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OK, it was hard for me to start watching Tomie: Replay. I don't mean like, hard motivating myself to pop it in. The second movie was actually pretty enjoyable. I mean, physically getting it out of the case was a huge chore. This boxed set consists of a standard boxed set looking cardboard sleave, containing a double-thick DVD case covered with snazzy color manga illustrations. Inside, on the left there's the first movie, on the right there's the last two in this double-pin configuration where you can't get to the 5th without first removing the 4th, and in the middle is this HARD plastic removable leave where movies 2 and 3 are also in this overlapping setup, with weird custom-cut pinch-down bits so as to hold them in without blocking the other disc's resting room. Since it's so hard and weirdly shaped, actually getting either disc out is kind of a chore, and of course, here I needed to yank out both... and now I kinda just have to deal with Another Face being loose while I watch this.
And of course, as I have come to expect, I have to manually go in and turn on the subtitles... which is tricky, because the title screen has this setup where there's a little white bar with "Play" "Special Features" and "Scenes", with Special Features actually being white text on black. So... that's selected, right? No. Play is selected. It has a VERY slight blue tint, pretty much unrecognizable. Moving over to special features, that quite clearly gets a blue background. Anyway though, actual movie! We start out with an 8 year old girl or so getting rushed into a hospital, with a very pregnant looking and weirdly veiny stomach. Apparently she swallowed some of the ashes from the end of the previous movie, because an ultrasound shows she's got a Tomie head in her tummy. They cut it out, she's all "'Sup? Name's Tomie, nice to meet you," and apparently chuck the whole disembodied talking head into either a tank of some sort or the ocean. Also, this movie is from the year 2000, so we've finally graduated to having decent lighting and camera work it seems.
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I would imagine we've officially hit the point where his is going to be proper horror stuffand Tomie, if only due to sheer population, is going to start posing a problem to the general survival of humanity. Ah. It was actually a fish tank in a back room apparently, and she's done regrowing. Time for some nudity avoiding strategic camera placement! And some more. Anyway yeah, we appear to be set on setting this whole movie in a hospital, which is largely abandoned. We've got two dudes in here, one of whom apparently has liver problems, the other has a manga collection I could read over his shoulder if I had a bigger TV and could read Japanese, we've got a senile old lady puttering around, and also we've got this wandering nude girl. Comic Book Guy gives her a spare shirt and brings her home. I gather he was just there visiting Liver Guy. Home is a pretty impressively tiny apartment. Tomie points out that she was born in that hospital, and all six people in the room were pretty creeped out. I have to note though that they were calm enough to put the freaky talking head they found in a fish tank and pint a camera at it.
Anyway, Tomie is starting in pretty early on screwing with this guy's head. "Ever kill anyone before? You're going to kill me I bet, I've seen that look. How are you going to do it you think? Planning to hack me up and bury me in the woods? That honestly kinda sucks what with being all dark and the bugs and worms and such." She says all this in fake-scared mode though, not awesomely upbeat casual style like usual. Meanwhile, back at the hopsital, here's some plot involving some other characters. Ponytail Schoolgirl is accusing Smoking Nurse of having an affair with her dad. Nurse is all yeah, you got me. We broke up though. Meanwhile we've also got the mother of Belly Girl talking to the only doctor who didn't immediately quit after cutting that Tomie head out of her and going crazy. I mean, he still went crazy, he just didn't quit. He's just like "Yeah, that was a weird case. Surgery went fine though, she's recovering, you can probably take her home... isn't that right ceramic doll? Then he casually jumps off the roof and lands right in front of Ponytail Schoolgirl. She... seems to take it pretty well. Also she's the daughter of the hospital's director apparently. She takes a cab home with her mom, then does a bit of belated terror vomiting.
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Back with characters we've already seen for once, Liver Guy is using a real minty green pay phone to call Comic Book Guy and see what's up. He's sounding pretty crazy and obsessive and you can hear Tomie laughing in the background while he's getting all weird about having just kinda yoinked her out of the hospital. After they hang up and we leap over that way, Tomie's back in proper snarky mode, and she's all "Wow, you broke down into a simpering wreck in like record time here didn't you. Want to call your friend back and introduce me so I can dump you for him?" At which point of course he bludgeons her to death with the phone. Meanwhile, Ponytail is reading the diary of one of the crazy docs and it's... actually pretty unsettling. See, the dude who was cutting the head out of he little girl... which... was her dad I guess? Maybe? Anyway, he knicked his thumb with the scalpel and kinda got some regenerating Tomie blood in there, which apparently was enough for a new one to start regenerating and kinda give him this whole evil hand deal. Eventually this led him to just freaking the heck out and sawing his own arm off, possibly repeatedly. So yeah, we're kinda straying from established rules some at this point, but we're getting an actual decent horror movie as a result, and I can deal with that.
So now it seems Ponytail and Liver Guy are teaming up to try and solve them a groovy mystery or two. And... extended crazy docs diary flashback montage! OK yeah. For those curious, this has officially become a decent Japanese horror movie. And there aren't even any lame drowned ghost girls in it! Also, we seem largely to have achieved the usual dynamic of nerdy dude and emotionally fragile girl are in love and investigating weirdness that is pretty much standard for all post-Tomie Junji Ito stuff. Well, most anyway. The short from the back of Gyo that didn't become a totally awesome meme is about a whole family, as is kinda the case with the spooky little 10 year old deal. Oh yeah, and Comic Book Guy took Tomie's suggestion of cutting her head off and burying it in the woods. He's kinda freaked out when he comes home to see the rest of her corpse standing there and growing a new one.
