Tag: japan

Robogeisha

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★★★½
“‘I, too, have an ass-sword.’ That quote about sums this up.”

Having been largely unimpressed by Iguchi’s other work, which seemed to have little to offer except megabytes of digital blood, I likely wouldn’t have watched this except an accident involving beer and my Apple TV remote has stopped me from much of my usual viewing. I could still stream from Netflix, however, though when I saw this was dubbed in English, I almost didn’t bother. But surprisingly, this has easily the best plot of his movies, with a slyly-twisted sense of imagination that’s very effective.

It centres on sisters Yoshie (Kiguchi) and Kikue (Hasebe), the latter a geisha who is cruel and vindictive to her younger sister. They are taken by Hikaru Kageno (Saito), the scion of Kageno Steel, to his castle and inducted as recruits into a geisha army, which he is using to take out opponents to his plans for national domination. Yoshie has an innate skill for assassination, soon surpassing Kikeu, who begs Hikaru to “upgrade” her mechanically, so she can best her sister. Yoshie, to keep up, is similarly enhanced.

The scenario shifts when Yoshie is sent to take out a group of senior citizens and discovers they are the families of other members of the geisha army – far from being willing volunteers, they were abducted and brainwashed by Kageno and his father. After narrowly escaping a suicide mission, Yoshie switches sides and joins the senior citizens, who add further to her artificial armoury. It’s up to her to stop Kageno, before he can drop a massive nuclear weapon into Mount Fuji, completing his plan.

This is certainly out there, but is a good deal lighter in tone than expected, often crossing the border into an outright silliness that is actually endearing. For instance the whose “castle-shaped robot” concept is beautifully ludicrous, not least as the building rampages around, whacking building that then spurt blood, for no readily apparent reason. There’s also shades of 60’s spy thrillers like Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs in the basic concept of the geisha army, though there’s still a certain ass-fetishism which I could have done without – swords and shuriken both come flying out of there.

Complaining that this is, to quote Monty Python, “too silly,” would be missing the point, and the fight sequences are well put-together, not least when involving Kageno’s lead henchwomen, the Tengu Twins. At over 100 minutes, it is likely a little too long and these are less performances, than hangers, on which to place lurid visuals of questionable taste. However, you will want to keep watching, simply to see what the heck Iguchi will come up with next.

Dir: Noboru Iguchi
Star: Aya Kiguchi, Hitomi Hasebe, Takumi Saito, Taro Shigaki

Helldriver

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★★
“Conclusive proof that more is not necessarily more…”

I think I am officially over the whole Japanese uber-splatter thing. Either that, or I just don’t like Nishimura’s approach. He has been behind the last couple of examples I’ve seen (this and Tokyo Gore Police) and neither have reached the heights of te better genre entries. At 117 minutes, this is even more overlong than TGP and, to be blunt, I fell asleep before the end. Oh, there’s no lack of stuff going on, as we’ll shortly see, and certainly no shortage of arterial spray. However, neither of them make any significant impression, on either the emotional or visceral levels.

Kika (Hara) comes home to find her father being eaten by her cannibalistic mother (Shiina) and uncle; Mom has designs of dining on daughter too. However, this is interrupted by a meteor which blows right through her chest. No problem: she’ll just rip out Kika’s and stuff it into the hole. Dust, apparently related to the meteor, spawns a zombie epidemic which forces the government to wall off the top half of Japan, though the zombies grow antler-like tumours, which are much in demand for the psychedelic high they induce when ground up and ingested. Meanwhile, Kika is rescued and given an artificial heart which also powers her chainsaw-sword. She is sent into the infected zone, along with her associates, to take out her mother, who has now become the queen of the zombies.

Yeah. Like I said, it’s not short on “stuff.” However, none of this is explored in any meaningful way, and the uber-low budget ($600K) is stretched thin, with most of it going on gallons of corn syrup and obvious latex prosthetics. There’s certainly no shortage of imagination on view – witness the vehicle made entirely out of zombies – but it’s operating in a vacuum, and it may be significant that the opening credits don’t appear until 40 minutes in. The fight scenes, while plentiful, are badly assembled and rarely memorable. The length here is less necessary, and more an exercise in desensitization, and long before the final mother-daughter confrontation, the arterial spray will have lost its impact.

