Tag: japan

Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess

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★★½
“Not very violent, and certainly not pink.”

When Rika (Oshida) gets out of reform school, she goes to visit her friend Midori (Katayama), and gets a job working in the garage belonging to Midori’s father Muraki (Ban), even though Midori is estranged from him – except when she needs money to pay off her boyfriend’s gambling debts to the local Yakuza under Boss Ohya (Nobuo Kaneko). Another friend of Rika’s is working in an “art studio”, doing nude modelling to support her sick husband, and still others are hostesses at the Ginza Girls cabaret, a dance-hall which Ohya’s gang are also extorting for protection money. After Muraki has to take a loan using the garage as collateral to pay Ohya, Rika tries to offer herself as an alternative to the boss. This goes about as well as you’d expect, though there’s a genuinely cool twist in which we find someone isn’t quite who we seem. There’s a tragic fatality, which sets the scene for all the girls to get together and take on Ohya’s gang.

As you can tell, there’s no shortage of plot going on here. However, the overall result is more like an overwrought Japanese soap-opera, with a lack of much delinquence, or indeed, real action of any kind from the girls, up until the last ten minutes. Indeed, there’s very little exploitation present at all, with a surprising lack of nudity as well, though personally, this is less a concern. Reading various reviews elsewhere, there is a broad spectrum of opinion as to whether this makes it the best or the worst in the series. I tend to be somewhere in the middle: while I can appreciate the dramatic elements, and the two lead actresses are good in their roles, it’s not what I expected at all, being too worthy, and completely lacking any sense of excess of transgression.

I’m definitely uncertain where the poster image comes from, although that may be because I had to look at it twice, since the first time I thought she was holding a yo-yo. Must have been some kind of residue from Sukeban Deka, I guess.

Dir: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Star: Reiko Oshida, Yumiko Katayama, Junzaburo Ban

Pinky violence

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pinkyl“Pinky violence” is a genre of cinema that flourished in Japan during the 1970’s. It was spawned from the “pink film” genre of sexploitation movies, which started the previous decade with Satoru Kobayashi’s Flesh Market, which grossed over 100 million yen on a budget of just eight million. It was originally the domain mostly of independent producers and studios, but as the Japanese market became tougher, due to competition from imported movies and other forms of entertainment, major studios like Nikkatsu and Toei moved in to the field. While the former took the more traditional route, Toei opted to merge sex with the other staple of exploitation cinema, violence.

But what makes them of interest here, is their focus on women as the central characters, active participants in the violence, rather than simply being passive victims. Frequently, the heroines are sukeban, a term which means “delinquent girl” or “bad girl”, often operating in conjunction with, or leading, other girls in a gang, This may form part of a larger Yakuza enterprise, or work entirely independently. Sometimes, the focus is on obtaining revenge or justice for some past crime, whether against the girl or someone she loves. The ratio of sex to violence did vary, as did the setting: while most had a contemporary setting, films like Lady Snowblood took the themes are ran them out against a period backdrop.

While the ‘golden era’ of the genre is generally considered to be in the seventies, the influences and general themes continue on. They can be seen in the likes of the Female Prisoner Scorpion and Zero Woman series, and arguably, even in the new wave of Tokyo Gore movies, such as Mutant Girl Squad or Gothic & Lolita Psycho. We started by reviewing the four movies included in the box-set released by Panik House in December 2005. While it’s now out of print, its contents remains available from various sources, and it’s as good a place to begin as any. Further entries will continue to be added during the coming months, with the movies listed in order of release date.

See also

And, in chronological order

Death Row Girls

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★★
“Despite the poster, more WiP than GwG.”

Misaki (Hoshino) is in prison for stabbing a policeman to death, but is taken from her jail to a remote island. There, she joins the rest of the hand-picked prisoners, who are there to be trained by a mysterious government organization, and moulded into operatives who can be used to protect national security. Most of the inmates just want to make things easy, sleeping with the guards in exchange for privileges, but Misaki is made of tougher stuff, and won’t buckle down to the authorities. While she begins plotting how to escape the island, she needs to overcome a number of problems, not least having no idea about where it is, and whether the small boat they stumble across will be capable of getting them to any other land.

There’s definitely elements of Nikita here, not least the sequence where Misaki tries to take the facility head hostage. Except that, where that breezed through the training inside 25 minutes, it is, more or less, the entire focus of proceedings here. Hoshino snarls nicely as an independent and feisty bad girl, yet neither she nor any of the other residents are in the slightest bit convincing. I’d normally avoid using a phrase like “runs like a girl” as unnecessarily demeaning… except here, where it’s entirely accurate. I can see absolutely no chance – zero, zip, nada – that any credible group would select her, or the rest of the inmates, as potential trainees.