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The next day, our investigating couple go to his appartment to check things out, and find him hiding in his closet clearly not having slept and totally freaking out. Tomie meanwhile is just kinda holding onto the ceiling giving him dirty looks for feverishly gibber-shouting monster in her general direction. So... they just leave I guess. Also, Ponytail's house is like... made entirely out of wood panelling. Or is this her dad's office? Either way, I know wood panelling sounds like a normal thing to be made of but it's like... picture a videogame having a single wood panelling texture is uses for the outside of unpainted newly built cabins, and applying it to all the interior walls and doors. Anyway yeah, dead's arm is looking weird and he's freaking out and being creepy and talking in a super deep voice upon calming down... meanwhile recently decapitated Tomie goes out to the woods to find her previous head and bad mouth Comic Book Guy for calling her a monster. Head-Tomie actually is legitimately freaked out at the burial thing though, and receives a mercy-burning for not being all properly cool and fun... which may be a continuity error, or may just be for the sake of burning off the unpleasant memories for some fresh regenerating.
Anyway, after being severely freaked the hell out by her dad going all crazy and apparently having an immortal girl growing parasitically inside his arm, she demands the address from a nurse of Belly Girl, because seriously, working out what's up is important here. Looking into it, she sees a couple very clear signs that she should run. Belly Girl (still like 8 or so, in case you though significant amounts of time passed somewhere) is setting in a shed counting and bandaging her head, and her dad is looking pretty freaked out. He's Done The Research apparently, and gets that his daughter, much like Ponytail's dad, is getting gradually Tomie-fied after having gotten a liver transplant from, apparently, Tomie, which well, yeah. Don't do that. Also yeah, an immortal freak regenerating themselves within your circulatory system and generally using the rest of your mass to replace as you go is pretty grim.
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Back home, Liver Boy is all freaking out, having apparently hit some Tomie or other with his car as she was coming out of the body burying woods or somesuch. He's not being especially coherent though, which is understandable. Both start prowling about all paranoid, and he kinda accidentally pushes Ponytail down some stairs. Tomie actually was lurking about and finds this fairly hilarious. And now for a brief intermission, here's someone or other giving new investors a tour of the hospital because, well, the current owner is some kind of insane monster man who's locked himself in his office while he argues with his arm. Plus he hasn't called in to explain this to folks. Oh, he HAS been back. He decided to jump into that tank of alkaline solution they were growing that first Tomie head in and die. After discovering his freaked bloated girl-growing-in-it body, they decide to show his daughter the tape from the nearby camera of yon head growing a new body in pretty groovy stop motion.
After the funeral, Tomie sends Ponytail a letter saying, roughly, "hey, sorry for your loss. I've got Liver Guy here at the hospital (we kinda hooked up after he him with with a car accidentally) and he seems pretty broken up about it to. Wanna wheel yourself down to the hospital and talk to him about it?" Yeah, she's kinda got a broken leg what with the stairs thing... and possibly spine for that matter, if it were just the leg crutches would work, and seriously, Japan is not an especially wheelchair accessible country. At the hospital, which, seriously, apparently has no night staff at all, she follows a trail of nasty looking stains to find... a manikin with a mouth stuffed with maggots. Oh Tomie, you're such a prankster some times. This here is kinda mean of her really, but, on he other hand, she IS clearly in the camp considering her a monster. While poking around in the basement, Ponytail finds an axe, which she throws at the fish tank Tomie is standing behind when she finally finds her. "Well that was uncalled for." She then goes on to observe "Look, your boyfriend pushed you down a flight of stairs, and your dad had an affair with some nurse. I'm not the bad guy here, you just put a lot of trust in jerks. Oh and now your boyfriend's probably going to try and kill you for my sake. He sucks though, see? Look, he just hit himself with that axe. Hey, you know, you're actually pretty good at keeping together under all this stress, I don't see a lot of that, want to hang out?" Ponytail's all "You're a horrible monster!" though, so she just kinda dumps her from her wheelchair and says what the heck. Then Ponytail kinda crawls backwards and puts her hand in a puddle of acid she knocked over earlier with the axe.
Then Tomie breaks out down how no, seriously, she's not evil or anything. Guys just get totally obsessed with her and murder her all the time. She just tries to keep a positive attitude and a sense of humor about it all is all. And now a quick flashback to visiting Belly Girl there and her begging for death. Oh and then Liver Boy gets his act together, sneaks up behind Tomie, and does this honestly pretty groovy bit of decapitating her, with her body landing in the wheelchair, and sliding into a rack of flammable chemicals. Her head lands on the ground and starts laughing, because hey, it is pretty funny looking. Then Ponytail tosses it in too, and that's pretty much it. Cue happy credits music. Also, wasn't that pretty much exactly how the first movie ended? And seriously, what's with acting like fire works as a proper Tomie killer when the ending of the previous movie was specifically showing how that was not the case? Still, this one here? Actual serious decent nice looking horror movie, so hey! Also, in addition to the same 5 trailers for these 5 movies all 5 have, and the option to turn subtitles on, we've got a little gallery of original manga illustrations... which would be neat if they weren't the same 4 used for the cover montage.
