The development of Washimiya Monogatari is a surprisingly long and storied one. Shortly after the otaku boom by Lucky Star in 2007, the city of Washimiya was scrambling to figure out how to capitalize on it. In 2008, Keiichi Kitagawa, (assistant director to the Ju-On films and several TV dramas) called in to suggest producing a short film to promote the town and boost local spirits.

The first resulting short was a low-budget affair, shot on crummy handycams and full of interlacing artifacts, but it was also full of off beat sight gags and parody references to everything from Evangelion to Hatsune Miku. It showed a certain manic energy that allowed them to get the okay for a bigger-budgeted, more slickly produced version. Finally in April of 2010, the production for the new, improved Washimiya Monogatari was complete.

The film opens in mockumentary fashion, done as a low-budget anime where the newly reformed town council of Washimiya has banned all otaku goods as a public nuisance, complete with x-ray scanners at Washinomiya Shrine. However, a small band of men and women who love their pleated short skirts are forming a rebel band against the wicked machinations. It’s all coming down to the all-out war prophesized in Otaku no Video…

“Dude! Even with 100 million yen you couldn’t do it!” cut to live-action as we meet young Takashi Miyata (D2 pretty boy Toru Kamitsuru), a young film director who is being called back to his childhood home of Washimiya. From here, the show mostly becomes a social dramedy in contrast to the farce of the original short. Here, we follow Takashi getting reacquainted with his town and his relationship with tsundere-next-door and shrine maiden Naoko Washio (AKB48 lovely Yuka Masuda). All the while, Takashi struggles with how to create an entertaining film that showcases Washimiya as something more than the workplace of Lucky Star’s Izumi family. As Takashi calls up his buddies Kensuke (Kenki Yamaguchi, also of D2 fame) and Ayame (Ayumi Orii, an AKB graduate), the four plot together on what to pitch the town mayor, but oh noes, they can’t agree to anything!

 

Being a production with the goal to promote the town, the story frequently takes a backseat to interviews with local (mostly aging) residents. These turn out to actually be the most intriguing and moving scenes in the film. Interviews with an elderly shop owner worrying about Washimiya becoming a ghost town in 20 years or even casual establishing shots of a mostly empty kindergarten ring with more sincerity than the forced antics of Takashi and his buddies.

Kitagawa seems to have realized this too. One of the most moving, if melodramatic, scenes in the film involves the eventual premiere of the film. After long deliberation between a tokusatsu flick, the aforementioned mockumentary and an Initial D parody, the result is a goofy mecha show that features the omikoshi shrine of the town transforming into a Mazinger Z rip-off that leaves the residents utterly puzzled. In a cheeky moment of meta-commentary, the characters shrug and say, “Well, at least we got it out there.”

However, as the noise and excitement die down and the audience leaves the theater, it’s revealed that Takashi has put a little coda to his flick: a montage of exteriors of every shop in town as he solemnly reads their names, like victims in a disaster. To anyone who has walked through the streets of Washimiya in its off-season, it’s both touching and heartbreaking to see the uncertain future of this unique little town crystallized in such a fashion.

It’s hard not to be of two minds about the film as whole. As a movie for entertainment, it is less than a sterling success. Kitagawa has obviously done his homework on otaku, but he seems to have missed Genshiken.  The unfortunate result is that the characters remain without depth and are overshadowed by the cliché pandering, and even the cliché pandering is overshadowed by the agenda. Those three aren’t mutually exclusive – just look at any Michael Moore film – but Washimiya Monogatari collapses under its weight.

Yet, it’s impossible to hate it. For all the failures, there is a certain can-do nature to the film and, for overseas fans, the peek at a Japan that is so often overlooked when it isn’t over-idealized is worth looking at whenever it hits the DVD market. Okay, maybe the shots of Ayumi Orii in a plastic superheroine skirt have something to do with it too.