The film does deliver the expected helpings of gratuitous nudity and moderate violence, as things bumble along towards the climax, where Misaki has to battle her jail friend, to the death. Winner gets to leave, loser…well, will be dead, so shouldn’t worry themselves about it. It’s not exactly the best knife-fight you’ve ever seen, and the ending leaves a good deal to be desired in terms of tying up the loose ends as well. The 84 minutes passed reasonably enough though, and it’s reasonably competent, albeit by the genre’s fairly-low standards.

Dir: Sadaaki Haginiwa
Star: Aki Hoshino, Emi Kitagawa, Ren Suzuki, Ami Natsui
a.k.a. Female Prisoner 1316

Gothic & Lolita Psycho

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★★★½
“First martial arts movie where the heroine dresses like a refugee from a Sisters of Mercy concert. Er, kids, ask your parents.”

First of all, “Gothic Lolita” is a Japanese style term; Lolita fashion is based on clothing from the Victorian era, and the Gothic sub-genre is…well, suitable for a Victorian funeral, basically. Quite why heroine Yuki (Akiyama) decides to dress like this, after her mother is murdered by a group of five thugs, is never satisfactorily explained. Actually, it’s never even mentioned, putting it alongside the issue of why her father (Yanagi) is apparently a Christian priest, now confined to a wheelchair as a result of the attack. Or where Yuki is now a skilled fighter, armed with a bulletproof, lethal umbrella that can kill you in a variety of ways. Where does she get those wonderful toys, to borrow a phrase.

What matters here are her battles against the five killers, starting with a gambling den house-mother, through a lecherous and psychic teacher, up to the “big bad” (Aoyagi), the man who co-ordinated and led the attack on her parents. They’re a decidedly mixed bag. The lower tier make it clear that Akiyama was likely not cast for her fighting talents, but more to do with her being named “Best Butt in Japan” for 2007, though the film is pleasingly free of nudity. The best is probably her fight against Lady Elle (Momose), a marvellous character who comes off like a highly-caffeinated version of Elle Driver crossed with Hit Girl, complete with sparkly eyepatch and a gun that flips open into a pink mobile phone. I could have watched those two for the entire movie, bickering and brawling.

Yeah, if you hadn’t noticed, it’s more than a little like Kill Bill, though mercifully without anyone droning on about comics. The final battle isn’t quite up to the same level, and there’s a twist in the ending which is probably not necessary: it adds a level of fantasy to proceedings that goes nowhere. But despite the flaws, it remains a unique item, and if you appreciate the recent wave of Japanese hypersplatter, this is another entry you’ll enjoy in the genre, with everyone possessing appropriately-high blood pressure.

Dir: Go Ohara
Star: Rina Akiyama, Yurei Yanagi, Ruito Aoyagi, Misaki Momose

Memoirs of a Lady Ninja

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★½
“The world’s first Christian soft-porn ninja film. And probably the last.”

This one is so obscurist I couldn’t even find an IMDB entry for it, despite a fairly high-profile release from Tokyo Shock. I can perhaps see why. It’s more an excuse for a series of coupling, mostly involving Hara, who has gone on to greater fame in the 3-D Sex and Zen movie. She plays a blue-eyed ninja called Hijiri. She gets frames for the theft of a scroll which can be used to gain immortality, and ends up falling off a cliff. She is nursed back to health by a Christian named Seitaro (Yoshioka), but their peaceful existence is threatened, as the scroll’s previous owner sends out minions to retrieve it, and another religious sect also vows to convert adherents to the ‘heathen’ religion, by any means necessary.

So many problems here, not least that no-one involved in this can fight their way out of a paper-bag, in particular Hara, who manages to block full swings from samurai swords with something better suited for opening envelopes. There’s a whole subplot about her mother also being a ninja, and abandoning the heroine for her own protection, shortly before she was killed, which has left Hijiri with issues. It is not very interesting, and serves largely to provide the McGuffin necessary for the final battles, when she has to take on the “Saint” at the head of the rival sect, and defeat someone who has read the scroll of immortality.

