Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi (2012 - 2023)

You probably haven’t heard of Koji Shiraishi’s Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! That’s fine, not many people outside of Japan have.

Shiraishi, director of found footage classic Noroi - The Curse, has been putting out episodes/films in the series since 2012. The series is now up to 10 entries as of 2023. And I think they may just be a goofy masterpiece.

The initial run of episodes (we’ll call them the File entries which are followed by 2 Super File entries and then the most recent World entry) is a wonderful pastiche of found footage meets reality ghost hunter style show. In ways it leans more heavily on the latter in terms of framing, while locking the audience in the found footage framing of herky jerky camera work and not knowing what lurks beyond the frame.

Presented by our intrepid trio of Director Kudo (Shigeo Osako), Assistant Ichikawa (Chika Kuboyama) and cameraman Tashiro (played by Shiraishi himself), the series starts out normally (for a weird Japanese horror series I guess) enough. Each episode finds the team being informed of a yokai that people have taken video footage of, they then go to investigate the area where the sighting took place, often they’ll do some experiments (can a normal human run as fast as the purported yokai does in the video, that sort of thing), speak to some experts, and then inevitably Kudo will try to punch evil.

(For those not familiar, yokai are spirits and supernatural entities found in Japanese folklore. Which along makes the show fascinating. Often people will think of yokai as demons or ghosts but they are way stranger than that. Take Toilet Hanako, featured in one episode. That’s a yokai that essentially haunts toilets, and only toilets. Or Neokmata, not featured in the show, who are old house cats that get to the end of their lives, grow two tails, move to the mountains and haunt the shit out of abusive owners. Or Tsukumogami, which are a group of yokai that ask the question what if all the furniture and cutlery from Beauty and the Beast didn’t burst into song and help Belle but instead were EVIL cause they hadn’t been used enough. Yokai are gleefully weird and the show walks a fine line between being a horror series and being bugnuts.)

As the episodes/films go on, a meta plot starts to come to the fore. From the jump, one of the reasons the series works is the banter between the trio but particularly Kudo and Ichikawa (who is awesome and the best and maybe I have a crush on her). It helps to ground the series which is otherwise just nutty.

The meta plot brings in that they have been releasing these episodes (as DVD releases) in the world of the series. So other characters recognise them from show. There is tension on how well the series is performing in its sales. And Kudo… well, we’ll come back to Kudo.

Then as we get to the 7th episode (the last of the File entries), all the threads of the series start to converge.

***

People often talk about liminal spaces. If you’ve been near Reddit in the last half a decade or so, you’ll have encountered discussion on liminal spaces. Those spaces that feel like they should have people in them but don’t. There is an uncanny sensation to those spaces, whether you encounter them in real life or on the screen.

In analogue horror (of which found footage is a subset, and this could be classed as), often the filmmakers don’t get liminal spaces on the screen. Instead they get abandoned spaces. The difference that an abandoned space HAD people in it but now doesn’t. They are often disused, no longer serving their purpose but still standing and heavy with the weight of what they once were.

I found myself reminded of the early Youtube analogue series Marble Hornets (go watch). That too made use of abandoned spaces to create uncanny sensations. Here too Shiraishi leverages those spaces that are haunted to create tension and scares for the audience. These are spaces that are beginning to crumble, that had people at one time but are now abandoned and like yokai are conjuring spectres aggrieved at being ignored.

***

If there is something that will make people bounce off Sneritsu (I’m just gonna call it that for ease, and yes, I know that means horrible or hair raising in Japanese) is the CG effects. Cause they are cheap. Like laughably cheap, and in a manner that I’m pretty sure that Shiraishi intends. But for some that will be too immersion breaking.

The thing is, I think there is a place for bad CG and not just for jokes.

Since CG started being a core element of filmmaking it has always been about reaching fidelity. Making it life like so you can’t see the seams (and yes, I have raged about how shitty the Ents look in the second Lord of the Rings film at various points in my life).

I think that underthinks CG as a tool.

This is the giant Rei head from the last Rebuild of Evangelion film. People bounced off this hard. Hell, the first time I watched the film and that happened (that’s CG, the rest of the film is mostly hand drawn animation… including everything happening in the scene around that head).

But it’s also strange as hell and uncanny like nobodies business.

Because it is something coming from outside the reality of the film. It is eldritch. It is what kept H.P. Lovecraft up at night.

In Senritsu, as cheap as it looks, it serves a similar purpose. Most of the time Shiraishi uses practical effects (and quite well. But for the supernatural he leans on CG, and at least for me it works as being something otherworldy. It looks fucking strange because it is a fucking strange thing being encountered in base reality.

