2 Best Movies to Watch by Taiga Nakano

It's an incredible story, but it's one that only really deserves to be told a certain way, which director Arthur Harari gets right. Onoda's one-man crusade to continue World War II is nothing short of delusional, and Harari spends most of the film following the soldier as his companions die one by one, worsening his delusions even further. Unfortunately, even with how impressively strange this story is, 10,000 Nights in the Jungle still misses the opportunity to look through the lens of Onoda's victims. He is, after all, a literal embodiment of colonization's lingering effects, so it's sad that the Philippines here is just window dressing more than anything.

Genre: Adventure, Drama, History, War

Actor: Angeli Bayani, Chiba Tetsuya, Issey Ogata, Kai Inowaki, Kanji Tsuda, Kuu Izima, Kyūsaku Shimada, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Nobuhiro Suwa, Ryu Morioka, Shinsuke Kato, Taiga Nakano, Tomomitsu Adachi, Yuya Endo, Yuya Matsuura

Director: Arthur Harari

Adapting an old socio-political novel, especially after the great Akira Kurosawa, can be a challenging endeavor, but the team behind A Town Without Seasons does it wonderfully. The show takes the ensemble cast of the original novel’s characters and places them in the present time with modern-day technology and digital payment systems– yet many of the struggles remain the same. While this series takes a sweet, slice-of-life perspective on the inhabitants, it’s grounded by an underlying awareness that most of us are a disaster away from the town’s situation. A Town Without Seasons empathizes with its unlucky characters, by taking its time to introduce them.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Daichi Watanabe, Gaku Hamada, Sosuke Ikematsu, Taiga Nakano, Toko Miura

Director: Kankuro Kudo, Naoki Watanabe, Satoko Yokohama

2 Best Movies to Watch by Taiga Nakano

1. Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, 2021

2. A Town Without Seasons, 2023