The official DVD cover.
The year is 2004.
Sensational rock star Miyavi Ishihara is a major superstar in his home country of Japan. A prominent player in the thriving Visual Kei underground scene, he can barely walk out of his apartment in Tokyo without being mobbed by adoring fans, playing sold out venues night after night. This is the life he wanted, the life he left his little home in Osaka City when he was seventeen to live. But a life in the limelight can get exhausting, and he’d be lying if he didn’t say there were times where he missed home. So one night, he decides to get into the car and go to Osaka for a visit, and falls asleep on the way.
Except when he wakes up, he’s no longer in the car. He’s stranded on the train tracks in last night’s clothing, and his hometown looks decidedly unfamiliar. He doesn’t recognize the locals, and can’t figure out why they don’t recognize him, or why they’re all wearing outdated clothes. Things get weirder and weirder, until he realizes with a sinking feeling…
So what’s a famous musician stuck backward in time to do? Start a band, of course!
Oresama (Japanese: おれさま) is the 2004 wacky semi-autobiographical film of Japanese musician and actor Miyavi, and his first starring role in any sort of film.
Cast Includes:
- Miyavi as himself
- Hassei Takano as Shinni
- Matsushima Ryouta as Ryuu
Not to be confused with this manga, which has Oresama in the name.
Oresama includes the following tropes:
- A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll": Brings his signature style to 1984, and into his band with Shinni.
- Shinni shows obvious distaste for the music Miyavi plays at first, but when he plays a generic Heavy Metal riff, Shinni is absolutely awestruck.
- Ambiguously Gay: Miyavi. He makes out with
Shinni on stage, sounds like he's flirting with Shinni when he meets him, critiques others' fashion, wears makeup, and gives Shinni a very effeminate makeover, all while seeming very disinterested with the Female Gaze that seems to accompany him wherever (and whatever time period) he goes to.- He does however tell Ryuu that he has a lot of girlfriends, so it may be a case of Ambiguously Bi or Camp Straight.
- Arc Words: "Time slip," "I'm from the future," "Oresama."
- As Himself: Miyavi, naturally.
- Big Brother Instinct: Miyavi to Ryuu. Ryuu exclusively refers to him as Onii-san or Onii-chan, they share the dynamic of an older and younger brother, and Shinni even remarks to Fujiko that they're like brothers. They're the same person.
- Big Eater: Miyavi. After the show, Kaori, Fujiko and Shinni are at a diner, where the only person eating is Miyavi...who has about five plates of food in front of him, and is shoveling all of it into his face while the others watch in a mix of disgust and fascination.
- Call-Back: At the beginning of the film, he sees a woman in a white and orange, outdated polka-dotted dress and thinks to himself, "Wow, lame dress." At the end of the film he sees her again and thinks, "cute dress!"
- Cassandra Truth: Miyavi constantly tells Shinni, Fujiko and Kaori that he's from the future, and they laugh it off as one of his quirks. By the end of the film, Shinni and Fujiko believe him.
- Chick Magnet: Miyavi. He's ambushed by school girls thirty seconds into the film, and in 1984, Kaori can't stop fawning over how sexy he is.
- Cloudcuckoolander: As he is in real life, so Miyavi is in this film.
- Comic-Book Time: Miyavi's childhood counterpart is eight years old in August 1984. In reality, Miyavi was born in September 1981. If Miyavi had traveled to 1984 and looked for the younger version of himself, he would have found a toddler just shy of his third birthday.
- Ding-Dong-Ditch Distraction: Averted. He does accidentally Ding-Dong-Ditch his mother in 1984, but that's because he's afraid to see her.
- Dueling Movies: Oresama came out fresh off the heels of GACKT and Hyde's 2003 film Moonchild.
- Fangirl: The schoolgirls in 2004 are almost rabid examples.
- Kaori.
- Fanservice: The whole point of this movie is to stare at Miyavi for an hour.
- The rather deep kiss Shinni and Miyavi share onstage takes the cake.
- The rather deep kiss
- Finger Gun: When Miyavi returns to the train tracks to transport back to 2004, Fujiko and Shinni chase him down. When Miyavi turns to them, they pretend to shoot him with finger guns, saying they'd rather say goodbye with a smile.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: The residents of Konohana are more or less convinced he's a whackjob because of his clothing, mannerisms, and overall behavior.
- Friend to All Children: Miyavi. Except the child he befriends is himself.
- Gilligan Cut: When he bolts out of the restaurant after The Reveal and tries to calm himself down after his freak out, a black screen with Japanese on it appears, saying "dude, calm down," complete with a voiceover. It cuts back to Miyavi...frozen in a kung-fu pose.
- Hidden Depths: Immediately plays this up when he sees Shinni advertising to start a band.
- Makeover Montage: Played with. It's not directly a montage, but there's a scene where Miyavi gives Shinni a makeover, complete with his music playing as the background track.
- Oh, Crap!: When Miyavi is in the restaurant and realizes he's in 1984.
- Shortly before that, he's walking down an alley and sees two schoolgirls and tries to hide...by being a mime. It works.
Miyavi: "Super power: Wall! *Pantomiming in the corner*"- When Miyavi sees his grandmother while playing soccer with Ryuu, who calls her Grandma as well. He then realizes Ryuu is, in fact, the younger version of himself.
- Put on a Bus: You never hear about the bus driver once they fall into the time slip in the tunnel.
