Summary and mini review: Confidenceman JP - Episode of the Princess
Dear everyone,
Multiple people have asked me what I thought of the movie when it was first released in the cinemas. I did not go to the cinema however, but now the DVD is out. And as promised, I would post a review once I have seen ‘Confidenceman JP: Episode of the Princess’.
This post is NOT going to be spoiler free. So if you want to watch the movie first for yourself: Amazon Japan has the absolute cheapest price, and you can rent it from ￥440 for 48 hours! Amazon ships internationally, but if you wish to use proxy service, use #proxy on my blog to find some options and tips.
Spoiler free section
The premise of the story is fairly simple. The Hu family is the wealthiest family in the world of Confidenceman JP, and the protagonists Da-ko, Boku-chan and Richard plan to get wealthy by tricking that family’s fortune into their own hands. The head of the family Raymond Hu has passed away, and now his three children - Brigitte, Christopher and Andrew - are in line to succeed the astronomical sum of inheritance...
...except apparently not!
Raymond Hu left in his testament to whom he will pass down his name and fortune, namely youngest child, Michelle Hu. (Click here for the clip with subs.) Nobody knows who Michelle Hu is however, and Da-ko and her friends decide to make good use of this.
They find a 16 year old girl nicknamed Kokkuri, and they plan to dress her up as Raymond’s appointed heir. In this plan, Da-ko is to pose as Michelle’s mother, named Misako.
Kokkuri is brought to the Hu estate in Singapore where she undergoes DNA tests and background check - all prepared by Da-ko of course - to verify whether she is indeed the future head of the Hu family. She passes the initial test and undergoes rigorous training to be worthy of being a queen.
The three eldest children of Raymond however, really, really want Michelle gone, dead or alive. Preferably dead.
The eldest child Brigitte does not really care whether Michelle really is her sister, all she cares about is that fake or not, Michelle is but a street rat gone Cinderella, and would bring shame to the family. As the butler Tony is the one who gave Michelle’s test a ‘pass’, Brigitte asks him how he intends to take responsibility should Michelle be unworthy.
The butler Tony is first and foremost loyal to the Hu family and their face, and shows that he is not above killing a 16 year old if it be for the sake of the Hu family’s name.
And thus a game of legitimacy has started!
Spoiler section
The following will be a very simplified summary of the rest of the movie wherein I do leave out some parts. This is NOT a replacement for watching the movie to understand the full story, though it will contain spoilers that can, well...spoil the story.
This section will contain footage gifs and screenshots of the movie that contain spoilers... and admittedly focus disproportionately much on Christofuru.
Kokkuri now named Michelle is very anxious to be exposed. She was originally prepared to face the wrath of her “new siblings”, but had not expected Tony to be totally alright with murder.
When Michelle was to be introduced to the siblings things go about as smoothly as one might think. Brigitte especially is contemptuous towards Michelle and Misako for their ‘commoner status’, finding every way possible to humiliate them out of her life. When Michelle accidentally drops her food on the floor for example, Brigitte tells her to eat it from the floor because that is what animals like her should do.
Christopher is not much better, he shows off his unmatched class in front of Misako and Michelle and adds to his elder sister’s words: “Humans need to show actions that “befit” their status, how do you say that in Japanese again so you will understand, bunsouou (分相応)?” Simultaneously showing off his Japanese proficiency as well as playing the condescension card.
The youngest son Andrew is relatively chill about Michelle, though he also does nothing to stop his elder siblings. He just seems to be enjoying the fact that he is not the youngest child anymore. There is not much information, but judging from Brigitte and Christopher’s big attitude being the eldest daughter and son respectively, to Andrew not being the youngest might be a really nice breath of fresh air.
Especially Brigitte’s attitude really, really gets on “Misako’s” nerves, and she accidentally challenges the family using Raymond’s will. Misako’s and Michelle’s mission now become to prove themselves more worthy than the legitimate children of Raymond.
