Shozin Fukui’s film, 964 Pinocchio, forges the tale of Pinocchio: a sex slave who, when unable to maintain an erection, is discarded by his owners and left to wander the street. It becomes clear that his memory has been wiped and, after he is discovered by the homeless Himiko, he starts trying to relearn how to speak. As usual with this flavour of Japanese Cyberpunk, there is a bodily transformation. When Pinocchio begins to become self aware, his body is unable to take its newfound consciousness and it begins to transform in unprecedented, unpredictable ways. Fukui presents a creature who struggles with finding ways to navigate and communicate with a world which produced him for one purpose, and one purpose only, to be used for his body by those around him. Fukui’s other works, such as Caterpillar (1988) and Gerorisuto (1986), also feature characters wandering the streets of Tokyo, disillusioned at the city’s blinking, grey, lights which can all but blink at them as they stare back. I enjoy Fukui’s work especially because there is a melancholy underlying his dystopia, one which I see reflected back to me. The way these human-like figures wander the streets, being forced to transform from their own disillusion towards the world, echoes myself, my friends and the disillusion that many feel towards modernity.
