Mikie Hara – Kirari Kirarete (April 24th, 2009)
Liverpool Productions
Catalog # – LPFD-174 – Region 2 Disc – 16:9 Aspect
Running Time: 100 Minutes

The Skinny: What do you do when you don’t understand something? Take hold of your chin with your thumb and first finger? Scratch your head? Shrug your shoulders with your hands held up in front of you?

Well this video’s theme is about clothing that is literally cut open, section by section, while Mikie is sleeping or while she is awake. Either way she is oblivious while it is going on.

We later come to discover that she is the one doing the cutting and all that came before was either a dream or an imagined event. And all that follows? We now know that Mikie is cutting her own clothes. Oh great! Only this revelation doesn’t explain anything. Nor does it make it any more interesting than before we knew.

Well Mikie’s motivation aside, it is not all that scintillating to watch. I mean if you are standing on the balcony, ostensibly awake and watching fireworks, and someone is slicing open your clothing, it is unlikely that you would fail to notice. Right?

But this is what is presented to us. Mikie sleeps, dreams, and is oblivious. She’s still a great looking model, with a body to die for. But for this type of ‘activity’ to occur and be presented to us visually, then this model must be stationary while the hand-held scissors do their thing.

Bingo! There’s your problem. Who wants to watch a model, even a beautiful model doing nothing while an unimaginable event occurs. There’s a section where Mikie is apparently being stalked and chased into a stairwell where she is cornered. But instead of adding to the supposed suspense, this leads only to more head-scratching.

And in between each of these sequences, they cut back to a park where Mikie is situated beginning in a tee shirt and gym shorts. However each time we return to this ‘home base’, the holes in Mikie’s tee-shirt have increased in size, while the overall size of the tee-shirt has decreased, and her shorts fare no better.

Yes, there are some standard sequences, like a Mikie arriving at the Guam airport wearing eye glasses, having dinner in a dimly lit restaurant, shopping for a swimsuit which will be sliced and diced, or romping on the beach of Guam’s Leo Palace Resort, a favorite location for Japanese production crews using Guam for location shooting. But there are too few of these and too many of the nonsensical and mystifying. But, to give the video some credits, there are some nice views of Mikie being Mikie (out of character) in the making of scenes.

Summary: If you look closely at the cover, you won’t see any scissors in Mikie’s hands. Geez, I wonder why?

Two point zero. Don’t blame Mikie. She’s still beautiful. Blame her agent and blame the hole-in-the-head producers over at Liverpool. Avoid.

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