is a 2005 Japanese film, starring

Takayuki Yamada is a Japanese actor, singer, and producer. He is best known for his role as Sakutaro Matsumoto in TV drama ''Socrates in Love'' and as Densha Otoko in the 2005 film of the same name. Yamada gained international popularity through his portrayal ...

and

Miki Nakatani is a Japanese actress and singer. She began her career as a member of the girl group Sakurakko Club from 1991 to 1993, wherein she formed the duo Key West Club with member Keiko Azuma. Nakatani focused on acting after her departure, making he ...

. It is part of the ''

Densha Otoko is a Japanese movie, television series, manga, novel, and other media, all based on the purportedly true story of a 23-year-old ''otaku'' who intervened when a drunk man started to harass several women on a train. The ''otaku'' ultimate ...

'' franchise. The film was a big success at the box office, making the story of Densha Otoko popular. It was directed by Shosuke Murakami. The screenplay was written by Arisa Kaneko, and was based on the original book by Hitori Nakano.

Plot

The film follows the basic sequence of

the drama There are two magazines with the name ''The Drama''. Around 1923, ''The Drama'' was a monthly review of the allied arts of the theatre sponsored by the Drama League of America. VOL 13 NOS. 8 and 9 was dated May-June 1923. It was edited by Theo ...

, with the lead protagonist saving a young woman from a drunk on the train. The young woman sends him a set of

Hermès Hermès International S.A., or simply Hermès ( , ), is a French luxury design house established in 1837. It specializes in leather goods, lifestyle accessories, home furnishings, perfumery, jewelry, watches and ready-to-wear. Its logo, since ...

tea cups as a thank you.

Cast

- Train Man/Densha Otoko *

- Hermes *

Eita Nagayama is a Japanese actor from Tokyo. He has appeared in many Japanese television dramas and movies; most notable is the TV series '' Water Boys''. He also appeared in ''Summer Time Machine Blues'' and '' Tokyo Friends: The Movie''. Career In 2009, ...

- Hirofumi (

hikikomori , also known as acute social withdrawal, is total withdrawal from society and seeking extreme degrees of social isolation and confinement. ''Hikikomori'' refers to both the phenomenon in general and the recluses themselves. ''Hikikomori'' ha ...

) *

Tae Kimura is a Japanese actress. She won the Best Actress award at the 32nd Japan Academy Prize for ''All Around Us''. Biography Kimura starred in Ryosuke Hashiguchi's ''All Around Us''. Her performance in the film was described by Jason Gray as "one of ...

- Michiko (housewife) *

Ryoko Kuninaka Ryōko or Ryouko is a Japanese female given name. The meanings of Ryoko vary depending on which Kanji is used to write the name. Possible writings * 涼子 – "refreshing, child" * 亮子 – "helpful, child" * 良子 – "good, child" * 諒子 ...

- Rika (nurse) *

Kuranosuke Sasaki is a Japanese actor, known primary for his roles in Japanese television drama. Biography He was born into a family of a sake brewery in Kyoto, Japan. After graduating from Kobe University and resigning from an advertising agency, he played an ...

- Hisashi (business man) *

Yoshinori Okada (born 19 March 1977 in Ōno, Gifu) is a Japanese actor. He has starred several TV series such as '' Atsuhime'' (2008) and '' Nobuta. O Produce'' (2005) as well as movies such as ''Densha otoko'' (2005). He is a high school graduate and does not ...

- Yoshiga (geek 1) *Hiroki Miyake - Tamura (geek 2) *Makoto Sakamoto - Muto (geek 3) *

Naomi Nishida is an actress. She won the Best Supporting Actress award at the 2001 Yokohama Film Festival and at the 25th Hochi Film Award for her performance in ''Nabbie's Love''. Personal life She married a Japanese shoe designer in 2005, and gave birth to ...

- Hermes' friend *

Momoko Shimizu is a Japanese former child actress who was affiliated with Horipro. She is best known for her role as Yuki Fukushima in the 2004 film ''Nobody Knows''. Selected filmography * '' Nobody Knows'' (2004) * '' Train Man'' (2005) * ''God's Left H ...

- schoolgirl *

Ren Osugi , born was a Japanese actor. For his work in ''Cure'', ''Hana-bi'' and other films, Osugi was given the Best Supporting Actor award at the 1999 Yokohama Film Festival. He often worked alongside Takeshi Kitano and Susumu Terajima. In the DVD comme ...