Dir: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Star: Yumiko Hara, Eihi Shiina, Yurei Yanagi, Kazuki Namioka

GAEA Girls

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★★★½
“If you think wrestling is “fake” – think again…”

Out in the middle of the Japanese countryside is a square, unremarkable building that is the headquarters and training center for GAEA, one of the country’s leading women’s wrestling federations. Into this comes Takeuchi, making her second attempt to become a pro wrestler – the brutal training, under the glare of GAEA’s top wrestler Nagaua, caused her to give up last time. Will her second attempt prove any more successful? Can she get through to the final exam, and pass it to become a full member of GAEA?

There are moments here whih are just jaw-droppingly savage. For instance, Takeuchi, after failing to deliver dropkicks correctly, is on the receiving end of a truly malevolent one, which you swear came close to decapitating her. The next scene has Takeuchi being berated by the trainers for her failings: only eventually does the camera pan round to show the rookie, standing there, blood dripping from her face. And the emotional abuse through which Takeuchi is put, is possibly even worse. As proof of the world of difference between “fake” and “staged,” this is impeccable, and you can’t blame the other wannabes, who opt to leave, when they realize exactly what they’re in for. The grind behind the showmanship of pro wrestling has never been so well depicted.

The film’s weakness is the lack of background – and it’s significant, unless you’re fairly well-versed in the world of joshi puroresu. For instance, it’s never mentioned that Nagayo was one half of the Crush Gals, whom even Wikipedia calls “possibly the most famous and beloved women’s tag team of all time.” Without that knowledge, it’s hard to understand the respect she has, and why trainees put up with so much from her – indeed, though we see Nagayo in action, there’s nothing to indicate the elevated position she has in the sport, an icon of eighties Japanese pop culture. Similarly, there’s very little effort to probe into Takeuchi’s desires and dreams: why is she willing to go through this hell? I know enough about wrestlers and wrestling to have some idea, but for the uninitiated, I suspect the documentary will raise as many questions as it answers.

Dir: Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams
Star: Saika Takeuchi, Chigusa Nagayo, Meiko Satomura, Yuka Sugiyama

Salvage Mice

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★★½
“Mice-ensed to thrill… Albeit, barely.”

Mai (Tanimura) and her partner (Sato) form a team – the titular rodents – who recover art and artifacts, and return them to their “rightful” owners – quotes used advisedly, it’s vague on the details. However, Mai is betrayed, and framed for the robberies actually being committed by the gang operating under the Evil Western Dude (Heselton, who was also the main villain in Karate Girl). Mai encounters Mio (Nagano), part of ‘Hiroshima Cleans’, a group of volunteers who help keep the city tidy. Initially, Mio thinks Mai is the villain, but is eventually convinced that the real bad guy is elsewhere, and the pair team up to take on the villains, including both Mai’s ex and Evil Western Dude.

The main problem is Tanimura, who is incredibly unconvincing in terms of martial-arts skills. Even though her character is supposedly more thief than fighter, there is much more of the latter than the former, and she simply isn’t up to it. Nagano fares rather better in this regard, and there are a few sequences which are decently put-together and well-executed. However, even here, you still find yourself yearning for a presence like Rina Takeda or Jeeja Yanin, who are capable of really upping the pace and delivering blows that look like they have real impact. Too often, that’s not the case, especially when the heroines team up to take on Evil Western Dude.

What works a little better than expected is the stuff around the edges, like Mai pretending to be a tourist to lure Mio into befriending her, or Mio’s relationship with her non-violent colleague in Hiroshima Cleans. This kind of stuff could be grating, but it’s handled with a light enough touch to pass for frothy entertainment, and fits with what could be a showreel for the Hiroshima Tourist Board. There’s more than a hint of anime series Saint Tail here, and it’s entirely PG-rated. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but here, its more blandly inoffensive than family-friendly, and passes the time acceptably, without being at all memorable.

Dir: Ryuta Tasaki
Star: Mitsuki Tanimura, Julia Nagano, Tomohito Sato, Richard Heselton

Ninja Girl (Kunoichi)

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★½
“Save your time, save your money, and go watch Karate Girl instead. Again, if necessary.”

