THE CENTENNIAL CASE: A SHIJIMA STORY

Square Enix brings together real life and fake deaths

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After the critical drubbing handed out to Square Enix’s previous FMV venture, The Quiet Man, the company’s decision to produce a live-action mystery adventure evokes less a whodunnit than why make it? For director Koichiro Ito, it’s a chance to tap into Japan’s appetite for detective novels and mystery television dramas, but one that benefits from flesh-and-blood actors. “I think that having real people play the characters in the story adds a sense of depth to it,” he says. Enlisting Yasuhito Tachibana as the cinematographer and scenario director also avoids pitfalls – with a hit Netflix show, The Naked Director, to his name, he brings the production nous to avoid the hackier B-movie vibes that often plague the genre.