Video Store Adventures: The World of "New Releases"

Yes, Japanese people still rent movies at video stores, and sometimes there are strange choices available. In this series, we will explain some of the more noteworthy titles.

Our video store has two “New Releases” racks. The first has the movies you’d expect, big Hollywood titles like Tenet or Little Women or Fast and Furious 12: Island Style. That rack is in the back of the store, and in order to get there, you first have to walk past the other rack of new releases.

This one is filled with lower-budget movies that were not released in theaters. Many of them have covers that look strikingly similar to top-tier Hollywood films. I recently learned that my wife is unable to tell the difference between these and normal movies by sight, which I guess is the point. They want to trick Japanese people like her, who won’t easily notice the lack of famous actors, into renting these lesser productions. (note: the hardest part of writing this post was finding ways to say these movies are garbage without just saying it; I mean, I’ve never watched them, so who knows, maybe they’re good.)

Let’s take a look at what’s on the “New Releases” rack right now:

Those two at the bottom say “Dead Hit” and “Danger Close”

Top Gunner! The logo is a pretty decent knockoff. However, something tells me they did not work with real F-18s in this one.

New!

Up top, we have Strange World. I think this cover is pretty well-made. I’ve never watched Stranger Things, so those could be the real kids for all I know. Sort of looks like E.T. on the left side, which is the schtick of that show, right? I’d say this one could fool an unsuspecting customer.

Now, I have to be honest about the bottom one: I genuinely did not know if this was a real sequel to District 9. I had to look it up. If there were a sequel to District 9, I can imagine it being called District-X or something like that. I tried Googling “District-X film” and was taken to District X, a movie about Chicago police officers with PTSD. It seems this is not a legitimate sequel, but it almost fooled me, so I guess that’s a win.

Kawaii!

It’s Robo-Cody! Okay, so this one probably won’t be confused with a big-budget picture…

…or will it?

On second thought, we might rent this.

According to the limited amount of text on this box that I’m able to read, this movie was made by Marvel people! Is it a Marvel movie? Did I miss one in the canon?

It appears this is a film called Cody the Robosapien, released in 2013. It was written by Avi Arad, best known as a producer on films such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, Ghost in the Shell, and Iron Man. Wow, the box wasn’t lying! This movie is a big deal! It’s also based on a toy, apparently. They’re still lying about its being a new release, though.

One more interesting image from the video store this week. They’ve set up a special display:

Please don’t miss the film on the right, which appears to be called Gonin.

“‘90s History.” I can’t think of a better set of films to represent the decade: Titanic, Men in Black, The Fifth Element, Schindler’s List, and Back to the Future 3.

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back with more titles from the video store soon!