After reading Amazon's synopsis of this film - which is quite accurate - how could I not buy this film? A Japanese soft porn musical love triangle between a female worker in a fish factory, her boss, and a mythical creature from the deep, who is part man, part turtle and part bird. Imagine Twilight, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Half a Sixpence. And yet that doesn't quite capture it.
The film is shot quite naturalistically and without any special effects. The creature is a bloke with a beak mask over his face and a turtle-shell shaped backpack. It is mostly shot under grey skies in a fish factory and on the side of a dismal harbour. The various people, apart from the Kappa, look, dress, and talk normally. So what we have here is a modern day fairy tale. The Kappa's appearance helps the lead character question her upcoming marriage and reflect upon what is important in life. Perhaps this is overstating the depth of the film; it is clearly more a throwaway piece of entertainment than a think piece, but there is more here than immediately meets the eye.
Soft porn? Not really. There's as much T&A as your typical French art house film, but no front bottoms. We do get close-ups of the Kappa's fantasy penis (cf. The Beast), which is pretty impressive in a foot-long knobbly kind of way. There is also an 'anal pearl', but you'll have to watch the film to find out what that is; suffice to say, it looks extremely painful.
The musical numbers are short and rather fun. The songs are light pop songs with catchy melodies and the dancing that accompanies them is deliberately hopeless, which makes them quite enjoyable. The musical numbers don't get in the way of the narrative and add to the ambience of the fun, low budget spectacle. The whole thing rattles along at a healthy pace and certainly never gets boring.
It is enigmatic and weird and an interesting comparison is with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. But whereas that film takes itself far too seriously for its own good, this is a fun-filled 90 minutes of endearing strangeness.