- Really Gets Around: This exchange between Miyavi and Ryuu:Miyavi: "There are people who miss me."
Ryuu: "Like your girlfriend?"
Miyavi: "Something like that."
Ryuu: "Do you have a lot of girlfriends?"
Miyavi: "Tons of them. My body can't take them all!" - Recycled Soundtrack: The soundtrack to the film is almost entirely made up of preexisting Miyavi songs.
- Miyavi and Shinni perform "Are You Ready To Rock?" at their show, a song already done by Miyavi.
- Rip Van Winkle: Inverted. He wakes up twenty years in the past.
- The Rock Star: It's Miyavi, after all.
- He molds Shinni into one by the end of the movie.
- Satellite Character: Fujiko and Kaori. Shinni to an extent as well.
- Satellite Love Interest: An unrequited example can be found in Kaori. Kaori's main purpose is two things: book Shinni and Miyavi a show, and to Fangirl over Miyavi. Fujiko doesn't exist outside of being Shinni's girlfriend.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: When Miyavi discovers that he's approaching the day in 1984 where he tears a ligament in a soccer game, thus ending his chances of ever going professional, he decides to find his younger self and prevent him from playing in the match. Ultimately averted, as he does find his younger self, but he does not discourage him from playing on that day.
- Small Name, Big Ego: In 1984, when Miyavi introduces himself to Shinni, he does so by proclaiming he's an accomplished rock star. He proceeds to tell everyone else in 1984 the same thing.
- Smoking Is Cool: Miyavi always has a cigarette in his mouth or is playing with one. It's never lit, but it's there.
- Target Demographic: This unabashedly caters to Miyavi fans.
- Temporal Paradox: Played with, but on the whole it's played straight. When he meets Shinni and starts a band with him, Shinni gets ecstatic and tries to convince Miyavi to go with him to a recording studio. Miyavi advises against it, opting instead to just play music with Shinni.
- Averted completely with the little boy he plays soccer with in the neighborhood. Once he realizes it's himself as a child, he still sticks around.
- Played straight when he goes to his family's house. He's so freaked out by the fact that he traveled through time and afraid to see his family that he decides to run when he goes to see them.
- The Reveal: There are two.
- When Miyavi is in a restaurant, he sees live TV broadcasts, magazines, and newspapers dating to August 1984. He asks the waitress if they're current, and what year it is. He then finds out he's in 1984.
- While Ryuu and Miyavi are playing soccer, he hears a woman calling for Ryuu and realizes its his grandmother. He then finds out Ryuu is her grandson, Ryuuji—making Ryuu the young Miyavi himself.
- Time Travel: He travels back to Konohana during 1984.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: It's never discussed exactly how Miyavi catapults backward in time, or manages to return to 2004. He just sort of breaks into a bunch of squares when it happens.
- Turn of the Millennium: The film opens in 2004.
- Unreliable Narrator: Bear in mind, the premise of this film borrows liberally from Miyavi's life, to the point of it being semi-autobiographical. However, due to Small Name, Big Ego and the fact that it is, for all intents and purposes, a Vanity Project, everything pertaining to factual events in his life should be taken with a grain of salt.
- Vanity Project: Really, it's just to show off Miyavi's talents. And ego, apparently.
- In Japanese, "oresama" is a highly arrogant way of referring to oneself, affixing the honorific of "-sama" (generally reserved for very important people and to be used with the utmost respect) to the casual masculine self-identifier, "ore". note
- In 2004, Miyavi wasn't exactly known outside the visual kei scene and was more or less an underground artist. But in Oresama's 2004, every inch of Tokyo is plastered with posters of his face.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: There are factual elements to the story. Miyavi really did tear a ligament during a soccer game that effectively ruined his chances at a professional soccer career, which devastated him. But there's still the whole Time Travel thing, plus a bunch of minor little things, that justify this trope.
- Miyavi sustained his knee injury when he was fifteen, around 1995 to 1996. In the film, it happens when he is eight.
- The fact that he's eight in 1984. Miyavi was actually two years old in August 1984, so if he would have traveled back in time to witness a major moment in his life, it would have been to attend his third birthday party two weeks later.
- Just how famous he is during the film. Miyavi wasn't a big sensation in Japan in 2004, having little to no notoriety outside of Visual Kei fans. Visual Kei bands and artists such as L'arc-en-Ciel, GLAY, Dir en grey, GACKT and X Japan were far more well-known; but even then, musicians that would have their image all over billboards and Jumbotrons in 2004 would be more mainstream-friendly acts like Ayumi Hamasaki, Koda Kumi or Utada Hikaru (or perhaps even L'Arc~En~Ciel and Gackt, as they were all Lighter and Softer by then), since the entire visual kei subculture is far too out-there for the conservative Japanese palate, nor did it exist in a mainstream demographic until the 2010s.
- A minor example. He asks Ryuu what his full name is when he realizes it's a nickname, discovering it is Ryuuji. Miyavi's real name is Ryuuji, and he realizes Ryuu is his childhood self. Since Miyavi had deliberately kept his birth name a secret until 2009, some fans mistakenly believed his name was in fact Ryuuji. It's Takamasa.
- Visual Kei: This was during Miyavi's visual kei days. He also gives Shinni a visual kei makeover, which was in its nubile stages around this time.
- Voiceover Letter: The note Miyavi leaves for Fujiko and Shinni.
