OK, so Seven Days in Japan has a tenuous connection to comics, in that it's all about Japanese pop-culture, especially anime and manga, and that stuff is pretty deeply intertwined with comics right now. I'm reviewing it on the site for that reason and two other important ones. One is that the narrator/film-maker and trip-goer in Seven Days is my good buddy Joe D., who worked with me at Psycomic (see, another comics connection) and the other is... it's really really good. Good enough to have taken home the prize for Best Documentary at Comicon earlier this year (see, another comics connection!) If you're a fan of Japanese culture and you've never taken the trip, Seven Days is a must, because it gives all the flavor of a fun trip to Japan focusing on the pop-culture aspects without the expensive air travel and hotels. Even if you're not, though, Seven Days is a great show for anyone with even a mild interest in Japanese culture. Try to imagine The Real World if it weren't dead-set on creating fake drama and pissing people off or vacation footage from your cousin's trip if your cousin had a wicked sense of style, great taste in music and a sharp skill for editing.
Here's the upshot: Seven Days in Japan is about a group of people who hooked up with a website (Pop Japan Travel) and took a seven day trip out to Japan. The focus was on anime and manga, but it included a visit to all parts of the culture, and the trip involved several group activities but clearly had some room to maneuver on your own as well. Doughrity, for instance, had a great time examining how black culture had migrated into Japan, with such phenomena as "ganguro girls" (girls who use tanning, expensive hair styles and fashion to adopt black culture) and kickboxer and marketing phenomenon Bob Sapp. Doughrity explores the continuum that runs from J-pop to hip-hop, and does it all in a way that is completely approachable even if you're not anywhere on that particular scale in your tastes.
Doughrity definitely puts his own personality stamp on the show, narrating the piece with an informative but casual air that is kind of like getting a tour from a good friend who really knows what he's talking about, but knows that you might not. There's some fun humor in his often-times amused (but never condescending) look at Japanese culture, and there's something genuinely touching about a guy who grew up on Mobile Suit Gundam getting to take a ride in a real Gundam... even if the pilot outfit provided didn't fit his XXL frame as well as he might have liked. It's all very approachable and fun, and by the end you feel as if you know not only Japan, but Doughrity and his traveling companions, a little better. Maybe most notable is the flamboyantly red-haired and utterly charming "Aka-San," the African-American tour guide who has Japan all dialed up given his many trips there. One of the great bonus features on the DVD is a 15 minute feature wherein Aka-San relates various stories of his travels and experiences in Japan, and they're every bit as entertaining and informative as the main feature.
The Seven Days tour puts Doughrity and his dozen or so traveling companions into a number of interesting locales and situations. Some of the best moments in the film come from the more spontaneous events, such as meeting up with the "Freaky family" in McDonald's or Joe's last night having dinner with friends of friends in a Friday's, but Doughrity has a good eye for what's entertaining and what's not no matter whether it originates from the tour or not. The film includes stops at the Bandai museum, venerable animation studio Studio Pierrot and the Tokyo Dome (a giant amusement park/arcade/events center, basically) as well as less pop-culture and more just plain culture stops like the cherry blossom trees in Ueno Park or a district with more temples, statues and less modern, poppy Japanese culture. There's only so much you can fit into seven days' worth of travel and 30 minutes worth of video, but Doughrity provides a pretty good, quick and fun overview that might tickle the travel bones of those with an adventurous spirit and an interest in Japan.
Seven Days in Japan is also pretty polished, as far as film technique goes. The whole thing is shot handheld, and usually on the go, so it is at times not framed perfectly, almost closer to the kind of thing you'd see on Cops than traditional documentary filmmaking, but Doughrity's eye for shot composition is pretty solid, polished from years of work in film, and the film is definitely edited in a way that is pleasing to the eye and fast-moving. In addition, there's a nice complement of music that gives the film a nice flavor, adding to the personality that Doughrity infuses in it with his narration.
Bottom line, Seven Days in Japan is a really fun film, must-watching for anyone with even a casual interest in Japanese culture, manga, anime or even just travel as a general rule. It's also dirt cheap ($10+shipping), and you can buy it HERE. I can't recommend it highly enough.
