Team Manriki is a video creative group whose core members are comedians Nagano, Saito Takumi, Kaneko Nobuaki, and Shimizu Yasuhiko. Based on an original story and screenplay by Nagano, the film "MANRIKI" is produced and stars Saito, with Kaneko acting as music director and Shimizu, a video creator, making his feature-length directorial debut. The film centers around a facial plastic surgeon who uses a vise to correct facial contours, and explores the depths of people's hearts beyond superficial beauty.

Saito began filming first, and then Nagano, clad in a "MANRIKI" T-shirt and cat mask, burst in. "He always comes up with something new every time," says a cheerful Saito, while Nagano changes his expression and pose in front of the camera. The two, who have collaborated on short films and other projects, spoke about their team, their aesthetic sense, and one thing that's present in "MANRIKI" but not in the much-talked-about film "Joker."





--Team Manriki is a unique team made up of people active in a variety of fields. How did you come together? 

Nagano: To put it simply, we knew each other from the start. Saito and I met on a TV show and we started interacting. I appeared in his short film "Balancer," and he'd been inviting me on his radio shows even before I became famous. Director Shimizu heard about me through someone and came to see me perform live in 2011. So they asked me to appear in a music video, and I ended up appearing in GLAY's "everKrack" music video, even though I wasn't selling at all. It was a crazy production. They cut off the three-minute song in the middle and added about seven minutes of my own material. It was really unpopular with fans, so they made an unofficial version that cut that part out...

Saito: They put it back together, with a vise (laughs).

Nagano: They put me in a vise and made it so I wasn't even there (laughs). That version got more views. After that, I was invited to Director Shimizu's wedding reception and performed my material, and Kaneko Nobuaki, who was in attendance, saw it and was really moved by it. This story is centered around me, but Kaneko and Saito are connected; they've known each other for a long time and resonated with each other.

Saito: Team Manriki was founded on the film "MANRIKI." We formed a team to make short films, but I actually see it as us forming the group to make "MANRIKI." Including SWAY (a rapper and one of the cast members), we already had a lot of close friends from various fields who were perfectly suited to the job of making the film. Furthermore, after seeing the film, some people, like Kitamura Kazuki and Itaya Yuka, started to show interest and said they wanted to work together, which made me think that maybe we didn't need to disband. I now feel that if we stayed, it would make for an even tougher party. It's surprising, though, since we didn't form the group for that purpose.




--I heard that "MANRIKI" was started when Nagano felt uncomfortable with the so-called "small face boom."

Nagano: It's not a particularly bold theme like feeling uncomfortable, but a few years ago when I appeared at Tokyo Girls Collection (TGC), I was doing treatments backstage.

Saito: There were huge lines, weren't there? Actresses and models.

Nagano: Yeah. People who were like, "My face is already small, and I have a great figure!" They were also lining up for the small face photo booths. They were like, "Your face is already small, you want to be photographed even smaller?" At the time, Saito-kun was there for another project, and we got excited talking about it, saying, "If you want to make your face that small, why not just tighten it with an arts and crafts vise?" The next day, Takumi-kun contacted me and said, "Nagano-san, what about that movie story?" That was the start. At the time, I had the naive idea that if there was such a thing as "Saito Takumi", it would come true right away, but it wasn't that easy. As time went on, the content gradually developed from the idea of a small face.




--Was it originally intended to be a kind of "small-face skit"?

Nagano: It started out as a conversation where we were laughing out loud while making funny faces. I wasn't thinking about depicting what was going on in my own mind or my own brain. However, Saito-kun had always told me, even before I became famous, that "Nagano-san's skits are cinematic." If we had just clamped his face down with a vise it would just be splatter, but that's not what we ended up with. This is an afterthought, but I don't think that if Saito-kun, I, Shimizu-san and the others had gotten together we would have ended up with a "small-face splatter" skit.




--The photography was done by master fashion photographer Arai Toshiya.

Saito: It's amazing. He's not the type to shoot so-called horror films, so the angle of view is different and the footage is very cool and unusual. 」 English:





--The female model who appears at the beginning, swept up in the small face craze, is supposed to be self-conscious about what others think, but once she's satisfied with her facial correction, she stops caring at all about how others see her. That scene was powerful, and it made me think about what aesthetic sense really is. Nagano: Even before you were cast as the lead role of the facial plastic surgeon, Takumi said that you "really wanted to see in the film" a scene of the model walking happily with that man.

Saito: Right. That's the point. To an outsider it may seem excessive, but the people involved don't think so. I think the end result of that kind of exploration might be a culture unique to Asia. Foot binding is one example, but the idea of "endurance" is a different aesthetic concept from the West. This is also the theme of this article. For example, people who repeatedly undergo plastic surgery become dependent on a situation that cannot be maintained without further intervention. At some point, they lose all sense of the outside world, become self-centered, and cross the line. All the people around them who used to cheer them on are suddenly gone. But somehow, you knew that future was coming. I think that's very realistic. I talked about this with Nagano at TGC Night, and if there's a theme, it's this.





Nagano: When I first started appearing on TV and garnering attention, I received a ton of negative comments on social media about my appearance. At the time, lots of people would come up to me and ask me to pose with them for photos. When I took the photo, I stepped back a little, and when I uploaded it, people said, "Even though it's the same pose, your face is so different in size."

Saito: I'm waiting for that comment.

Nagano: That's right. It's all about perspective, and the size of your face has nothing to do with it. That's when I thought, "That's impressive," about people. I got comments like, "How can you survive with a face like that?" On the other hand, those same people are incredibly kind to those they see as inferior. I hate the hypocrisy of saying things like, "I care about you," when the other person is weak. There's a scene in the play that depicts that.

Saito: At the beginning, you mentioned that we "resonated with each other," but I think Nagano's material confronts the Japanese spirit of berating and exposes our wounds. I've always felt like I was looking into my own heart, wondering, "How does he know me?" and that feeling has been swinging ever wider. The truly tough side of Nagano-san is that he uses external pressure to his advantage and turn it into his own material to bounce back.

Nagano: Yes, that's true.

Saito: I think that's what a creator is at their best. I think it resonates with us in this day and age, where blades of fire attack anyone from any angle.


--Indeed.

Saito: I hope this work will be a return ace for Nagano-san, all of us involved, and everyone who sees it. I just remembered something. Take "Joker," for example. It's a wonderful work, and there are many things that "MANRIKI" doesn't have, but I think there's one thing that "MANRIKI" has that "Joker" doesn't, and that's that it doesn't evoke sympathy. Even characters who appear to be victims have a poisonous side. We all have both. So it's a world where you say, "You may not be able to love the people in this work, but this is you," and that's something that can't be portrayed in Japan today. Entertainment is about empathizing with someone and portraying good and evil through that person's filter. In that sense, it's a very rare work. That's why I understand why it was rejected by various film companies. It's a type of angle that isn't being made these days, so there was a discrepancy with the judgment of companies thinking about the film industry. But I think that what was born out of that discrepancy and friction is a cinematic, a true counter. Even though it took three years to realize and I was constantly turned down, I was also excited, at the same time as feeling frustrated. When it was completed, it was very well received overseas and has been appreciated by sensitive people in Japan as well. I made this film with a desire for revenge throughout, but I think that never-ending creativity is incredibly important. That's why something came through in the film. I think it's a miracle.











photographs : Naoto Hayasaka
text: Yuki Tominaga