Ryo & Ren Comedy Video with English Captions (2001)

The Japanese voice/mocap actors that played as Ryo and Ren, Masaya Matsukaze and Takumi Hagiwara, created a slapstick video of themselves filming in the city of Shanghai - dressed as their characters - for the promotion of the upcoming Shenmue II.

Although this video has been around on the net for several years, being in Japanese it has not been been very accessible to non-Japanese fans. So now I have added English captions to allow it to be appreciated by a wider audience.

(The captioned video can be viewed directly a little further down in this post.)

Background

The concept of the 15-minute video is ostensibly the filming of a new TV commercial for Shenmue II, which in reality is just a pretext for humorous interaction between the pair. The video was originally screened at the 2001 AM2 Summer Festival event (which you can read about in the previous post), and it was also later included as bonus content on the Japanese DVD of "Shenmue: The Movie".

A youthful Matsukaze takes on the role of director and drags Hagiwara around various parts of Shanghai in his quest for a suitable filming location. They have a great rapport and they are clearly enjoying themselves.

Hagiwara (Ren) is chided by Director Matsukaze (Ryo) for his unsatisfactory acting performance.

Notes / Highlights

Some background notes & parts to watch for in the video include...

• "Hagi-chan": in the video, Matsukaze often Hagiwara-san this way in several places. It is a friendly/affectionate way of abbreviating his name, reflecting the good-natured relationship the two have.
• Reference to "Muecas": this was the official Shenmue fan group in Japan (see this post on a Shenmue Comic for more details).
• Matsukaze's impersonation of Shenhua ("My, what a long road!")
• Matsukaze trying his hand at Mandarin Chinese:  Wǒ ài nǐ (I love you), Zài jiàn (See you), Nǐ hǎo ma? (How are you?).
• Reference to "West Shinjuku": this is a skyscraper business district of Tokyo.
• Reference to crab cuisine: the crab season of autumn is an important part of the culinary scene in Shanghai each year.
• Reference to "Dou Niu" in the credits: Masayuki Kumagai, credited for "narration" on the video (perhaps the voice of the interviewer?), was the Japanese voice actor for Dou Niu in Shenmue II.
• The introduction text in the video states it was filmed in August 2000, but I suspect the year should read 2001, the year of Shenmue II's release in Japan.
• Reference to "Action Demon King": the name of a 3-set comic book series published in 1995.

Video: "Making of a Shenmue II Commercial in Shanghai"

And now, on to the video, embedded below (turn on captions):

Voice Acting for Shenmue III

As per a previous Kickstarter update, it is good to know that Masaya Matsukaze's return has been confirmed as the Japanese voice for Shenmue III. As for Hagiwara, his current whereabouts appears to be unknown.

24-year old Matsukaze in 2001...

...and present-day Matsukaze (2015).

Video Assistance

Thanks to the Shenmue Dojo's Ziming for preparing and hosting the video, and to BlueMue who provided a new, high-quality movie capture from DVD. Thank you also to Kiyuu for the correct names in the credits.

DVD title screen of Shenmue: The Movie

As an aside, BlueMue's YouTube channel has one of the best collection of in-depth Shenmue videos around, from rare scenes to amusing mods, play-throughs, voice collections and more. I highly recommend checking out his channel. Make sure to subscribe while you're there, as new videos are released regularly. Check out BlueMue's YouTube channel here.

What did you think of today's video - was the style of humor to your taste?

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