“NOT TO DO” (TOMORROW X TOGETHER YouTube channel)
Jeong Dana (guest editor): “NOT TO DO” was envisioned as a “chill” spin-off of TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s original series “TO DO” “where they can just enjoy themselves.” The opening tagline of the new series mirrors that of the previous one but toned down, which makes sense, because this time around, the members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER aren’t given any tasks to complete or any to do list to get through at all. Instead, the group simply enjoys the activities the crew’s prepared for them for MOA’s viewing pleasure.

The first episode of “NOT TO DO,” released on October 20, features SOOBIN and BEOMGYU meeting with fortune-telling expert Park Sung Jun for face readings and saju readings. Their chemistry’s on full display as they dive into how compatible the five members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER are as well as the future of the group. In the second episode, released a week later on October 27, TAEHYUN and HUENINGKAI visit psychiatrist Dr. Kim Chong Gi for an objective perspective on themselves and each other, undergoing TCI, drawing, brain activity, and autonomic nervous system evaluations. They come alive as more than just artists but as individuals, with TAEHYUN opening up about how he “hate[s] eating alone” and HUENINGKAI calmly talking about certain memories he’d rather forget. They close the gap between themselves and twentysomethings like themselves watching with their candidness, like when TAEHYUN says, “Usually, whether things go well or not, I’m like, ‘It’s fine, it happens,’ but there are lots of times when I thought, ‘That shouldn’t happen.’” There’s also plenty of laughs with every little thing that comes up as the boys navigate the therapy sessions with their signature style. In the last episode, from November 10, SOOBIN, BEOMGYU, and TAEHYUN meet with personal color consultant Lee Seryeong for some insight. It’s hilarious watching each of them discover their best, second-best, and worst colors, particularly when SOOBIN’s typical wardrobe turns out to clash with the principles he’s taught. Another irresistible part of the show is how every episode ends with an improvised song capturing the group’s thoughts on their experience.

Instead of checking off tasks, TOMORROW X TOGETHER spends “NOT TO DO” experiencing things they’ve never had a chance to before, learning more about themselves in the process while also reaffirming how good things are between the five of them as they approach their sixth anniversary. Granted, it’s a shame oldest member YEONJUN was too busy promoting his first mini album, “NO LABELS: PART 01,” to join in on the fun, but “NOT TO DO” still shows off how energetic and exciting TOMORROW X TOGETHER can be just having a good time together. And that in itself is enough to finish off their to do list with MOA.

“KOKUHO”
Bae Dongmi(“CINE21” reporter): It’s 1964 at a grand New Year’s celebration in a snowy Nagasaki, and a young boy named Kikuo (Soya Kurokawa), the son of a yakuza boss, is performing a Kabuki play with his family and some gang members in the audience. The boy, gifted with strikingly beautiful features, is also an immensely talented onnagata, a male actor specializing in female roles, and his performance catches the eye of renowned Kabuki actor Hanai Hanjiro (Ken Watanabe). During that very same New Year’s celebration, however, a violent clash erupts, and Kikuo loses his father. Now alone in the world, he follows his late mother’s wish and begins under Hanjiro’s tutelage to be a Kabuki actor. There, Kikuo trains in the art of Kabuki alongside Hanjiro’s similarly aged son Shunsuke (Keitatsu Koshiyama), growing as an actor as he grows up into an adult.

The film “KOKUHO” shows us 50 years in the life of an artist, from 1964 to 2014. As a child, Kikuo is so devoted to Kabuki that he even sees sleep as a waste of time, but as a young man and artist, he becomes riddled with envy over Shunsuke’s inherited Kabuki lineage. As Kikuo begins to rise to fame, he shows signs of his personal flaws, willing to sacrifice the good graces of those closest to him for the sake of success. In the space of roughly three hours, director Lee Sang-il meticulously portrays the twists and turns that fill Kikuo’s life, exploring an evolution of art from merely a skill to full-fledged creative expression. Kikuo’s deepening artistry is underscored through his various Kabuki performances. He begins with plays like “Sekinoto,” where a princess disguised as a court lady defeats a villain disguised as a guard, then moves on to challenge himself with “Futari Fuji Musume,” a story of wisteria spirits lamenting unrequited love in song. Kikuo later performs “Ninin Dojoji,” where a growing gap between a jealous pair of lovers transforms them into snakes, and “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,” where a roadblock to marriage ends in mutual tragedy.

Zainichi Korean Lee’s “KOKUHO” is on the verge of becoming the single highest-grossing live-action film in Japanese history, having already attracted over 12 million moviegoers. The film’s approachable, audience-friendly style is a significant factor behind its success, but what really sticks with you are the film’s almost aphoristic lines, which poignantly capture the challenging yet beautiful essence of being an actor. Compared to the real world, the stage is a breathtakingly beautiful place—one where actors live out dramatic, fleeting moments and convey their emotions with their entire being. Considering how people tend to see actors as a kind of mirage come to life, how apt that seeing Kikuo should be described as being “like looking into the New Year” and “like something wonderful is about to happen.”

“Grabbing with both feet” (huijun woo)
Na Wonyoung (music critic): In the early pages of Kobo Abe’s novel “The Woman in the Dunes,” the narrator writes that the barrenness of sand “was due to the ceaseless movement that made it inhospitable to all living things,” the constant movement rendering it incapable of being fixed in place. For bassist and singer-songwriter huijun woo, life and its “truth” might just resemble the gritty clumps of sand that get caught between your toes. You look close to examine what you believe to be a living thing, but all you find are endlessly shifting particles. And when some of those grains of sand collide unpredictably or stop altogether, what comes from it is none other than death. The way woo has been putting out one record per season—she’s on her third release of the year already—feels just like repeatedly building up sandcastles only to watch them collapse, all in an effort to endure life’s truths. When you listen to the instrumental tracks that form the core of each album, you can hear shifting layers of electric guitar and every manner of noise caught in the recording collectively cutting through the central “pumping” of the heartbeat-like bass guitar like a tangled mass of raw innards. It’s grotesque in a way that recalls woo’s previous riffs on youra’s music, like an unexpectedly lifelike artificial structure standing among barren dunes.

True to the title of the EP, “Ah, the grits of truth sting my feet… and it prickles!,” producer khc has scattered countless shards of sound throughout that sting and prick at the eardrums. Unlike the soundscapes of real instruments played by fellow musicians on woo’s previous works, her new approach takes that sound and grinds it into fine digital grains of sand, flowing fluidly while subtly enhancing the artificiality of the music. The plunky bass undertones, restless orchestration, mysterious Japanese samples, glitchy acoustic guitar, slithering vocals in the chorus, and parched, brittle texture all swarm together to create something curiously writhing “ABOUT THOSE THAT I WILL NEVER KNOW.” The first three tracks come out in a single breath, with “Grabbing with both feet,” one of the singles off the EP, serving as the exhaling crescendo. The once sporadically scattered grains of sound coalesce into a rich harmony, ever tightening around each other in an infinitely dense clump of sand like those we made as kids in the sandbox. While the sound keeps up its ceaseless movement, rendering it incapable of being fixed in language, interweaving the two—sound and language—seems like it could briefly create “the excellent lies that sustain life.” Alongside the murmuring music that temporarily assembles this synthetic sense of life, woo hums as if to remind us that, “if you don’t grab the ground with both feet, your existence will drift away.” And so, standing in the middle of endless desert, we keep trying to gather up the grains of sand spilling through our toes and hold onto them.