Ringu Ryuji

Ryuji Takayama

'Ringu'

The original box office hit that inspired the US version of The Ring.

A mysterious video has been linked to a number of deaths. Asakawa Reiko is an inquisitive journalist, and when her niece is found dead, and her friend gone insane, she sets out to investigate.

She visits Izu Pacificland where her niece and her friends stayed and watched the video. She herself watches it, and when the phone rings and no one is there, she realises that according to the legend of the video, she herself has only a week to live. She must solve the mystery of the video within the week to save her own life. Little does she know that her actions have also endangered the lives of her own family.

Ryuji Takayama and his son Yoichi stand in the rain eyeing each other, neither saying a word before continuing on their separate journeys.

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Reiko greets her ex-husband, who she has called to help solve the problem.
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	Ryuji seems to feel uncomfortable in his ex-wife's new home, and they make polite conversation for a while until Reiko explains the problem fully.
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Reiko asks Ryuji to take her photo. The developed photos of her niece and her friends, taken at Izu after they had watched the video had been distorted. Reiko needs to know if her photo is the same.
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	Looking rather skeptical, Ryuji nevertheless takes the photo.
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On seeing the developed Polaroid, he is dismayed to see that Reiko's photo is indeed distorted. He watches the video but this time the phone does not ring. He asks Reiko to copy the video for him, so that he can take a better look at it.
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	Sitting in the open air doing some work, Ryuji sees a woman approach him. He does not look up at her face, but he asks her if it was her that did this. When he looks up she is gone. Ryuji's ESP is acute and he seems used to seeing these visions.
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When he arrives home, his ex-wife is waiting for him.
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	Reiko has brought him the copy she has made of the video.
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Together they sit down to watch it again, hoping that they can find some clue to its origin and purpose.
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	Takano, Ryuji's new girlfriend arrives, and seems put out that Asakawa Reiko is there. She gives Ryuji a message from his publishers, but he doesn't seem that interested. He leaves with Reiko in order to view the video on a more advanced machine.
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Ryuji listens to the sounds on the tape and says that it sounds like "Frolic in brine, goblins be thine." He later finds that it is a dialect from Oshima Island where there is a volcano - Mt. Miharayama.
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	At the local library Ryuji and Reiko search for information. They discover that a woman called Yamamura Shizuko predicted that the volcano would erupt, but her warning was ignored and she was ridiculed by people who thought her ESP to be a fraud. She eventually killed herself.
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With Yoichi staying with his grandfather, Ryuji and Reiko travel by ferry to Oshima Island. Reiko tells him that her niece Tomoko's ghost had told Yoichi to watch the video, which he had done, so it was likely that the child also had only a week to live.
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	Ryuji tells of what he has learned about Shizuko; that she was a seer, but while the press had revered her after her prediction of the volcanic eruption, soon they had called her a fraud, and written some horrible things about her. She had gone insane and killed herself. It was rumoured that she had a daughter, but no one knew where the girl was.
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At the inn where Shizuko's cousin still lives, Ryuji goes straight to the room that had been Shizuko's, and sees the oval mirror that she is seen in during the video playback.
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	Reiko begs Ryuji not to leave her on the day that she is to die, and to find a way to save Yoichi. He reminds her that Tomoko's friend had gone insane, so he didn't know what would happen to him either.
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In a fit of melancholy pique, Ryuji suggests that they should never have had a child, and that it was perhaps better that the three of them die. Reiko gets very upset by this statement.
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	The landlady then interrupts them, and gives them a photo of Shizuko with Professor Ikuma, her mentor / exploiter. Along with Shizuko, he had also been denounced as a fraud, and had lost his job at the university.
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Ryuji goes to speak to Shizuko's cousin, but he is very reluctant to speak of his niece. He tells Ryuji that the fishermen used to hate her, she spent all day looking out to sea, and speaking to the waves. They felt that she was unlucky for them. If you play in the sea, the goblins will get you. Ryuji recognizes the dialect from the video tape.
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	Ryuji says that he also has the same gifts as Shizuko, that he is also a seer. When he asks about Shizuko's daughter, the cousin becomes agitated and gets up to leave.