This however was easier said than done as the children would not budge one bit. Da-ko did try to offer Brigitte to “yield” the position of head of the household in exchange for enough money, but Brigitte simply dismissed them for she had too much disdain to even talk with Misako and Michelle, and even literally attempted murder on them.
Christopher is a man who only knows how to solve problems with money. Before when Christopher learned that Michelle’s mother is “but a poor commoner” he had instructed butler Tony to give her enough money to make her happy, and therefore leave. (Also, I need to say that I just can’t get over how incredibly goooood Furukawa looks as Christopher. The way he slid the telephone across his face is so HNGGGG.)
I am not sure whether Da-ko knows of this conversation between Christopher and Tony, but when she had given up on talking with Brigitte, she attempts to bribe Christopher in the same way. Christopher however, really does not appreciate somebody coming to ‘ask’ money of him. The throws Da-ko two coins and says: “This is all I can give to a beggar.”
Next they try to bribe Andrew into the same plan, but then they find out he’s busy in bed with his boyfriend, and apparently??? too gay to be bribed??? So they give up without trying.
All plans to bribe the siblings unfortunately fail, so instead Da-ko comes up with a new plan. She would make a fake Hu family “royal seal”, swap it out for the real one during the Hu family inauguration ceremony, and later sell the real one on the black market as reward.
The ceremony however was disturbed by a suicide bomber whose life was previously destroyed by the Hu family, and now wants revenge. The suicide bomber is sent into deep depression and solitude because of the Hu family, but he kept himself going for a long time. When he lost the doll his dead wife had made he kept as momento however, he felt that keeping himself strong really was for nothing, and how the Hu family was merely the vampire of a healthy society.
Everyone was in panic, and even though it really seemed that the Hu siblings’ bond could not be worse, big bro and sis were the first to actually try to do something to save their little brother. Brigitte says: “how much money do you want? Name any sum, I’ll give it!” and Christopher screams off the top of his lungs “shoot him! Somebody shoot him!”
Just when the bomber was about to press the button however, Michelle reaches out to him with 🌈kindness🌈 She had found the doll the man lost and kept it with her for she did not know when she could return it to its owner. Now that the owner has showed up, she feels relieved the man can have his momento back.
All this time Tony had suspected that Michelle might be a fake and had conducted his own research. In his research he found a letter written by Raymond Hu addressed to the ‘real mother’ of Michelle. This woman however, was named Siti, not Misako. Tony found out that really nobody knows where the real ‘Michelle Hu’ is, and that the current Michelle is therefore not the legitimate heir. Tony’s original plan was to expose the truth, but seeing how this fake Michelle Hu has spoken so well during the inauguration ceremony and effectively saved the suicide bomber and everyone, Tony changed his mind. Michelle’s courageous attitude and problem solving skills was much better than Brigitte’s and Christopher’s who only know how to tackle problems using money and power.
Finally Tony gathers the children and tells them about Raymond’s last letter. However, Tony had cut out the addressee of the letter, and only told the children the key message.
In this letter - Tony told - Raymond Hu said how he saw his fortune as something of a curse that bound his beloved children, and therefore thought somebody else would be better to inherit the name and fortune of the Hu family. Raymond had supposedly seen how Brigitte had always wanted to just live her life happily as a normal woman, how Christopher wanted to become an entomologist, and how his youngest son had always lived for love. By giving the inheritance to Michelle Hu, his three eldest children would be able to live in freedom.
The siblings hold hands and acknowledge how what they truly wanted was not the inheritance or name, but their father’s love.
The three accept their new young sister, and extend their kindness to her.
Finally Brigitte was able to live her life and accept the affection of a commoner-born man she had been in love with.
Andrew was able to publically date his boyfriend without fear of “shaming the family”
And Christopher was able to run about in the bushes and lay in the grass surrounded by his beloved insects.
The Hu family is all happy now, and Tony is more or less happy. Now that things have been wrapped up and Michelle Hu formally accepted as head of the Hu family, Da-ko and her team need to go.
Tony of course knew that Da-ko and her friends were con-artists. But as they have indeed brought “Michelle Hu” who saved the family, Tony had decided to let Da-ko and her team off without punishment as a way of ‘reward’.
