One of the biggest merits of the Kowloon Generic Romance manga (and subsequent anime) is its ability to set a mood. In portraying a tense blend of romance and science fiction there’s a tension that’s infused with an unknown nostalgia for an unfamiliar yet recognizable communal past that reverberates through its setting. It transforms its sense of place into a character of its mystery in and of itself, and arguably its finest.
While I perhaps wouldn’t go as far as this in describing its unique vibe, the series certainly shares similarities in its mood to the works of director Wong-Kar Wei, particularly in how it tries to portray the unspoken connection between two people in the multi-layered, multi-faceted locales that created and separate yet connect them. However you describe it, you would think the film would find a natural home in live-action compared to other mediums.
You would think that, wouldn’t you? Except, it’s a mess.
The story is set in Hong Kong, more specifically the Kowloon Walled City famous for its visually-inscrutable high-rise buildings and labyrinth-esque streets so densely packed that they give it the appearance of some alternate world. It’s within this space that the Wong Loi Realty Company is based, with two of the employees working there - Hajime Kudo (Koshi Mizukami) and Reiko Kujirai (Riho Yoshioka) - developing somewhat of a romantic connection. But not all is as it seems. For one, Reiko is having images of another life where they’ve been together, there’s a weird religious preacher going around, never mind the disappearances. They live a normal life nonetheless, sharing lemon chicken and other things for lunch regularly and going about their routine, but it’s hard not to feel there’s something more sinister behind the walls of this dense cityscape.
A mystery in such an unusual place with a touch of the supernatural in part from the cult-like devotion bubbling underneath the surface should have a sense of the surreal and unusual running through it, and yet that’s completely missing in this film. Indeed, for a film set in a location so well-known for its unusual topology that the source material embraced, it’s surprising and the film’s biggest crime that there doesn’t even appear to be an attempt to recreate this on the big screen.
I think in such a case to a film like Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan: At a Confessional, a story certainly flawed but at least felt steeped in the history of its location by making the efforts to reach out to local filmmakers and produce the film entirely in its setting of Venice. For a story reliant on the steeped-in Catholic doctrine and history of its setting, there was no other choice, and how it looked and its production setting were most certainly that film’s strongest assets. Though the credits for Kowloon Generic Romance suggest the team did visit Hong Kong for producing aspects of the film, much of the production feels completely devoid of its setting and the depth of place necessary to build the film’s atmosphere. While they share history due to proximity and colonialism, their divergent development, particularly in Kowloon, makes them very different places, even if you could be fooled that they were identical due to the portrayal here.
This manifests even in the film’s earliest sequences, where we’re first introduced to the characters and their typical uninterrupted routine in the city. Reiko is almost late for work, but her abrasive-yet-caring relationship to her work partner manifests here with the fact he makes great pains to punch a time card in such a dramatic and last-second way that she ends up late by default. Annoying, but they can’t stay mad. They grab food at their familiar spot, they disagree and talk, but there’s a connection.
The office, however, feels more in common with a Japanese workplace than what you would expect for such a company in the region. The shop they visit for food is a Chinese restaurant, but the street lacks the claustrophobic feeling of the city for something more akin to a Japanese street, or at most a Chinatown. This is felt in every location for the film, a poor imitation of the place the film is supposed to be set in that’s a result of not making the effort to film on location or go to the extra effort of recreating that vibe. It makes the film look and feel cheap, but its impact spreads to the story.
Much of the atmosphere of the series was built from the legend of its place and the way its almost-trapped feeling exasperated the stakes of the story. By failing to recreate this space, the story is exposed and lacking the thing that made it a page-turner and intriguing in the first place. Its characters were enhanced by their links to this space, the threats more sinister because you can’t escape. The film looks flat, and everything falls flat as a result.
Without atmosphere any mystery of the place disappears. Without mystery, there’s merely a series of events that happen disconnected from the viewer, as though the events are occurring before us without actually being connected or feeling like they’re of importance enough to register. Hints of a darker underworld connected to the occult, disappearing people by forcing them beyond the walled city, the connections to the past and the lost memories. These are questions that could build to an intriguing and alluring story and, indeed, do in their source. But they feel meaningless here, and as things begin to reach a crescendo and the questions begin to be answered, you’re left shrugging shoulders rather than shocked or enthralled.
After much anticipation and love for what Kowloon Generic Romance can be in this format, I was highly disappointed with what I saw. The credits rolled and I felt relieved, and had I not been taking notes as I watched I would have soon forgot what happened by the time I reached the train home, so little did the story impact me. Whereas the industry has shown what great stuff can come by embracing a series’ unique aspects in adapting it to live action, this feels like everything an adaptation shouldn’t be, only more egregious when this could be truly great. A lack of care, a feeling the film should be made without a desire to create it, permeates. When the film’s core ideas of self-belief and trusting someone with all of yourself should shine, I’m cold.
The source material is a love letter to a place and people. This is none of that.