- drunkard

Production

The film was filmed in only 25 days and released in 35 days. Atsushi Itō and

Misaki Ito (born May 26, 1977) is a Japanese actress and model. Her maiden name is . Career In 1999, Ito became the Asahi Beer "image girl" and a model under an exclusive contract to ''CanCam'' magazine. She also appeared in commercials for Gateway comp ...

who respectively played Densha Otoko and Hermes in the television series have a

cameo appearance A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly eit ...

after the end credits in the movie. Incidentally, Yamada also appears in a brief cameo in the first episode of the TV series.

Miho Shiraishi is a Japanese actress from Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Filmography Film * ''Shiroi Fune'' (2002) * '' Swing Girls'' (2004) ''as Yayoi Itami'' * ''Densha Otoko'' (2005) ''cameo'' * ''The Harimaya Bridge'' (2009) ''as Kayo Takeuchi'' * ''Halfway ...

who had a brief minor role in the movie also appears in the TV series as a different character.

Release

VIZ Media VIZ Media LLC is an American manga publisher, anime distributor and entertainment company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ M ...

, through its Viz Pictures arm, gave the film a limited release in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

on September 22, 2006, and the

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

was released on February 6, 2007. An accompanying manga series followed. In the United States, the film premiered at the Imaginasian Theater in

New York City, New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

on September 22, 2006. It was also screened in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

Reception

''Densha Otoko'' movie was ranked 14th in the top movies in Japan in 2005, staying on in the

box office A box office or ticket office is a place where ticket (admission), tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a Wicket gate, wicke ...

's top 10 movies for 10 weeks, grossing ¥3,532,525,613 as of January 2006. It grossed over $35 million since its release.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

gave ''Densha Otoko'' an aggregated score of 60%. Pop Culture Shock's Erin Finnegan commented on the movie's ASCII art, which made the "strange transition from computer monitor to silver screen". She continues, "you might be familiar with

emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a ...

s in English internet-speak, but the Japanese use totally different emoticons. Thankfully, these symbols are clarified in the film. The bowing man art is usefully overlaid with an image of Densha Otoko bowing." Manga Life's Michael Aronson criticised the film, saying, "It’s understood that he lacks all social grace when he trips and falls in the train in the beginning, but he does so over and over throughout the film. Furthermore, the length could easily be cut by twenty minutes if Train Man could keep from stammering all the time and actually spit out a word or two. His inadequacies translate into a crippling experience for the audience who just wants to see him get the girl and call it a day. Lastly, the characterization of the girl is so bare-bones that it’s bewildering why she would be attracted to him at all."

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

's G. Allen Johnson commented that ''Train Man'' "fable ups the ante on depicting modern communication". He also commented on the chat-room messages, saying "chat-room messages are texted right onto the screen, sometimes narrated in voiceover, with such frequency that a real person saying something in his real voice to another real person can be startling".

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

' Jeannette Catsoulis commented on ''Train Man: Densha Otoko'', saying, "though its appeal may be limited to the socially awkward, the movie is unusually perceptive about the attractions of online communities while gently insisting on the superiority of flesh over fantasy. “Train Man” wants us to get off our computers and get out of the house; in a country as technocentric as Japan, the suggestion that it may be time to replace the cyber with the real is not just subversive, it’s downright revolutionary." ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...

s Drew Tillman criticises the film for its "annoying split screens" when "

rain Man ''Rain Man'' is a 1988 American road movie, road Drama (film and television), drama film directed by Barry Levinson and written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass. It tells the story of abrasive, selfish young wikt:wheeler-dealer, wheeler-dealer C ...

turns to his chat room buddies for advice on how to win

ermes ERMES (European Radio Messaging System or Enhanced Radio Messaging System) was a pan-European radio paging system. Technical specification In 1990, the European Telecommunications Standard Institute ( ETSI) developed the European Telecommunication ...

over". ''

TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or t ...

''′s

Maitland McDonagh Maitland McDonagh () is an American film critic and the author of several books about cinema. She is the author of ''Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento'' (1991) and works of erotic fiction and erotic cinema, as well a ...

criticises the film for its ending that "drags on, and the fantasy sequences are bluntly obvious (though Train Man's nightmare vision of meeting Hermes' parents is pretty funny)". However, she commends the fairy-tale romance

hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...

is grounded in authentic detail.

References

External links

* * {{Use mdy dates, date=January 2012 2005 films 2000s Japanese-language films Otaku in fiction Rail transport films New People films Films scored by Takayuki Hattori Japanese romance films Films set in Tokyo 2000s Japanese films ja:電車男#映画