"No blondes were hurt in the production of this motion picture"

...was the credit at the end of "Stratosphere Girl".

Billed as a European-film-meets-Japanese-anime; it's a German film of a Belgian girl that draws comics quite well who goes to Tokyo and becomes a "hostess" and discovers a coverup about a missing former "hostess", which gets her into a bit of hot water. Or something like that... it gets a little weird and it's hard to tell what this film is really trying to do.

Which is okay. But it was really quite amusing to see anime "camerawork" being used in an actual real-people film. A lot of the anime-cliche-type reaction shots and mise-en-scene and whatnot were plentiful. And the plot was, well, a tad thin. But it sure was stylish. And the girls were... *ahem* hawt.

(and none of them were harmed in the production of that motion picture.... *ahem*)

Anyway, the only substantial thing I've taken away from this is just how alien Tokyo seem to be. At least from this particular perspective. I'm sure if I add up all the various slice-of-life bits of fiction, from various animes to "Lost in Translation", I'd probably come up with a better representation of reality over there, but it'll take a little something to clear out the slant that this picture painted.