From the director of Alien vs. Ninja, the story here centres on a pair of ninjas, Shimotsuki and Hyotsuki, who are carrying on what appears to be a family tradition, kidnapping women from other clans’ villages, and taking them back to their own for nefarious purposes – let’s just say, the phrase “tools of pleasure” crops up on more than one occasion. They ar returning with their latest batch of four, including Kisaragi (Takeda), who is a ninja in her own right. With the help of a mysterious man (Sato), Kisuragi and her colleagues in imprisonment are released from their bondage – but that is only the first obstacle between them and their freedom. Of course, it turns out the heroine is not quite as innocent as she appears, and has an agenda of her own, because her mother was kidnapped by the same sleazy ninjas, when Kisuragi was just a baby.

Barely an hour long, this still somehow manages to outstay its welcome, managing to spend far more time engaging in borderling misogyny, rather than anything remotely empowering, and a distinctly sleazy tone with plot elements involving castration, venereal disease and a great deal more molestation of helpless women that I generally like (particularly in my ninja flicks). There is really only a single battle of note, when Kisuragi gets to take on one of her captors in a battle that is fairly well-shot and does a good job od showcasing Takeda’s undeniable skills. However, you don’t get the sense that there was more than a couple of days work involved, and even given the short running time, it’s still a negligible amount of what’s on view, and there just isn’t anything like sufficient elsewhere to keep you interested or entertained.

I haven’t seen Chiba’s earlier work, but it seems to be basically the same “head off to a forest for some film-making” approach that we see here. That can work in the right hands – Versus is justly the most well-know example of that genre. However, here, it’s more like a cheap excuse to disguise the obviously limited production values than anything else. Hopefully, Takeda will soon move beyond this kind of Z-grade dreck: I did read rumours of her being in Chocolate 2, which would be nice if said rumours had the slightest grounding in fact, which seems questionable. Hey, we can dream, can’t we?

Dir: Seiji Chiba
Star: Rina Takeda, Yuichi Sato, Masanori Mimoto, Mitsuki Koga

Big Tits Zombie

  By

★★½
“A better trailer than a movie.”

There seem to have been a spate of these recently. Not just zombie flicks – though there’s been no shortage of those – but zombie flicks set in or around strip clubs. This is the Japanese take, and follows more or less the expected pattern of such things, combining nudity, violence and self-awareness in varying degrees. At least initially, this is definitely leaning towards a 70’s, grindhouse aesthetic, but after a few minutes, that aspect vanishes, and never really returns. Instead, it’s a fairly straight-forward tale of a motley crew of stereotypical strippers, e.g. the money-hungry one, the intellectual one (who quotes George Bataille), who work at a pretty crap club in a spa town, but who find a tunnel leading across the street, which brings them to a book of dark magic and a well containing an apparently infinite supply of zombies.

It takes its time getting that far, and given the title, it’s a lot more restrained in terms of nudity than you might expect. It’s clearly not intended to be taken seriously, and does seem to be riffing on the genre (another of the alternate titles is Hot Spring Zombies vs. Strippers 5). At one point, a character says, “Must be a cheap movie. They’re big recently. Like some girl fighting zombies with a sword” – perhaps a reference to Onechanbara, which is also echoed in some of the costumes. But the make-up is largely bargain-basement stuff, and so are most of the FX, with obvious wires at some points, and an over-reliance on unconvincing digital work.

The real problem here, is likely that it tries to be too many things, and ends up being not all that good at any of them. It’s a fairly poor zombie flick, and certainly can’t hold a candle to the uber-gory genre entries also coming out of Japan in the past few years. As noted, it’s pretty tame for a movie set where it is, and none of the more traditional aspects of cinema (characters, performances and script) are interesting enough to make up for those shortcomings on the grindhouse front. It doesn’t exactly outstay its welcome, at a brisk 73 minutes, and can be commended for that, and certainly being aware of (and, largely, not giving a damn about) its limitations. However, like many of its kind, the sizzle is considerably better than the steak.

Dir: Takao Nakano
Star: Sola Aoi, Risa Kasumi, Mari Sakurai, Tamayo
a.k.a. The Big Tits Dragon

Wandering Ginza Butterfly

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★★
“More suited for ‘Cuties with Cues’ than this site.”

