Fish Story

The featurette Fish Story Making divides itself into the film's different shoots, corresponding to the different time frames in which the story unfolds – The 1982 Part, The 2009 Part, The 2012 Part, 1973-1975 Parts[', and finally a space sequence, and a car crash. Fish Story may itself have a punk sensibility to match the song at its heart, but in contrast director Nakamura Yoshihiro comes across as polite and subdued, full of nothing but compliments for his ensemble cast – many of whom are also interviewed here.

Still, you know this featurette is desperate for filler when it devotes several minutes to guitarist Ohkawauchi Toshimitsu's arm cramp – and there is just too much group applause and self-congratulation here to justify the 34-minute running time, with precious little insight offered into the film itself.

What comes across most is the way that the director gave his cast the freedom to inhabit their roles with aspects of themselves – so that even the made-up band Gekirin, two members of which did not even start out as musicians, became a real band after two months of intense practice, and ended up themselves recording the songs used in the film, and hoping to stay together and record more. A second, briefer featurette shows Gekirin performing their song 'Fish Story' live for the first time at Tower Records in Shibuya, joined by the song's (real) producer Saito Kazuyoshi on guitar.