In Translation | The Cabbage Butterfly (dir. Sumiko Haneda, 1968)
What color do butterflies see?
It’s time, the subtitles everyone has been waiting for. The world’s been hungry to finally enjoy…an educational doc about butterflies?
On the surface The Cabbage Butterfly might seem like a straight forward science documentary, the kind rolled out in school all the kids fall asleep to. And…well, it absolutely is! This is 100% a short film about using the scientific method to understand the behaviors of a type of butterfly. No sneak attack twist here. But it’s also a science doc directed by one of the greatest documentary filmmakers Japan has ever had (Sumiko Haneda — another of her short work, The Cherry Tree With Gray Blossoms, is absolute essential viewing in these parts) who infuses it with real visual beauty and an unobtrusive poetic musing, form and content playing off of each other to find a beautiful depth.
Here, the cabbage butterfly’s preoccupation with color is connected with the films own gorgeous, considered use of color to turn science experiments into delicate art pieces. Here, for brief moments, the narrator — personable and involved — will stop explaining things to wonder about the beauty these butterflies must see. Here, a single butterfly is so big and so small, an endless creature of wonder and yet only the smallest puzzle piece in the beauty and mystery of the world.
The result? A pretty miraculous piece of work that has sat and grown with me over the past few weeks way more than I was expecting.
I hope you enjoy!
P.S. Unlike my previous subtitling projects, you can find English subtitles for this film already…technically. Those subs are VERY roughly machine translated, filled with enough mistimings, invented sentences, and fully incorrect phrases that the movie is rendered largely incomprehensible. Which is where I, professional MTL hater, come in to fix the problem with nothing but a love for butterflies and a spite for the machine in my soul.
Music of the Week | Futurista by Ryuichi Sakamoto
Similar to his Yellow Magic Orchestra contemporaries, you simply can’t understand the modern history of Japanese music without talking a lot about Ryuichi Sakamoto. He’s the best, maybe the greatest to ever do it, has been discussed to death and yet was also so prolific and varied that countless releases bearing his name have since slipped through the cracks of time. Take today’s example, a collection of absolute adventurous new wave’d pop bangers that for anyone else on earth would be a classic and easy career highlight. The big track to escape the album and live its own life, "Ballet Mécanique", is simply the unbeatable.
Book of the Week | Itai no Itai no Sora wo Tobe by Fuyuko Kurosaki
As of writing this monthly manga is still fresh with only a handful of chapters, but it’s quickly shot up the list of my favorite currently running works. Following a young guy starting a job at a daycare, this is a blindingly warm and kind and told manga with infectious humor, wonderfully expressive art some potent visual metaphors. What makes it great though is how clear-eyed it is beyond that niceness, a series unafraid to dig into the real and messy issues with a remarkably empathetic understanding of both adults and children. Look at this little boy dealing with his parent’s divorce that they try to keep hidden from him and sob as he finds a safe place in his new caretaker at daycare. Wonderful stuff.
Movie of the Week | Taroman Expo Explosion (dir. Ryo Fujii, 2025)
Big screen entry in the delirious 60s tokusatsu themed homage to artist Taro Okamoto, Taroman Expo Explosion is the most overwhelming, colorful, and joyous film out of 2025: a nonstop barrage of lights and colors and wild practical effects as the cast is flung into the retrofuture. And as a movie about (in part) the vital importance of living dumb, embracing nonsense and the wildest parts of you, that breathless creativity on display is exactly the point. It’s hard to imagine anyone leaving a viewing not feeling invigorated and alive.
Have thoughts about anything covered this week? Got a recommendation you’re dying to share? Want to tell me how handsome and cool I am? Leave a comment below!
oh, and here's a much watch video essay about Monster Hunter