DVDs - Documentary

The title refers not to the Dutch city, but to an example of the western theme parks the Japanese like to visit. This, of course, reminds one also of the strange Japanese obsession with our own Canadian theme park, Prince Edward Island, with its red-haired Anne of Green Gables.

The protagonist is Aozora, a bone-lazy university student addicted to the Chinese game of mah-jong. His debt to a money lender puts him in a very awkward position, when an apparent solution appears on the horizon. On a visit to his father, a creator of strange topiary, he finds out his aunt Okane has died. It seems she has left him and sister Mai a large inheritance. Problem solved! Wrong!

Instead of freeing Aozora from the goons to whom he is indebted, the inheritance leads him on a merry chase across Japan to find the missing Mai, supposedly studying singing in Kyoto, but who seems to have ended up in the southern part of the country. He cannot get his hands on the inheritance until she is found.

Money lenders who try to break your bones for not paying debts is one thing, but involvement with the yakuza, Japan's famous gangsters who control the construction industry, is quite another. It is with such folk Aozora finds himself involved as his search for Mai leads him ever closer to her. The companions on his journey from Kyoto south to a tourist town on Kyushu are as varied as a high-tech sex doll manufacturer, members of a motorcycle gang, Japanese versions of hippies, the yakuza, and a kind, struggling rice farmer, an archeologist, some sex-trade workers, and even corrupt police. What's more, we experience modern Japan's strange fascination with a cuisine unrelated to its own: burgers, nan bread, honey-dipped donuts, and Malpeque oysters, the latter leading to a very comic food fight, to mention a few.

In this serio-comic tale, Sherwood manages to evoke an atmosphere of the Japanese manga brought to live through prose rather than illustrations. Manga comics, read by young and old alike, by traditionalists and those craving modernity, are filled with cutesy, large-eyed characters. Sometimes called komikku, they offer a huge variety of topics, from children's stories to lurid sex tales, from adventure to romance. Sherwood crams all of these topics into Escape from Amsterdam, in a tale that moves as fast as the bullet train that carries Aozora south to Kyushu.

Will he find Mai? Will he be able to elude Mr. Umo, to whom he owes so much money? Will he manage to escape from Amsterdam? Will he be able to get out of the clutches of the murderous yakuza? Those are questions that can only be answered by reading Barrie Sherwood's enjoyable screwball novel, lightly illustrated with photographs, sketches, and a few manga from a variety of sources.