All this time Da-ko and her friends had had rivals who tried to win the ‘Hu Royal Seal’ from Da-ko, and sell it on the black market themselves instead. But then Da-ko outwitted them of course~! And all the drama had been a misconception etc. etc. Honestly...this is SO Japanese I can’t.
To be entirely honest, I found this rival-storyline very distracting and there are just fragments here and there, and I really couldn’t explain this in this post without sitting here all week... so forgive me for leaving that out.
But the movie closes on the ‘revelation’ of how Da-ko had outwitted her rivals, and “all’s well that ends well”.
Review
Plot: 5/10
The plot is really very predictable and follows a rather stereotypical ‘Cinderella saves the day with kindness’ trajectory. If you are familiar with the ‘con artist genre’ in Japanese media, then I honestly would say this movie does a pretty poor job being anything else than that. This genre tends to rely too heavily on ‘misconceptions HAHA’ in my opinion, but in the very least, Confidenceman JP in this movie did manage to at least have ‘logical’ misconceptions that are intentionally planted in the story to be misconceived. Hence, 5/10.
Execution: 7/10
This movie is actually a lot better in execution than I originally thought. I would say that the PVs did a really poor job showing the audience what to expect. The PV contained a lot of very anime-esque moments that - to me - just don’t translate well in live actions. Once you do see the movie though, you see how those anime-esque moments are for the most part there because the characters were imitating anime-esque moments. The movie is still not innocent of really dramatic acting, but that’s just Japanese cinema for you. In the very least - to my very untrained eyes - the editing was not bad, and there were no painful anime CGI moments that suspended all my will of belief.
Acting: 7.5/10
In my opinion the actors in this movie did an ‘overall okay’ job, with some people scoring higher, and other scoring lower than the overall-7/10 I give. In this list I shall give a brief review of the more prominent characters.
Da-ko: 8/10. The main character Da-ko played by Nagasawa Masami did a really good job. She was a slightlyyyy older woman (i.e. not a student) and she really did show how she has some life experience, and sold all her roles as con-artist believably.
Richard and Boku-chan: They had very little screentime and also little to show off; so I would say that in the very least they didn’t do anything that made me go: Wow... you suck. So, no rating here for now.
Michelle/Kokkuri: 6.5/10. She was after Da-ko the main character, and I expected quite a lot from her. Sekimizu did a fairly good job to be a princess of kindness and compassion. PLUS, I could tell how hard she worked to pull off the scenes wherein she was supposed to speak English and Mandarin Chinese fluently. Her English still was quite hard to accept, but it was understandable! (Though, admittedly it’s not super fair for me to judge her English because my English is better than that of the target audience. The target audience were all ooh-and-aahing at her English.) But I am less impressed by her ‘I’m a poor girl raised on the streets, I am intimidated by everything” act. It was just too much. It was constantly as though I could see her thinking: “can I make this even more sad?”
Brigitte Hu: 5/10. To be honest I really expected much more of her...... Vivian Hsu had her nice moments, but when she was ‘the ice queen Brigitte Hu’ she seemed to only ever have 2 modes: The Diva or the Yelling Diva. I personally had the feeling that somebody like Brigitte would feel like she is ‘above’ yelling, or in the very least I hoped for more nuance in her. Even though she was a bit too ‘obviously Diva’ to me, she did sell the ‘aura’ of a queen fairly well.
Christopher Hu: 10/10. Christopher did not have a LOT of screentime, but whatever he did have, he aced it! Yes, I might be biased, but there’s a reason I became such a huge Furukawa fan, because he aces acting.
Furukawa as Christopher was incredibly cold and whenever he felt like he was too good to listen to someone, you really could see how he was inside his own little world. When he had to show the softer side when he opened up to his family and was able to be with insects unashamed, you really couldn’t help but cheer for him.
Furukawa’s English was still pretty bad. As shared in this post, Furukawa had THREE English coaches to help him, and half of the time I still relied on the Japanese subs to understand him. Though I must say, his intonation in English was very good! It was like his tongue was too stiff to actually pronounce the words, but his perfect pitch helped him get all the intonation right.
