Fall in Love with Fran Rubel Kuzui’s Tokyo Pop All Over Again with IndieCollect’s 4K Restoration

Hiro’s a charming scoundrel. On their first encounter, he tries to bed her in a love hotel on a dare by his bandmates and pals, which goes about as well as an instance of mixed messages and miscommunications abetted by language barriers can go; Wendy bites his head off and sleeps in the tub, with Hiro left to cram himself on the couch. Tokyo isn’t small, but Wendy and Hiro’s chosen subculture is; inevitably but not improbably, they bump into each other again, with a happier outcome. They become friends. They become an item, too, as well as partners in rock ‘n roll, because Hiro and his buddies know that having a towering blonde gaijin on vocals can only be good for their career. What Tokyo Pop never allows is overcooked drama where the couple has to decide if they’re really in love, or if they’re just trying to hit it big. The film is genuine. It devoutly avoids putting on airs.

Music is only a tertiary matter to Kuzui anyhow, compared to her leads’ performances and her obvious affection for Tokyo. Tokyo Pop carries out the dynamic of cultural trade – the way that American fashion and music and business impinge on metropolitan Japan’s landscape, as well as the enthusiasm with which some, if not all, of those elements are embraced and repurposed by the populace. (Occasionally they’re just blithely accepted, like the junk fast food joints.) Wendy’s fish-out-of-water experience and Hiro’s black-sheep status are what bond them; she’s a stranger in a strange land, he’s a stranger in his own land, a country boy trying to prove himself as a rocker in Tokyo’s rocker scene. It’s telling that the scene where the pair grow closest is their trip to Hie Shrine, one of Tokyo’s esteemed shrines, where they leave omikuji and stroll down steps through stunning torii gates, practically glowing red.

It’s a beautifully filmed moment, and a rare beat where Tokyo Pop’s layers of othering are stripped away. Hiro is othered in his own home, a conflict resolved in a conversation with his grandfather (Taiji Tonoyama) while fishing; his dad (Makoto Fukuda) thinks he should get a real job, because that’s what dads do, and his mother (Masumi Harukawa) is overjoyed when he picks her brain about visiting the shrine. “I’m so happy!” she tells him. “You’re finally interested in Japan… instead of American things!” Wendy, meanwhile, takes a job hostessing at a karaoke joint, where she’s othered on account of her appearance, then othered further by singing karaoke, then othered further than that when the song happens to be “Home on the Range,” which she wouldn’t be caught dead singing in America. “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” suits her better, when she and Hiro duet after their meet-cute redux; it’s the song that cements their passion, and helps them get a leg up in Tokyo’s music business. 

The combination of free-spiritedness, musical fellowship, bemused culture comedy, and kindred hearts is seamless, paced with the sense that Kuzui has somewhere to be and a clear path to get there; Tokyo Pop moves briskly, a quality enhanced by the liveliness baked into Hamilton and Tadokoro’s chemistry. But the breeziness carries bittersweetness, too, the kind that weighs the heart down without smothering the high of falling in love in the first place. It’s a remarkable effect. We should all be thankful to feel it in our own lives, much less in theaters. 

Director: Fran Rubel Kuzui
Writer: Fran Rubel Kuzui, Lynn Grossman
Starring: Carrie Hamilton, Yutaka Tadokoro, Taiji Tonoyama, Masumi Harukawa, Makoto Fukuda
Release Date: August 4, 2023

Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.