***

So all the threads crash together in episode 7 and Kudo and Ichikawa are trapped in some hellscape dimension. So it is up to Tashiro to undertake a series of rituals around Tokyo to ward off the end of the world. The rituals are grissly (beat up a homeless person, chop off a finger) but suggest for the first time that there are layers ate play in the series and it’s not just a goofy lark about running around investigating yokai.

It suggests that perhaps there is a reasoning to the violence in the series. That perhaps, and this is an odd position to find one self talking about, the series positions violence as a means of cleansing and growth.

Of course, the universe ends up ending (not before Kudo suggests that he and Ichikawa should shag). and they are pulled through to the new universe that is being birthed (“Tashiro, are you getting this footage?” cries Kudo as he pledges that in the new world he will do another series like this, especially cause the film of episode 6 has apparently gone gang busters and made mad cash).

Which leads to the Super entries. The new world that has been born and the trio has no memory of the old world and what they did. History in the new universe seems to line up with the old universe up to the point of episode 7, so here Tashiro didn’t go through the series of rituals. The relationships between the characters seem to have slight shifted also (though not entirely).

One of these episodes, I swear, is Shiraishi doing a loose adaptation of Tomie by Junji Itou. These two entries are linked and seem like they may have been intended to dovetail into a meta plot again but then there was nothing for 8 years.

Then Shiraishi came back with Senritsu Kaiki World Kowasugi. For all that the series had been more layered and complex than the goofiness let on (time travel, hair talismans, toilet ghosts, exorcisms, alien snake women, the list goes on and if you like the sound of even two of these elements then why are you not watching this yet), it is here that I think might just be Shiraishi’s masterpiece. Not just of the series but his career.

Yes, before we go too far, it is filmed in the same location as One Cut of the Dead.

Good? Good.

The relationships have changed between the characters. Kudo is a producer now. Ichikawa is the director. The way they know each other has changed, and appears to be that they worked together on a film set years ago. And, most importantly, Ichikawa doesn’t suffer Kudo’s shit anymore and has a mean left hook. The entry feels like it has been crafted to be stand alone.

The crew goes out to investigate a mysterious red woman in an abandoned factory, with three teenagers in tow who sent in a video. There is time travel, there is dimension hopping, there are evil twins. But here, clearly, for the first time is thematic resonance with the characters. All 3 teens have suffered through abuse in their lives. One of them is queer, and the red woman is her girlfriend who has become trapped (in a spirit sense) at the factory where the two of them were raped by a masked man.

Yes, the goofs are still there (and Tashiro is still Tashiro), and yes there is an expert psychic (and his master) along for the ride to save the day. There’s even a giant, terrible CG fetus that is part of the monster show and part of how they save the day. But that is all a gloss on a story about love, queerness, being seen, loss, rage, madness. And it hits fucking hard.

The ending is proper daft though.

***

So what do we say about Kudo. From the jump in the series he is a hard on his luck filmmaker that things his way to riches is by documenting the paranormal (oh shit, there is a bit where Kruo and Ichikawa body swap, and she does the greatest impression of him). He’s not actually wrong about that. As the series goes on, he finds success and fortune through the films they make together.

But he is always motivated by greed. Doesn’t matter if people will be in danger, so long as they get the footage (“Tashiro, make sure you get all the cool footage”) and they make bank from it.

He is wonderfully horrible. He is violent to everyone. And that includes the supernatural. His go to move when faced with a yokai (or a human possessed by a spirit) is to try and beat it up.

(Pictured: Kudo stripped down, about to get his punchy punch on with a Kappa)

And it works. Cause that is the goofy ass world we are dealing with here.

But that is why the World entry is so wonderful and deeper than it appears. It entirely subverts the character of Kudo that we have come to laugh at and with. Ichikawa punches back now. He’s still greedy and profane and uncaring. And then it turns out, the masked man that raped those girls is a dark Kudo from another dimension. And out Kudo, having only violence as a tool can only try to punch that part of him out.

Which works in the sense that they save the day and dark Kudo is defeated. But he recognises and acknowledges that part of him will always be there because it is there and has always been there and he has to deal with that knowledge.

***

It is all weird and goofy and you kind of need to be on its wavelength to not just feel like it is a poor pastiche of Ghost Hunters but this is a series that should be more well known. For all the punchy punchy with hair talismans and all the shaky cam work that may make you want to hurl, there are depths to be explored in the world of Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi!.

You can find the whole series (wtih so-so subtitles) on Youtube.