[thread] NJPW has released the movie "My Dad is a Heel Wrestler" on their streaming service with subtitles. It's a sweet family movie about a great wrestler, Takeshi Omura, a face famous for his beautiful frog splash, the FlyHigh.

Unfortunately, a knee injury means he can't do the move anymore. He drops to the bottom of the card, dons a cockroach mask, and becomes a comedy heel who wins through cowardice, cheating, and double-teaming.

The main plot of the movie is about Omura's young son. But I think many of you would empathize with the heroine of a subplot: Michiko, a fan who lives and breathes wrestling. Here she responds to her editor saying no one cares about a loser like Cockroach Mask:

She loved Omura as the top face, and she has waited ten years for him to make the comeback he said he would, cheering Cockroach Mask with all her heart but yearning to see the Fly-High again.

She's the character who guides Omura's son through learning how to accept that his father may be a bad guy in the ring, but he's a hero in the fans' hearts.

She writes an entire article about his career and gifts it to him, and that, combined with the desire to give his son the image of him at his greatest again, inspires him to reveal himself as Omura, make his comeback, and try to do his signature move once more.

I will not spoil the remainder of the movie for you, except to say, probably to no-one's surprise, that I cried watching it in 2018, and I SOBBED re-watching it this week.

It's a lovely little gem of a movie, a love letter to wrestling and to wrestling fans, and I recommend it to anyone who's ever loved a "jobber," a heel, or an injury-plagued wrestler. I wrote a full and spoiler-filled review here:

http://thespectacleofexcess.com/2018/10/01/well-done-cockroach-my-dad-is-a-heel-wrestler-and-the-fan-experience/