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It is the final moments of the championship bout of the Japanese Pro Wrestling Federation, an old-school sort of professional wrestling, from the modern American point of view: these are men in simple black trunks, using their own names, who truly appear to be giving this fight their all. The mood is tense. The wrestlers are sweaty and resolute. But then, one of them, Koji Taguchi, gets his opponent into his signature hold: the dreaded reverse-inverted full nelson. The fight is over, and Taguchi is the new champion; Federation Commissioner Kamohashi enters the ring and presents Taguchi the championship belt. Taguchi holds it aloft, both hands in the air, elated.

Then, it is torn from his hand. A hush falls over the crowd. There, in the opposite corner of the ring, is a very large squid, perhaps seven feet tall standing upright on its tentacles; its eyes are huge and grim. It holds the prize belt now. There is only one thing for Taguchi to do - grapple this disrespectful cephalopod. The squid does not prove as tenacious as the human opponent, and it is but moments before it is in the grip of the reverse-inverted full nelson. But then, horror of horrors, the calamari slips right out of the unbreakable hold! “Joint locks don’t work on an invertebrate,” observes one of the ringside announcers! And in just seconds, it is Taguchi who is pinned! Oh, what has become of this noble sport?

So begins The Calamari Wrestler (Ika resuraa in the original Japanese) a 2004 film directed by Minoru Kawasaki.

After the squid defeats Taguchi, speculation begins to arise that it - or rather, he - is in fact the transmogrified Kan-Ichi Iwata, a famed wrestler thought to be dead. This is based largely on his demonstrated wrestling style, which must have been very distinctive indeed to be recognizable when used by squid, and his love for a certain sort of red bean rice cakes. Meanwhile, Taguchi is consumed by a lust for vengeance, alienating his girlfriend, Miyako, who also happens to be Iwata’s ex. Taguchi demands a rematch, which Calamari¹ is only too happy to grant. The Wrestling Federation will stage the rematch on one condition: that Calamari throw it. But the giant marine invertebrate simply loves the sport too much for that. As he awaits the inevitable change of heart on the Commissioner’s part, Calamari becomes a popular celebrity in Japan, and is often mobbed by admirers as he goes about his business of buying sardines, playing with children in the park, and wooing Miyako, with whom he eventually enjoys a sensual but tastefully-shot love scene.

Calamari - confirmed to be Iwata, by now - wins the match with Taguchi, of course, but not before Taguchi has himself been transformed into a large, red octopus. Calamari’s fame only grows. Then, things get weird. Out shopping with Miyako, Calamari is attacked on the street by a large, humanoid squilla, this being a sort of shrimp. The squilla demands his own match, and he is a very dangerous opponent indeed. Can Calamari defeat this savage new contender? How will Taguchi deal with all of this? Will Japanese wrestling be changed forever by these events? Oh, man.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about The Calamari Wrestler is that it is, in many important ways, not especially remarkable. One could very nearly criticize it for being too formulaic, too by-the-numbers. Stay with me: If you take all of the characters that are immense versions of ocean animals, and turn them into normal humans, what you have here is a totally ordinary sports movie, decently made but pedestrian. There’s the good-hearted hero who must resist the temptations of fame, the potent villains with personal connections to him, redemption, come-from-behind victories, all that sort of thing. There is a punch that lands in slow motion, with sweat flying everywhere! You’ve seen it all before.

For the most part, The Calamari Wrestler is well-paced, and hangs together nicely, save for a third-act “Who Is My Real Dad?” subplot that comes out of nowhere, is inadequately explored, and then insists on being very very important to the denouement. But this is the only serious flaw in an otherwise tight narrative. There are some scenes where the sound has a hollow echo that screams “student film,” and the acting is all over the map: Osamu Nishimura as the human Iwata is flat and ludicrous, while Kana Ishida, as Calamari’s concerned and doting girlfriend, does some very fine work in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable. But it’s really quite a competently made film in most respects, if maybe a bit predictable. Except there’s this squid.

Like the movie as a whole, the squid is realized in a workmanlike but imperfect manner. Let us put it this way: No Godzilla monster has ever looked more like a man in a suit than does Calamari. You will not believe that a squid can wrestle. In the movie’s defense, though, it does appear to try its level best with a limited budget. Some good work is done with flailing the tentacles about, to give them the illusion of life, and the eyes are startlingly expressive. But at the end of the day, there is really no way to bend a human being into the shape of a squid.

But this isn’t really the question, is it? The question is “Why?”

Squid are not an animal with any special cultural resonance in Japan, beyond what they have anywhere else; they’re weird, they’re tentacly, they live in the ocean. Some of them are giant. They are a more common food item than they are in most of the West, and indeed, all of the references to squidishness in this movie are either gastronomic, or to do with the simple facts of squid physiology. The film doesn’t give us much more to work with, and it certainly doesn’t justify the fact that there’s a squid in it. The closest it comes is when Calamari is told, “Nobody embodies the utter chaos in today’s Japan better than you.” The point is later repeated, for emphasis. This chaos is further described as political and economic anxiety, as well as viruses - nothing to do with seafood or soft mollusks at all.

So the squid is essentially an absurdism. Director Minoru Kawasaki is trying to be weird. It’s something of a signature of his; since Calamari Wrestler, he has made such films as Rug Cop (about a policeman who uses his wig to fight crime) and Koala Executive (which is self-explanatory, except the koala also goes on murder sprees).

To be clear, he’s not trying to be funny, not exactly. There’s no comic timing, no mugging, no gag lines. In fact, the whole thing is played so straight that it actually becomes weirder as a result. Calamari shops, wakes from nightmares, and has training montages all in a perfectly human manner. In the world of the film, he is thought of as a novelty, and no more. One old man objects to squid in the wrestling ring, but he does so as though someone had wrestled in women’s clothing; he just doesn’t think that’s right. Most confoundingly, and delightfully, of all, we never hear or see how it is that all these people are turning into giant invertebrates. Taguchi, bemoaning his loss as an octopus, is told, “Then turn into a crab or sea urchin or something.” Look, man, just transform into an ocean animal and quit your bitching!

And he certainly has every reason to change into another ocean animal; basically, it’s a plan that can’t miss. When Iwata changes from squid to human after a night of passion - and isn’t that always the way? - the first order of business is to change him back. The phrase “degenerate into a human” is used at least once. The Wrestling Federation wants Calamari to throw the match because, as a symbol of chaos in Japan, his defeat would be meaningful to Japan’s psyche. His weirdness shall provide a scapegoat. But instead, Japan rallies behind him. In the final analysis, it is his weirdness, and the weirdness of those around him, that saves the day.

This is a message I can get behind. There are those who would say that this is a message all of Japan can get behind, and that this movie is proof of it. But in fact the opposite is true. This film isn’t crazy; it knows precisely what it is doing. It’s intentionally surreal, and surrealism doesn’t work without normalcy to play off of. It is certainly true that the Japanese movie industry was much, much more likely to produce this picture than Hollywood was, but that has little to do with the film’s actual intent and effectiveness; it makes near as much, and as little, sense to the American viewer as it does to the Japanese. Hats off, then, to the Japanese studios, for having the courage or imagination to subsidize the bizarre.

Next on “Low and Outside:” Hybrid: The Roleplaying Game, and the problem of satire in a world gone mad

Edited by Matt Schneider