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You aren't fooling me twice Tomie series, I'm turning these subtitles on right now. Also, we seem to be starting off with the head in the bag bit again. And then a very short daytime soap style intro flashing all the character's we're going to have and who played'em. I kinda spaced out on it though. But yeah, this combined with this shaky, natural daylight bit of a bunch of kits walking home from school really isn't conveying the notion that this is a movie. I look forward to when this series gets a new director. Anyway, someone apparently wen and killed Tomie again at this here school, so people are talking about who might have done it, but then she just shows up all "What? Quit staring, it's rude." So they send her to the doctor to confirm that she's alive (or at least, that's what the narrator of this segment says), and people just assume that must have been some other, amazingly similar looking girl whose head was found in a garbage bag by a bum.
So, that issue dismissed, Tomie gets back to screwing with losers for fun and profit. Hey Glasses, you're totally in love with me right? I bought you this here bracelet. Oops, I dropped it off the overpass. You said you liked it right? Better run out into traffic and get it! Which works out just fine, but still. Then narrator gets all jealous on Glasses' behalf, seeing Tomie making out with other random guys, and gets all conspiratorial, hoping Tomie would die again, because, presumably, she's into Glasses, and really doesn't like seeing his slavish devotion get abused like this. Tomie totally calls her out as a hypocrite and pretty much gives her a "don't hate the player hate the game" speech. Narrator had the sense to have this conversation with Glasses hiding around the corner though, so... yeah. He officially goes all Jealous Rage and throws Tomie off the roof. Which she apparently gets a real kick out of, laughing on the way down. Then he starts freaking out about having killed her again. Apparently the last time she died it's because she decided she was sick of him and dumped him.
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Seriously, I love how Tomie isn't actually some horribly evil monster. She's just... kind of a snarky jerk, and people just can't deal with having an immortal snarky jerk that all guys fall instantly in love with around... and she honestly doesn't really seem to have any problem with getting killed all the time either. Kinda says some terrible things about the author's hang-ups about girls at the time he was writing this... especially looking at everything he's done since, but I wouldn't compare him to H.P. Lovecraft half as much if he didn't seem to be legitimately scared of girls in general on at least some level. Anyway, segment 1 here just ends with Narrator and Glasses dating for a bit, then having Tomie sneak up behind'em a couple days after burying Tomie and the highway bracelet in a shallow grave, all "Hey guys! Last time I saw you, you dropped this!" Again. Totally not evil.
Segment #2 is apparently from the perspective of this here big shot photographer trying to find a girl who meets his impossibly high standards of beauty. Apparently because he saw Tomie once as a kid, and it just set the bar entirely too high for the rest of his life. Also, I totally love how bars in Japan have Bar in front of their names. Like "Bar Polestar" here or "Bar Linda" in Shenmue... or was that Silent Hill 2? Those aren't two games I should be mixing up. Anyway, Photographer walks into Bar Polestar, it's empty except for the bartender, who's all Formal Bartender looking, and... he apparently has some random 60's style floozy behind a curtain just waiting for a photographer to walk in to do some posing. So... he takes a dozen or so pictures of her, then asks if she'd be willing to model for him. She being Tomie of course. That scene was kinda weird. Then she just kinda disappears, which I'm pretty sure was intended to be a metaphorical thing. He figures she's probably the daughter of the girl he saw as a kid, because apparently that detective from the first movie didn't publish all his documentation about this stuff or anything.
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Anyway, this batch of pictures all have les flares blocking out her face, because, as has been established, Tomie's face doesn't photograph. It always getts smeared out or has a second face sticking out the side, or otherwise messed up. She agrees to let him follow her around all the next day buying her fancy clothes and taking pictures though. And... oh yeah this guy. OK, in the first segment we had this dude with an eyepatch and a trenchcoat stalking around but nothing came of it, and, he's in this segment too. So presumably, he's eventually going to do something. Pretty sure he's not the previous movie's eyepatch guy, because it's on the wrong side, and doesn't seem to be hiding a weird puffy eye, but he still might be. The director for these first however many movies kinda... really sucks and does a terrible job. Like, seriously. I really wish I just had the original manga stacked up here to read, because so much is lost in the translation. This is especially clear looking at the inner cover of this boxed set, which has a bunch of original manga illustrations. Junji Ito stuff doesn't look right when people don't have harrowed despondent eyes all over.
