Evidently,
humanity is a lot like Microsoft Windows. Future editions might have new
features that sound really cool, but they are far less stable. In the 1990s, two
very different secret experiments attempted to hasten the next stage of human
evolution. Both endowed their test subjects with super-powers, but left them
with drastically shortened life expectancies. One group faithfully serves as
the project leader’s clandestine task force, while the other went underground,
but they will face their destiny together in Takahisa Zeze’s Strayer’s Chronicle (trailer here), which screens
today during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.
Based
on Takayoshi Honda’s novel, Strayer will
be inevitably compared to the X-Men no matter how strenuously it objects. The
similarities are obvious, but there is a dramatic difference in tone. While the
Marvel franchise uses mutants as a metaphor for intolerance, often lurching
into ham-fisted didacticism, Strayer is
more concerned with its heightened sense of mortality. These super-heroes will
all die soon, but straight-laced Subaru’s government-aligned team appears to be
doing better than Manabu’s outlaw Ageha group.
Subaru
has loyally served Koichiro Watase, the scientist responsible for his condition,
but he is concerned about the recent “burn-out” of a team member. Their next assignment
will be protecting a prominent molecular scientist and ethicist, whose insight
into their condition attracts the attention of Ageha as well. Naturally, they
mix it up during their initial encounters, but their attitudes towards each
other soften as both factions get a fuller sense of the big picture. In fact,
Manabu will send one of his members to Subaru’s group, because they will be
better able to protect her. Having determined Aoi is able to reproduce, unlike
her sterile comrades, she might actually have a future to protect.
Even
if Strayer “borrows” some concepts here
and there, it develops plenty of cool twists of its own, like Subaru’s power to
see a few seconds into the future, which means he always knows where and when
to move in a fight. On the other hand, the power stealing abilities of Shizuka
(played by Sara Takatsuki, who does not get enough screen time) closely
resemble those of Rogue. The multi-leveled government conspiracy also has no
shortage of forerunners, but it takes on eerie apocalyptic and existential
dimensions in Strayer.
