Gonna Buy Housenka Back From Saudi Gov, Rerelease Days of Memories & KOF For Girls, Give Them Sequels, And Make A RPG Based on the Iori Fantasy Novel

Housenka is one of the movies I saw at that one animation festival in Paris late November. See this article on Hateshinaki Scarlet for details. 

Just like most of my anime/games impressions article, there is a slightly longer (don't expect too much) slightly more personal version of the article on Ko-fi for tier 1 subs. It's 5$/month. I'm not gonna go homeless or anything if you don't sub, but it could help me do more videos and articles. One of my goals is to get over 100 subs one day and make "woke otaku games journalist" my main job, with daily articles, translations, videos, etc.

Housenka  / The Last Blossom was first released in Japanese theaters on October 10, 2025. It's not shonen jump related so I highly doubt it'll be released in theaters in France, probably not in USA nor in other countries either. There's a licensing company who announced acquiring the movie in France but I doubt they'll actually release it in theaters.

I don't have a lot to say about Housenka itself, besides that it was good. Not a masterpiece but still a nice movie. It made me want to check out Odd Taxi even more one day. They share a lot of common staff: Kinoshita Baku as director, Konomoto Kazuya as main scenarist, etc. 

It's a yakuza movie but not too serious and more like a family drama or something. It was fun. Most of the movie is set in the 80s, with a few scenes in the 2010s, showing how Japan and the Yakuza changed. If you like Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio games you'll definitely like this movie. The characters are fun and written pretty well, cool chemistry, nice moments, funny jokes, etc. The sole female character of the movie, which you see in the trailer above, also strongly reminds me of another character. I'm sure of it. I can't remember who though. I feel there's another character I know with the exact same haircut. Please let me know in the comments if it rings a bell.

Since I watched this at an animation festival, each movie was introduced by an MC. For Housenka, it was a fellow JP pop culture journalist. I never heard of him, but because of his way of speech, such as mainly using the word "japanime" rather than "anime", and pronouncing "anime" with a muted "e", I initially thought he was like a 50+ journalist doing this for decades. I was far in the audience so couldn't see his face much. Back home, when I looked up his name, it turns out he's around the same age as me lol.

While introducing the movie, he also talked about himself a little, and how dire the situation is for games, anime, and specialized journalists in general. He also said something I regularly say myself, that anime is seen as mainstream but it's mainly always the same things getting pushed be it by fans, the industry, or journalism. For example anything joseimuke (primarily aimed at a female audience) rarely every gets into the spotlight. Same thing for Kodomomuke stuff (primarily aimed at children). That's why no one talks about Pretty Series, since it's primarily for little girls.

This is a vicious circle because back home in Japan, most companies only do sequels, remakes etc for shonen jump stuff popular in USA and Europe. Lotof executives and higher-ups in Japanese companies are downright misogynists too and don't handle joseimuke with the same care as other stuff.

To be honest if I was in that journalist's place, standing in front of an audience, I probably would have done the same thing and talked about the condition of journalism. Even if it's a bit pointless, as sadly most people don't care. I would have been even harsher and downright said that games media in france is dead, because it is.

And the current global push with every site and journalist becoming independent and asking for paid subs is a good thing on paper, but it's only strengthening the lack of Black people in pop-culture discussion. Not to complain, but everyone will go sub to Giant Bomb and other white dude journalists they've been following for decades, not to a black journalist "only" doing this professionally for 7-8 years and talking about otaku games that surface-level leftists think are problematic like Dolls Nest.

Anyway thanks for reading look forward to impressions on the other movies I saw at that festival. Should be coming shortly insha Allah. You can signup to the newsletter if you wanna get new articles via email.