Anyway yeah, after a day of picture taking, he takes Tomie home, sleeps with her, and the develops all those real nice high quality close-up photos he just took. He immediately freaks the hell out and goes "You're a ghost of that girl I saw when I was a kid aren't you! AREN'T YOU!" Tomie's all "Dude what the heck? A bunch of pictures you took developed wrong and suddenly you accuse me of being a ghost? That is total crazy talk. I know you're not going to accept it though so hey, how about this? Why don't you just take your hands here, and strangle me to death. If I'm a ghost, that won't work right?" So... he does. Then he's all oh good... I didn't just sleep with a ghost... but I did just murder the only girl I ever really dug. Gah! So he dumps her body in the back of his car, and drives off at high speeds. She waits a while, then gives him a tap on the shoulder. OK, kind of a sick joke, but still not evil.
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So he runs off to where he first saw her as a kid... and oh hey! There she is, looking just like she did back then! Relieved that he's apparently just gone insane, he starts taking pictures of her. At which point, the Tomie from his car hops onto his back playfully, and they argue he should really be taking pictures of both of her. He... kinda gets a bit freaked out at the whole angle of there being spare Tomies floating around and being immortal, stumbles off a cliff, and dies. The two Tomies don't really let it ruin their good time though, pick his camera up, and just kinda start posing and taking pictures of each other.
Now for our third segment, where presumably, Eyepatch Stalker will pan out somehow. Today, Tomie's going out with this here Salaryman type. He's proposing. Oh hey Eyepatch Stalker! He's apparently decided to finally make use of that knife he's been fondling and attempt some murder. They flee. Salaryman is all "OK, I think we're safe now. What a crazy bum that was, huh?" To which Tomie goes "Dude, WTF! You're not even going to call the police? Someone just tried to murder the girl you literally just got engaged to that very instant. You'd think you'd be all defending me and fighting him off and such. Heck, you know what? I'm going to go buy you your own big freaking hunting knife so you'll be prepared if this sort of thing ever happens again. Now, OK, yeah. This is kind of instigating things pretty actively, but Eyepatch here has clearly been after her for a while now, and probably has some kind of plan that's more effective than just trying to kill her, so, hey, justifiable.
Salaryman attempts to challenge Eyepatch to a knife fight next time he sees him, but he just pulls a taser, ties him up in a parking garage, and tells his story. "I used to be a coroner working for the police." Ah. Say no more Eyepatch. I can fill in the rest. We're flashing back to it anyway though. She gets up off the slab, he freaks out, she stabs him in the eye with a scalpel, and kinda crawls out while waiting for her spine to unsever. Nobody else was there to witness this though, so they just kinda figure he went insane and stole a corpse to make out with or sell to gangsters who stabbed him in the eye for black market organs or whatever. So... yeah, he pretty much devotes his life to... well, getting people to quit hacking Tomies to bits and ending up with too many spares from each chunk independently regenerating really. Presumably, this would involve rounding various instances of her up and keeping them all locked away somewhere where they can't indirectly cause any more murder-suicides.
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Salaryman is not especially on board with all this. He's not willing to kill him so Tomie doesn't have to deal with him either though, so she's all "OK yeah, you're a spineless wimp. I can do better" and dumps him. Salaryman calls Eyepatch to say "OK yeah, I've reconsidered. Bitch needs stopping. So he stabs Tomie to death, throws her in the trunk, and heads back to meet with him. Or at least, that's his story. Really, as probably shouldn't be surprising, he just set this up to get close enough to try the Eyepatch murder thing. He still kinda sucks at it though. Speaking of sucking, this subtitle timing is TERRIBLE. So, OK, plan B. "Hey, you're a real big strong competent guy who gets me. How about we ditch this loser and go make out?" He doesn't fall for it though, and sticks to his principles of stabbing her in the gut, throwing her in a dumpster, and cremating her. Because obviously there's no way a pile of ashes is going to be able to regenerate, right? Direct quote from the reforming ashes, "You are so damn stupid." Now only can I really come back from complete immolation like that, each individual ash technically counts as a separate piece. So... yeah, real great job on the population control there, we're going to all go get swept up in the wind and settle in different areas now, see ya!
Again, I'm really amused by the basic premise with these, but it's such an odd thing to franchise out to this degree. This movie gets it across much better than the first, but... where do you go from here? My guess is the complete destruction of first social order, then the human race, with a horrible tangled mass of bodies in there somewhere, but that's just because I know that's how Junji Ito tends to roll.