What ultimately impresses me most though, is Furukawa’s “non native Japanese” acting. Brigitte’s actress is Taiwanese, so even though her Japanese really is incredibly good, you could hear that she is not a native speaker, and it works perfectly for Brigitte Hu, who is not a native speaker. Andrew’s actor Shirahama IS a native Japanese speaker, while Andrew is not. Shirahama did try to insert some dramatic pronunciations here and there when he speaks Japanese, but it was still very obvious Shirahama was an active Japanese native speaker.
Furukawa though: He said in multiple interviews that he had no confidence in his English, and especially in comparison to the other cast who do speak English very well. So instead Furukawa focused on speaking Japanese as a non-native would, WITHOUT making fun of them. (That’s a real problem in Japan... making fun of non-native Japanese speakers even though most Japanese people are monolinguals...)
Furukawa would put the intonation JUST a bit off, and prolong or shorten some vowels JUST a bit too much. When he said Misako’s name for example, he prolonged the ‘a’, saying ‘Misaako’ instead. Another time he said “mezurashikunai” (not uncommon), also extending the a, saying “mezuraashikunai” instead. I am honestly shocked how accurate this ‘quirk’ is, because in my experience speaking with non-native Japanese speakers with a germanic/latin language background, that is EXACTLY what they do.
Andrew Hu: 9/10. Andrew is a character who really doesn’t care about what the world thinks about him and is actively trying to establish his own person. Shirahama does a really good job giving off this energy, and he has a lot of moments where he is actually scared or sad for example, but is trying to hide it, WHILST trying to hide the fact that he is hiding it. This is some really good micro detail in my opinion!
He did not stop his elder siblings from bullying Michelle, so he is complicit. However, you could see how he would not have made the same choice as Brigitte and Christopher did had he been in their position. There was a certain level of ‘empathy’ in his eyes that his elder siblings just did not have, meaning that in the end when the siblings kissed and made up, he actually made it more believable than the script made it be. Good job!
The only reason he has a 9/10 instead of the full 10 is because his English was really horrible, plus he did not have the ‘good non-native-Japanese act’ to compensate. Being bad at English is of course not a real problem, but you really could see the clear difference between Shirahama acting in English and him acting in Japanese. Whenever he was acting in Japanese it was just really good, but whenever his scene was in English you could just see how he was squeezing every drop of his energy into saying the words... sad.
Tony: 7/10. Shibata is not bad at what he does, but I think the character/script just gives him too little to work with even though he is arguably the real ‘antagonist’ in this movie. More so than Da-ko’s rivals effectively.
Tony is just always the stoic butler and he was always ‘function first, person later’.
Shibata never took me OUT of a moment, unlike Shirahama’s bad English acting, Brigitte’s shouting and Michelle’s cutesy-woobie act though. So still I would give this guy a 7/10.
Well, that was that. The movie was enjoyable, but I wouldn’t call it a GOOD movie. The story is quite predictable, as are the characters. The morale kind of reminded me of a children’s story of: “real fortune is love, not money”, or “love can cure greed.”
Though not a good movie, it is definitely a must if you’re a Furukawa fan, and especially if you speak English and Japanese, because then you can truly see how much effort he poured into the role.
If you don’t understand Japanese however (and you don’t mind his terrible English), then seeing him as this ice-cold, rich bastard is a real treat too!
Conclusion: If you’re a collector, buy the DVD, it’s not expensive! If you’re not, then I really do recommend renting it via Amazon. For 440-550 JPY it is definitely worth it!
Could you tell us what the reviews are on the movie The Confidence Man JP: Episode of the Princess
Like are people enjoying?, is it a good movie?
And what do the people think on Yuta Furukawa's character as Christopher Hu?
Thank you for answering the questions
Hello there Anon!
Caveat: I have not seen the movie myself, I only have 2nd hand sources.