Nami is sent to jail for killing a Yakuza boss, and when she is released, returns to the Ginza district of Tokyo to live with her uncle, who runs a pool hall. She gets a job as a hostess in a bar, with the help of her new friend Ryuji (Watase), but the quiet life doesn’t last for long, even as she tries to help the widow of the man she killed – whose petition on behalf of Nami is what helped lead to her early release. For the local mob, in the shape of Okada (Nanbara) and his gang, are sniffing around the bar, seeking to take it over. To settle things, Nami offers to take on Okada’s champion at billiards, a challenge the gangster readily accepts, not realizing he has just been hustled, and that Nami is no mean player herself. Can she win – and even if she does, will Okada live up to his side of the bet?

While certainly fitting in to the overall themes of the genre, with a significant emphasis on revenge and its execution, this is another entry which downplays the more exploitative angles in favor of the dramatic elements. Put another way, if you want tits ‘n’ gore, look elsewhere. If, however, you want ten minutes of billiards with your heroine unconvincingly trying to imitate Paul Newman in The Hustler [a film whose poster can be seen lurking in the background during the match], this will be right up your alley. It’s only at the finale that this delivers; with the ever-loyal Ryuji at her side, Nami ploughs into the Yakuza gang’s HQ, to interrupt their group porno viewing, by releasing some of their other body fluids.

While Kaji possesses some undeniable presence, the script doesn’t live up to expectations, meandering off in directions that prove neither necessary nor interesting, and the billiards match – even with its bizarre drug-withdrawal subplot – is a poor substitute for action. The film was (inexplicably) successful enough commercially to lead to a sequel, which includes Sonny Chiba playing a comedic pimp – I sense this is likely not the best use of his talents, and won’t exactly be rushing to include it in this article.

Dir: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Star: Meiko Kaji, Tsunehiko Watase, Koji Nanbara, Tatsuo Umemiya

Tokyo Gore Police

  By

★★½
“The middle word in the title is easily the most applicable. Far and away.”

In the near-future, Japan is plagued by “engineers” – criminals who have voluntarily undergone genetic modifications, which not only mutate their bodies in bizarre ways, but give them near superpowers and the ability to sprout weapons from their wounds. To combat this, the privatized Japanese police force under their chief (Benny) has an absolutely no-holds barred policy of shoot first, ask questions… Well, don’t bother asking questions. Their top “engineer hunter” is Ruka (Shiina, whom you may recognize from Audition), the daughter of a police officer who was killed in the line of duty while she was just a young girl. She is tracking down the scientist behind the engineers, known as “Key Man” (Itao) because of the key-shaped tumours which trigger the mutations. But when they meet, he infects her – and also reveals the truth behind the deaths of both their fathers.

The most obvious parallel would by Robocop, not only in the cautionary tale of law-enforcement run for profit, but also the sardonic commercials which pepper proceeding, showing how brutal society has become [here’s an example, for a wrist-cutting knife]. It’s against this backdrop that the cold, to the point of being emotionally-dead, heroine plies her trade, troubled by a past that she can’t forget. Shiina is certainly good at that kind of role, but it’s more or less a one-note performance, that doesn’t provide much reason for the audience to empathize with her. However, I get the sense that, as far as director Nishimura is concerned, characterization is probably not quite the main thing he’s concerned with here.

That would, instead, be the splatter, which goes to a whole new level, even by the outrageous standards of the genre. The arterial spray is so copious and powerful that, at one point, an engineer uses it to propel himself about, like a haemoglobin propelled jet-pack. That pretty much sums up the tone to be found here, with body parts also flying when not attached to their owners. It’s arguably the goriest movie ever made, though I’d have to re-watch Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead before I can be certain on this front. However, there isn’t quite enough to sustain it, especially at a fairly extended running-time of 110 minutes. While there no shortage of surreal imagination on view (like the creature which has had all four limbs replaced with samurai swords), and it’s undeniably the most OTT of its siblings, this probably works better as a party tape, playing in the background for your next Halloween bash, given its apparent apathy towards more conventional cinematic attributes.

