, Kumiko Endô, Shugo Oshinari, Shin Kusaka
Director: Takashi Shimizu

The fourth entry in the series is interesting in which it jettisons all elements of mystery from the story and features a more-focused plot that can best be described as a "Vengeful ex-girlfriend" story, but with horrific overtones. The film opens with a talented artist, Hideo (Shugo Oshinari), painting a picture of Tomie (Miki Sakai), our resident narcissistic Lorelei (filtered through Reptilicus). She destroys the painting when he finishes, prompting him to slit her throat with a painter's knife in a fit of anger. With the help of his two friends, Shunichi (Masaya Kikawada) and Takumi (Satoshi Tsumabuki), Hideo disposes of Tomie's body...albeit not for long. She shows up a few days later at a party and drives Hideo to suicide, and then exacts her revenge against the other two by inserting herself their lives and turning them upside-down.

Notable for being Takashi Shimizu's directorial effort immediately preceding Ju-On: The Grudge, his entry is just as violent as the other ones, but decidedly less creepy than the previous Tomie Replay. Miki Sakai plays her Tomie less as the seductress from the first film or the cynical man-hater from Tomie Replay, but more as a master manipulator hidden behind a thick veneer of kawaii. The movie doesn't do much to further the Tomie lore, except that it posits that Tomie is less Reptilicus and more John Carpenter's The Thing, in that exposure to just a few of her cells (or strands of hair) can infect and possess someone.

Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (2002) 
Original Title: 富江 ・最終章～禁断の果実～
Translation: Tomie - Final Chapter: Forbidden Fruit

Starring: Nozomi Andō, Aoi Miyazaki, Jun Kunimura, Ryota Saito, Tetsu Watanabe
Director: Shun Nakahara

Fifth entry in the long-running film series based on Junji Ito's popular manga. The gist of the story is that there's a pretty young girl named Tomie. She is a self-centered, manipulative narcissist who is apparently irresistible to men. She ultimately drives them to insanity and ultimately murder. However, Tomie is also immortal, so she always comes back to life to terrorize other families while her murderers usually end up in asylums, prison or killing themselves.

In this film, a young girl named Tomie (Aoi Miyazaki) is a loner who is bullied at school, whose dad (Jun Kunimura, of Godzilla Final Wars and Shin Godzilla) is emotionally distant and whose mother is dead. Tomie befriends another girl named Tomie (Nozomi Andoh), who may be the same young girl that her dad carried a torch for as an adolescent, before his friend dismembered her and hung himself. Tomie #2 starts coming onto to dad, promising him that they may be together forever...but only if he kills his daughter first.

The film is more a drama with some horrific touches. I kinda liked the scenes of the two Tomie girls interacting, even though evil Tomie's narcissism is evident from the start. The film loses its footing in act two. The whole bit about Tomie #1 taking care of Tomie #2's head as it grows back into a body, reminds me of a blackly comic version of Deadpool played completely seriously. The climax is not as exciting as it should be, save a brief scene where the crazed dad unwittingly solves Tomie #1's bully problems. The ending is kind of happy, in that it implies that all characters get what they want without it having to be at the expense of the other's life.

Tomie: Beginning (2005) 
Original Title: 富江 BEGINNING
Translation: Tomie Beginning

Starring: Rio Matsumoto, Asami Imajuku, Kenji Mizuhashi, Akifumi Miura, Yoshiyuki Morishita
Director: Ataru Oikawa

The sixth entry in the series was the first one to be shot on video and not released to theaters. Director Oikawa from the first Tomie returns to direct this prequel to his own contribution the franchise, which tells the story behind the class photo that Detective-Inspector Exposition was always babbling about in the first one. Tomie (played this time by Rio Matsumoto, probably the most attractive actress to play Tomie thus far) shows up at a high school and immediately causes havoc. All the boys (and the teacher, Mr. Takagi) all fall head over heels for Tomie, while the girl clique instantly takes a massive disliking for her. Tomie befriends a girl named Reiko Matsuhara (Asami Imajuku), who becomes something of a support for her.

Like most of the Tomie films, the film isn't really scary. There is some graphic violence, including a severed here and an infamous bit (I assume taken from the manga) where the class joyfully dismembers Tomie's curse. The film suffers from too many "important" events--Tomie's murder and the subsequent cases of insanity and suicide--taking place offscreen. Those are the sorts of things I'd like to see and not just hear in narration.

Tomie: Revenge (2005) 
Original Title: 富江 REVENGE
Translation: Tomie Revenge

Starring: Hisako Shirata, Minami Hinase, Anri Ban, Hitoshi Kato, Shoji Shibuya, Itsuko Suzuki
Director: Ataru Oikawa

Seventh entry in the franchise is a DTV film and generally considered the weakest of the bunch. A doctor at a small mountain village hospital runs into a naked girl (Anri Ban) in the forest. The girl is unhurt and the doctor follows her to an isolated cottage inhabited by some of Tomie's male admirers and an unconscious girl. The girl is taken back to civilization, but is missing her memory of how she ended up at the cottage. The doctor, a single lady, takes a liking to her and even considers adopting her...until one evening Tomie's goons show up at the hospital.

Tomie doesn't really show up until the end, where she starts making (to quote an IMDB reviewer) SCUM Manifesto speeches. Although the Tomie in Tomie Replay was also a man-hater, this one feels false and forced, mainly because we haven't seen her interact with anyone up to that point. Moreover, the most we'd seen of her was through a camcorder tape showing her ordering her male admirers to kill an innocent young woman, so WTF? Also, the climax involves neither the rescued girl or the female doctor, but hinges on the sudden revelation that one of the male cast members has actually been holding a torch for Tomie, despite there being NO SCENE to establish that he'd even had any contact with her in the first place...and all this seconds after the revelation that there's a second Tomie who's feeding off the entrails of one of the male followers, zombie-style. These two events are happening within a few feet of each other, but the script focuses on the former and COMPLETEY FORGETS about the latter. WTF? And the final scenes are so completely random that I can't help but think that the entire script was cobbled together from ideas at a stage 1 brainstorming session.