★★★
“Rage against the Machine Girls.”
A decade after the splattery joy which was The Machine Girl, we get this – not quite a sequel, not quite a reboot. Creator Noboru Iguchi helped on the script, but hands the directorial reins over to another, and… Well, it’s amusing and moderately entertaining, rather than the jaw-dropping and ground-breaking spectacle which was the original. Part of this is simply the passage of time: what was fresh and original at the time, has now become much more familiar. There is still no shortage of invention here, but it does seem haphazard. It’s less a story, than a series of skits, albeit ones heavily drenched in gore – unfortunately, a lot from blood group CGI-minus.
It takes place in a futuristic dystopia, where the poor are left to sell whatever they can to make ends meet, including their children, limbs and internal organs. Sisters Ami (Nagimiya) and Yoshie (Kanon) are both a bit short in the body-part department, but make a living as idol performers. Less the singing kind, more as combat performers, though they yearn to be one of the more kawaii (cute) variety. Yoshie moonlights as a vigilante, taking out the organ traffickers she feels responsible for her plight. This brings her the wrath of Aoyama Dharma (Negishi), leader of the local ring, who captures Yoshie. Fortunately, help for Ami is available, in the form of wandering assassin, Matsukata (Sakaguchi) , ranked the #5 hitman by his company.
There are certainly some cool moments here. The pregnant killer… though pregnant with what, I can’t even begin to describe. Or the Battle Bust Sisters, who are exactly what you think they would be from their name, e.g. one sibling’s bosom is capable of inflating into a pair of large, bullet-proof airbags as a defensive mechanism. But it never manages to gel cohesively, and I occasionally even got the feeling that new director Kobayashi was frankly bored of the whole endeavour. For instance, there’s what should have been a glorious, extended one-shot when Matsukata and Ami storm the Dharma HQ, dispatching minions with fists, swords and head-shots. But half of it is played out in fast-forward, entirely negating the point of the whole exercise.
There are some dry jabs at things like idol culture, fans being admonished pre-performance, “If you must jack off, please do so in your pocket.” [This is somewhat ironic, given the copious number of panty shots present!] It seems to lack a forceful personality at its heart, with neither of the sisters having the same presence of Ami v1.0 from the original. Negishi does deliver an enjoyably villainous performance, chewing scenery in a way that’s fun to watch. I certainly wish they had gone with a more practical approach to the effects; while some things obviously need CGI (those airbags mentioned earlier), there’s really no excuse for ever using it to fake arterial spray. It’s fun, but forgettable, and probably won’t stray across my screen again.
Dir: Yûki Kobayashi
Star: Hina Nagimiya, Hanakage Kanon, Tak Sakaguchi, Kimono Negishi