Dir: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Star: Eihi Shiina, Itsuji Itao, Yukihide Benny, Shoko Nakahara

Lady Sazen and the Drenched Swallow Sword

  By

★★★★½
“Depth perception? It’s vastly over-rated…”

A sequel to One-Eyed One-Armed Swordswoman, this stands more than well enough on its own merits, with an interesting and complex storyline and engaging characters. As a young girl, Lady Sazen (Ohkusu) lost both an arm and her eye to the devilish Lord Daizen-dayu, who coveted the titular sword owned by her father. Sazen barely escaped with it and her life, and is now a wandering swordswoman, roaming the countryside. She saves a girl being chased by some thugs, and it turns out that she knows all the inside dirt on a corrupt priest, and he won’t stop until she has been silenced. Meanwhile, Daizen-dayu hasn’t given up on the sword, and has hired another samurai to get it from Sazen, bu any means necessary.

Dating from the end of the sixties, this is rather more restrained in terms of arterial spray than the genre would become in a few years, with Lone Wolf. But there’s still a brisk efficiency here, with Sazen needing no more than two strokes to finish off almost any opponent. It actually took me some time – well past her first fight – to realize she only was supposed to have one arm. I thought the whole “taking the scabbard off with her teeth” was a stylistic choice, not a necessity caused by a shortage of limbs; really, the term “disabled” was never less appropriate. Ohkusu is a very good heroine, smart and kind, yet absolutely ruthless when necessary.

However, it’s probably the plot that’s the strongest element in this, with the two main threads kept moving forward independently, until they finally cross over, for the final, blood-drenched reel. There’s twists and turns, with setbacks for both sides, and the political intrigue and corruption proves as tricky an opponent for Sazen as a pack of sword-wielding henchmen. Many of these films I’ve seen find it difficult to strike a balance between the dramatic and action elements, usually falling on one side or other. That isn’t the case here, and the result here comfortably kicks the arse of, say, either Lady Snowblood movie, and is among the best examples of period female chanbara I’ve seen.

Dir: Kimiyoshi Yasuda
Star: Michiyo Ohkusu
a.k.a. Lefty Fencer

Karate Girl (2011)

  By

★★★½
“On the plus-side, this does have a plot. On the other hand, you kinda wish they hadn’t bothered.”

The film manages to cram just about every cliché of martial-arts films into its 92 minutes, with a plot driven by four major threads:
a) You killed my father, and must pay.
b) You run a rival school, and must pay.
c) You are generally not a nice person, and must pay.
d) You kidnapped my sibling, raising them as one of your own and training them in your evil techniques, before sending them out to kill me. Oh, and you must pay for this too, naturally.

Ayaka Kurenai (Takeda) can only watch as her father, a master of karate, is killed in front of her very young eyes, and her sister Sakura (Tobimatsu) is dragged away by the perpetrators. A decade or so later, Ayaka goes viral after using her skills to stop purse-snatchers in the cinema where she works, an event that brings her to the attention of Tagawa Shu (Keisuke), the man behind it all. He still covets the family belt, having apparently missed it when killing the man and kidnapping his daughter. He sends out some minions to verify if she is who she seems – then when that’s done, plays his trump card, revealing he has Sakura, in his evil grasp. Little does he reckon that Sakura’s family loyalties run deeper than all the training the Evil Dojo can drive into her…

Yeah, the plot is a load of pants, and the acting is nothing to write home about – it’s serviceable enough, in line with what you’d expect from a movie with this title. I did enjoy most of the action, and the relaxed style of editing which lets you see the performers and their skill. It doesn’t always work, but enough of it does to make for a generally-entertaining time. British-born Heselton. who looks like a pissed-off Simon Pegg on steroids, comes across well, but the highlight is probably the scene where a pair of Tagawa’s minions go to Ayaka’s karate school, and take on, first her classmates, then her, in an effort to flush her true talent and ancestry out.

Both Takeda and Tobimatsu show potential here. The latter is another young discovery – the next next generation of action heroines? – and it’s startling to realize she is just 14. One suspects child-labour laws must be a good deal laxer in Japan than the West. Let’s just hope their next film isn’t plotted out on the back of a beer-mat.

Dir: Kimura Yoshikatsu
Star: Rina Takeda, Hina Tobimatsu, Horibe Keisuke, Richard William Heselton