Missing The Lucie Blackman Case Review: (警視庁捜査一課 ルーシー・ブラックマン事件) Releasing on Netflix on July 26, 2023, the new true-crime investigation documentary film directed by Hyoe Yamamoto and written by Shoji Takao has a runtime of 1 hour 22 minutes, and delves deep into the story of the eponymous 21 year old British woman who went missing in Tokyo in the 2000s. The docu-film is is filmed in English and Japanese languages, with the availability of several dubs and subtitles on the OTT platform.
Missing: Lucie Blackman Case Review Does Not Contain Spoilers
Missing The Lucie Blackman Case Review
Living in the starry distant fantasy of Tokyo, aka the Eastern Capital of the Land of the Rising Sun (Japan) has long been a dream of many. The rise of anime and its romanticised aesthetic portrayal in the mainstream has only further led to the place becoming a hopeful beacon of one’s imagined utopia. However, this stylistic, colourfully attractive and wholesome art of animation often distances us from the touch of reality, rendering many of us incapable of seeing it as an actual metropolitan shrouded under a dark absence of light.
True crime documentaries like the one released today help us peek into the real-life picture of the location that often harbours demons of its own, camouflaged under the substantially ostensible perceived beauty of the place itself. Lucie Blackman was but another woman who was pulled towards Tokyo by her streak for exploration and adventure, but her eventual abduction and the heinous crimes borne by her body proceeded to open the Pandora’s Box and unleashed the severe truths of the underbelly racing underneath the stimulating lights of the city.
Reeling out a rather universal story, her life’s end sends out the message about the lack of women’s safety anywhere, regardless of what the city’s high status may correspond to. Blackman opted to work as a hostess, a common job among the women of Japan, yet a not so conventional choice when looked at from the world’s viewpoint. The profession entailed young women to escort clients (usually male) and entertain them by engaging in conversation with them at clubs, bars, etc.
The talking heads make it a point to steer away from any means of victim blaming by putting forth the idea that the same choice of job could easily be a safe means of income if one wanted it to be. It rather offered these women a chance to get acquainted with many high profile individuals of the society, and its nature didn’t even coerce women to engage in sexual encounters.
However, the profession in question is further critiqued, because things aren’t always as ideal as we may want them to be. By involving the intake of alcohol, the same clients could also put these women’s lives at risk, as it would essentially not leave them with the choice of consent under such influence.
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Moreover, by digging into Lucie’s case, which also linked up with similar disappearances as “she met a customer who was supposed to drive her to the seaside – and then she vanished”, the police is also able to retrace its steps back to an old history of identical cases. Additionally, the Captain of the investigation charge also speaks up about the gradual pace at which the main teams would proceed ahead with the case. While to them it mostly appeared as just another criminal case to be solved, Lucie’s father, Tim Blackman was emotionally involved in the situation.
He initiated his own search of finding his daughter by involving the higher-ups and public. Raising awareness through press conferences, he made the whole thing look like a high-profile campaign, which wasn’t always approved by the Japanese police forces. This not only accentuated the cultural gap between the two sides – the British who basically handed out the case for public viewing, and the Japanese forces that liked to keep the investigation all hushed up.
Neither of the parties were particularly wrong because ultimately both shared the same goal, but the differences between them only further highlighted that the one who was personally and emotionally involved in it all, wanted to speed things up to find his daughter as soon as possible. But the other side, that was professionally roped in to solve the mystery, had to a follow a certain procedure and set of protocols to go about with their investigation.
And as could be perceived, it was the joint contribution of both sides that ultimately worked in the favour of the case and helped narrowing down the suspect – Joji Obara, a Japanese businessman who was actually a serial rapist and had tortured many women like Blackman.
Keeping up the charade, owing to his wealthy visage, he’d been so far able to stay away from the local authorities’ purview. Yet ultimately, with Tim Blackman’s very public campaign quest, the whole thing pressured the forces at work to push even harder, finally leading them to Obara’s doorstep, and connecting the dots back to many hostess clubs where the predator would lure out women in the name of friendly exchanges.
The severity of Obara’s actions (as captured in the 400 video tapes uncovered at his property) have also been dealt out in the documentary, if not directly, then at least through comments like “A few of those officers couldn’t handle the trauma of seeing the videos. Several had to rescue themselves because they were having mental breakdowns”.
Final Thoughts
Maintaining an evenly balanced track between the investigation carried out by international authorities and the narrative told by Tim Blackman, the film unveils the dark reality of society which puts a big question mark against the safety of women, almost anywhere and everywhere in the world. The marks of violence borne by women’s bodies are a direct attack on their being.
Documentaries like this, often go back in time to remind us of old stories of horrors, further offering us the chance to compare our present realities with the past, and sadly, not much of a difference can be mapped out between these timelines – leading us to the question, Is society as a whole really doing enough to protect/save women at all? (and not because they’re someone’s daughter/ wife etc, but because they’re human beings)
It also showcases the various sides that are involved in such investigations, while also revealing that local authorities equally comprise of human forces that can be disturbed by traumatic sights encountered during many criminal revelations. Rendering the word “Trust” itself fickle and shallow, the film also drives up a dichotomy between how things appear to be and what truly races through them underneath what may be invisible to the public eye from the surface.
Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case is now streaming on Netflix.
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