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Ryuji follows him, and when the old man falls, Ryuji grabs his arm. He begins to see the scene where on stage in Tokyo, Shizuko had been jeered by the media crowd.
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	He also sees that it was Sadako, her daughter, that had killed someone in the audience, not Shizuko herself. Sadako's powers were much stronger than her mother's and she could kill simply by thinking about it. He also sees that her cousin had been there when it had happened.
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Ryuji explains that Dr Ikuma had taken Sadako away with him when Shizuko had killed herself.
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	With a typhoon on its way, Ryuji is finding it difficult to get a fisherman to take him and Reiko back to the mainland. Eventually Shizuko's cousin says that he will take them.
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On the perilous boat journey, Ryuji tells Reiko more of Shizuko and Sadako's story. Dr Ikuma was Sadako's father, though he had been married with children. Another reason why he had been sacked, because of the scandal it caused. No one knew what became of them. The video was Sadako's wrath - her curse from a supernatural world.
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	Ryuji jokes that at least Sadako hadn't drowned them in the storm, so she can't be angry with her cousin!
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While Reiko phones Yoichi to tell him she'd be home the next day, Ryuji gets the supplies he needs for the task ahead. He waits for her by the car.
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	Armed with two buckets, a length of rope and an axe, Ryuji and Reiko head for the cabins in Pacificland, Izu.
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Ryuji breaks through a wooden trellis with the axe. He steps through, helping Reiko after him.
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	Making their way carefully inside the old disused cellar beneath the new cabins, they find a well.
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As both of them place their hands on the lid of the well, Reiko says that she can feel that Sadako is inside. They see a vision that shows Sadako looking into the well, just before her father hits her over the head, intent on killing her, and then he throws her into the deep hole.
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	Ryuji must go down into the well to try and find Sadako's body - not a pleasant prospect.
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As he tentatively makes his way down the rope, he sees torn nails in the walls of the well. He realises that Sadako had been alive when she had been thrown down the well. She had desperately tried to get out again, but had died, trapped in the darkness.
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	Ryuji fills bucket after bucket with the water, while Reiko pulls them up from the well and empties them. Eventually she becomes too tired to pull any more, and he shouts at her to hurry up as she doesn't have much time left.
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Eventually Reiko collapses from exhaustion, so Ryuji swaps places with her. He realises that the time has past for Reiko to be killed, it has been over a week. He watches as she eventually finds Sadako's decomposed body.
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	With Reiko now seemingly safe from the curse, the police are called in. Sadako's body is taken away, hopefully to find peace at last.
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Ryuji takes Reiko home, and wishes her a good night; he has a deadline for an essay that must be completed.
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	He glances at the equation on his blackboard, and sees that something is amiss.
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He smiles knowingly as he spots the deliberate mistake.
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	Following Reiko's visit, Takano has made a slight alteration to the equation on the board! Ryuji laughs. "Idiot", he says fondly.
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His work is interrupted by the TV switching on automatically. He sees the video playing again.
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	He can't understand why the video has come on of its own accord. The curse should be over after Sadako's body was found. He puzzles to work out why the curse was lifted off Reiko and not off him. What had she done, that he hadn't.
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He realises that the only difference between what he and Reiko had done was that she had copied the video, and shown it to him.
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	Ryuji tries to phone Reiko when he realises that the curse is still on him, and so still on Yoichi. He knows that it is now too late to do anything to stop it coming for him.
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Horrified he stands frozen with fear as he witnesses Sadako's body coming out of the TV screen and towards him.
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	Ryuji looks into Sadako's eye, and he looks at the face of evil, terror bringing his time to an end. Reiko eventually realises that to save Yoichi, the video must be copied before the week is out, and then shown to someone else. She phones Grandpa to ask a favour!