The movie has been a major hit ever since its release, the success being called a “a princess class big hit!! (screenshot above)” and enjoying an “astonishing approval rate of 96.3% (screenshot bottom)”.
As for Christofuru, he is really popular among the audiences because he is considered a really well-written and appealing character.
Furukawa has always been asked whether he is mixed-race, and this time especially such comments flood the internet. Most viewers who don’t have a connection with the theatre world have no idea who Furukawa Yuta is, so those people usually say things like: “oh, that man, is he a foreigner? He sounds like a native English speaker!”
....which is really very funny to me, because English is one of his biggest struggles XD
I’m not an English native speaker and I have an accent myself, but even I wouldn’t be fooled for even one second. Please click here for a footage of Christofuru speaking English. To English native speakers or native level speakers out there, what do you think?
Hi I have a question If you are going to the cinema to see The Confidence Man JP: Episode of the Princess Could you write a review and write about the character Christopher Fuu I understand if won't go to the cinema because of the virus and for your own health
Dear Maten1502,
Firstly and most importantly, thanks for your kind concerns about my health! I hope you are safe too ^^
Erm, I am curious towards Christofuru, but I am not going to the cinema. I am still debating whether to buy any eventual DVD because it’s not going to be cheap, and I actually really don’t like the Confidenceman JP franchise, but that’s a future-me problem. If I do buy the DVD in future, I’ll definitely wirte something about Christofuru!
As for updates BEFORE the DVD; I can’t promise any updates/reviews, but I’ll definitely look out for any information there is and post them on this blog ^^
Hello there. I know somebody was curious about Christofuru earlier. Perhaps the photo the official ConfidenceMan twitter posted with all the sticky notes could be of some use. Just a thought. Thank you for all your translations and your art is beautiful! ^_^
【Response to this post】
Dear Anon,
First of all, thanks for your compliments! I am very happy to hear them ^^
Yeah that’s indeed a pretty good idea, so thanks for that! But I could only BARELY read SOME Of them, and I can’t tell which sticky notes were there for whom... So with some massive disclaimers, this is what I THINK I could make out and THINK apply to Christofuru.
Furukawa Yuta in the movie ‘Confidence Man JP 2’ to be screened in May 2020.
Story premise
The story takes us to Singapore and Malaysia. The head of the Fuu family - one of the the richest families in the world - has passed away. The late family Fuu head left an inheritance of 10 trillion dollar, and the characters of the movie partake in the greatest con game of all time in order to win the rights to this colossal sum.
Furukawa plays the eldest son of the Fuu family, Christopher Fuu. How will the nominal heir of this inheritance respond to the con game?
Official Website
Bonus, an incredibly Ken-ON-safe picture of Christofuru!
Have there been any reasons on why kuromyu 2018/19/20(?) has been more or less ignored by everyone like nobody was waiting for it to air? I mean - they didn't even say there wouldn't be a musical for 2018, right? Are there any signs for a 2020 musical? Will we die alone without another action of Yunbastian?
Dear Anon,
Alas, there is no news of Kuromyu at all, and us in the Japanese speaking fandom is also whining about it TTATT
We did have a Kuromyu 2018 - Tango on the Campania! (ÓoÒ)
It does not look like a Kuromyu 2020 is likely however, because Furukawa’s schedule is already incredibly packed. Next year, we’ll have to make do with the following three types of trash.
Raw trash - Christofuru Fuu (Confidence Man JP)
Can waste - Kijima Tatsuyun (Top Knife)
Incombustible trash - Furutod (Elisabeth)
I know… I know… Trash Demon™ is just so precious to us… Gosh I wish we could play Trash Quartets for 2020! (hmm what type of trash is Sebas? Definitely Large-size refuse! 💗💗💗 I love him Yunbastian much.)
More seriously though; it is not ENTIRELY impossible to squeeze a Kuromyu in 2020 because as demonstrated before, Furukawa only needs 3 weeks to prepare for Kuromyu, but I really fear he might be (even more) overworked… We can’t eat the cake and have the cake…
AGH, greedy human that I am, I want both! Son (´；A；`) I wish I could give you my time!
