Ore wa, kimi no tame ni koso shini ni iku (2007)

Also known as: For those we love; Assault on the Pacific ~Kamikaze~
Country: Japan
Format: movie
Genre:WWII
Cast: Tokushige Satoshi, Kobozuka Yosuke, Tsutsui Michitaka, Kishi Keiko, Tabe Mikako, Maekawa Yasuyuki, Nakamura Tomoya, Watanabe Dai, Hulk Ren, Nakagoshi Noriko, Sakurai Sachiko, Toda Naho, Miyasaki Yoshiko, Endo Kenichi, Terada Minori, Nakahara Takeo, Emori Toru, Nagato Hirouki, Ishibashi Renji, Katsuno Hiroshi, Matoba Koji, Ibu Masato, Suzunosuke Tanaka, Inoue Takashi, Hashimoto Ichiro, Matsuo Satoru,
Synopsis: It is the final months of 1945 and war drew a close. Allied naval forces expanded in the South Pacific and Japanese military headquarter decides to form special attack corps which the world now knows as Kamikaze pilots. Tomihara Tome is keeping a restaurant in Kyushu and witnesses their last days and cherishes their memory. 
Rating: 5/5
I was afraid to watch it, because I am not good with watching war movies. I am pacifist, there is no justified reason for war - it is just people killing people just because some "important leaders of the country" want more or have speaking disability. I understand when in the start of the ages, people

fought to survive, but to gain more land, wealth, resources (that is not FOOD) does not make sense to me. Of course it is different with home wars, but actually this is not the place or time to talk about my views on these things, so let's move on to the review.

The narrator of the story is Tomihara Tomie brave woman who lets the pilots live their fullest as long as they can. She does not care about military rules, which mean that all letters written by solders must go under censor control and they must not celebrate on their last night when it is ruining night peace. She becomes something like a mother or guardian to the boys. She is willing to sell her everything in order to fulfill solders' wishes. 

There are many many solders, so it was difficult for me to keep up with remembering names and faces. I think the most important solders were Nakanishi, Bando Katsuji, Tabata, Kanayama and Kawai. Nakanishi is Lieutenant, who believes for a long time that they are able to win the war, until his eyes are finally opened. After that he makes a decision of not wasting his men lives on useless trying, but to serve the order when it is really possible. Kazue is the daughter of wealthy family near by. Her dad may be called "war crazy", he even sends Kazue to help put at base from her own will. Their story line is pure and sad and shows that there can be love during the war, but it is not going to be an easy one.

To Bando Katsuji Tomie is similar to aunt. I did not catch it really because he is calling her

"oba-chan" and Tomie calls him "Kat-chan", but to Bando's family she is total stranger. When he left home he was unable to tell his father the truth, but his family wants to see him before he finally flies out. He became one of my favorite characters, because with his storyline shows how difficult it was for the families to accept these events. But he is one character whom God (if there is one) really seems to love, because he has came back for different reasons for several times.

Kanayama is the familiar with Tomihara family, because he was cadet at the same base. He is actually with Korean roots, that's why there are not many people around him. There is a high possibility that there could have been feelings for Reiko, but there is no evidence on it.

Tabata has always problems with his plane and he keeps returning to the base. That makes military head think that he himself is either damaging the plane or just finding an excuse. Not mention that his fiance comes to there and begs him to survive and marry him. He is the first who understands that there is only one outcome of this war for Japan and it is definite losing. Kawai is 19 year old and if there were not in war, he would become mangaka. He is the youngest of solders portrayed in the movie. He was my real favorite from the solders.

Reiko is younger daughter of Tomie. She is sent to airbase to help out. With working at the base she must suffer from direct war actions too, when the base is being bombed. That made me scared when

she suddenly was not shown on the screen for a really long time. She does not exactly show whether she has feelings for someone or not and sadly there is not mentioned what happened to her after the war.

The movie gives a different outlook for the whole thing. It shows that there were so many men who did not want to be in it, but they were forced. Even though later in the movie everyone are saying "volunteered", then it is all because no one could admit that they actually do not want to die and were forced into it. The saddest thing is that it all was useless, because headquarters knew already that they are going to lose and all those deaths were pointless. But nothing about it was told to solders or civilians, all they knew was that they are going to die for victory, it was the only thing that kept them

going! I like that they showed how years later people were trying to cope with everything and how  fast Japan actually took over Western style. Every war has victors and losers and most of the time history is written by the victors - that's why it is nice too see Japanese outlook on it.

I decided to go with Japanese title and cover for the review, because they represent the movie better than Western title or cover, even though I have European DVD of it. Literal translation from Japanese is "For your sake I go into death". Some years ago me and Yanne were drift shopping and accidentally discovered the DVD from one of the shops. It was only 50 euro cents (it is about 70 dollar cents), which is the reason why we could not leave it there. There is nothing broken with it, only one scratch on the plastic tile and it has English subtitles. I should scoop around the drift shop DVD section more.
The cast is amazing in this movie, many people also praise the effects and shooting. I was able to watch it as long as I did not think that these things actually happened, but for those who are interested in World War II and especially about the situation on Pacific, then it is one of the best movies about it given through Japanese view, though some say that there is just a little bit too much emotional things.