I watched this in the movie theater in the Toho Building in Kabukicho!!! For that day I knew I was going to hang around the area all day to fulfill a lot of Like a Dragon tourism, and I had entered a lottery to see a cool-looking live show (天號星, which come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I only heard about because I think Nao Kakuta tweeted about seeing it) but I didn’t get into that so I was planning to see one of that group’s past events playing in the movie theater upstage in the same building: the new Kabukicho Tower. And I was going to say that counted as storming Millennium Tower like at the end of every Like a Dragon game. Buuuuut when I actually got to Kabukicho… The geography meant it was absolutely impossible to convince myself any other tower but the Toho one was Millennium Tower, since it’s right there, while Kabukicho is over by theater square and Shinjuku FACE. So I got a highball at Gindaco Highball and saw a movie (after a slightly awkward conversation with the ticket salesperson when I tried to ask how long before showtime I could enter the theater, and after buying a really big thing of butter and soy sauce popcorn which I didn’t like that much). This is a new Antonio Inoki documentary, and I didn’t necessarily have huge hopes for it (Japanese reviews from what I saw seemed middling, criticizing it seemed like a lack of Inoki and debating about whether or not it was critical of him) but – and this 100% may have been the setting and the special occasion of seeing a movie on a trip – I ended up really liking it! For one, it put visuals to a lot of stuff I’ve read and heard about Inoki from Shupro (which has been talking about Inoki continuously since his death) – stuff like the plantations he worked at in Brazil, or the famous match at Ganryujima, or the Inoki panel Tanahashi had taken down from the NJPW dojo which was mentioned in the book I read about Tanahashi and Nakamura (turns out the panel is way way bigger than I was picturing! And there was a whole thing in here with Tanahashi about him putting it back up). Again, a criticism I saw from briefly looking at reviews is the lack of Inoki, but I actually really liked that! Something I didn’t like about the Black Jack anniversary exhibit, is that it seemed very much about celebrating and retelling (via very cool original manuscripts) the whole original story of Black Jack. But like… I can read Black Jack for that! You know? I think I would have preferred an exhibit that of course included the cool manuscripts, but also was more geared towards context and background around Black Jack. And anyway – this made me think of that, because in contrast, this documentary does indeed have very little of Inoki himself, and is made instead entirely out of people’s recollections and the impact of Inoki, and I think it works well in that context. There’s sequences like very cheesy staged recreations of a man throughout his life connecting strongly to Inoki’s wrestling in times of stress (squabbling for control of a tv to watch Inoki matches as a kid, quoting Inoki during relationship troubles as a teen, being emotionally comforted by Inoki matches as an adult with work and family troubles) – and these again were very very very cheesy and shmaltzy, but they worked for me actually quite a lot (again in this extraordinary setting of traveling) because you know – I HAVE been emotionally wrapped up in a wrestling match at times of stress and gotten comfort out of that (thinking particularly of Tanahashi’s Wrestle Kingdom win in the time between my leaving one job and starting another). And so I felt like those were successfully conveying a real legacy that pro wrestlers do leave on the world. Or another sequence that I thought was especially strong was they got I think a rakugo storyteller to narrate the match at Ganryujima, and I loved how well that built the atmosphere that match was going for (and was pleased at how well I generally understood the storyteller’s flowery language). With all that, when Inoki is shown, or that great theme he got from Muhammad Ali plays, it draws emotion! I didn’t find the documentary to be especially critical or non-critical of Inoki (which could break it for you depending on what you’re looking for, since there’s lots to be critical about). Rather I thought it was most interested in exploring and mourning what legacy an extraordinary character leaves on the world, and so it maybe only makes sense in the year after his passing. I don’t know how I feel about Antonio Inoki the person (very probably not good) but I did feel watching this movie that I mourned Antonio Inoki the figure, as an unusual person in a particular time who a whole lot of people connected to. I couldn’t tell really how the rest of the theater audience reacted to the movie – surprise surprise, it was almost exclusively middle-aged Japanese men (I think I saw one middle-aged woman). There weren’t any subtitles and I feel like I did pretty well.