It deserves some credit for the blue-eyed ninja idea – Hijiri’s father was a Portuguese trader – and it’s got an unusual take on both xenophobia and religion, unashamedly depicting Christians as the good guys [while I’m agnostic, I appreciate seeing something you rarely get, even in the West]. However, it’s executed with such a complete lack of skill, as to have me reaching for the fast-forward through significant chunks [and I confess to actually using it in the sex scenes]. Despite my summary up top, there is apparently a Part 2 of this knocking about. It’ll likely be quite some time before I can be bothered to review it.

Dir: Jiro Ishikawa
Star: Saori Hara, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Akari Hoshino

Sukeban Hunters

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★★★½
“Love that alternate title: Yakuza-Busting Girls: Final Death-Ride Battle.“

This teetered on the edge of a seal of approval, but didn’t quite make it. While there are some lovely moments, two great leads and the recreation of the pinky violence genre from the sixties and seventies, there’s just too much dead wood and pacing flaws, that leave it just short. Still certainly worth a look, with Asami (Asami) and Junko (Rena) going head-to-head as they battle each other for supremacy in the girl-gang world. Junko seems to have got the upper hand, leaving her rival buried for dead in the desert [or whatever passes for a desert in Japan]. But Asami is just warming up: she claws her way, literally, back from the grave, teams up with her old gang-members, and sets about extracting revengs on Junko and her crew.

The two leads are great, with Rena outstanding as a completely-warped boss. To give you some idea, when two underlings screw up, she doesn’t just make them cut off a finger. She pits them head-to-head against each other in digit removal – and the first one to refuse or hesitate, earns a bullet in the head. That’s what I call an incentive to avoid screwing up. She’s also a part-time dominatrix, who enjoys whipping a topless Asami with roses till she bleeds. That’s probably about as sleazy as this gets, and most of the time is more interested in the violence than the pinky, if you see what I mean; there’s a couple of decent extended brawls, as Asumi and her “sisters” take on Junko’s minions [I was initially confused by the sisterhood thing, until I worked out it seems to be a gang term, rather than blood relations].

On the other hand, as noted. some sequences brings things to a halt, most obviously a night-clun sequence which appears as much to be a promo for some band (probably a friend of the director), before going over to the always-popular, unconvincing transvestite assassins. The ending, too, goes on beyond what is necessary or effective, and the digital muzzle flashes are somewhat overdone. But don’t let that dissuade you from what’s a fun entry in the gang-girl genre, and I look forward to the promised second installment.

Dir: Nakadaira Kazushi
Star: Asami, Komine Rena, Motomiya Kenji, Sato Jiro

Geisha Assassin

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★★★½
“Surprisingly decent, and much more assassin than geisha.”

Taking a minimalist approach to its plot, particularly for the first hour, it’s about Kotomi (Tsukui), who is on a quest to find the man (Kanai) who was responsible for killing her father (Nomura), a samurai who wanted to leave his sklls to her. To reach the killer, she has to battle her way through a series of lower-level minions, such as a pack of ninjas, a monk and Pocahontas [ok, that might be a stretch, but honestly, that was my first thought on seeing her]. However, after she has fought her way past these henchmen and henchwomen, to reach the boss level, she discovers that things might not quite be the way she always perceived them.

After a series of Japanese films where it seems the experience most required by the lead actress involved modeling bikinis, rather than combat, it was pleasant to discover Tsukui appeared to know her stuff. This is apparent, because Ohara, for the most part, also knows his, keeping the camera an adequate distance from the action, and allowing the battle to flow across the screen without excessive edits. It’s particularly impressive in the fight between Kotomi and the monk, where one shot in particular is remarkable for its length, approaching early Jackie Chan levels. It makes sense that Ohara also worked on the action in Onechanbara, another solid genre entry.

It’s not without mis-steps: the lighting is occasionally crappy, and the film grinds to a halt at the end for a massive glob of exposition, just when it should be rolling out of control. This is significantly better when it keeps the whole “plot” and “acting” thing to a minimum, and concentrates on what it does best: Tsukui kicking ass in a wide variety of ways, ranging from surreal battles with zombie-like creatures who can detach their heads for use as weapons, or rolling around in the mud with Pocahontas. Which gives me an idea for an entirely new series of ‘Disney Princess’ movies, but I digress. Anyway, at a brisk 78 minutes, this doesn’t waste much time, and was certainly of unexpected quality and volume, as far as the action goes.

Dir: Go Ohara
Star: Minami Tsukui, Shigeru Kanai, Masaki Nomura, Nao Nagasawa
a.k.a. Geisha vs. Ninja

Female Slave Ship

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★★★
“Could have lived more fully up to its promise later, when the Japanese taste for pinku films had really awakened.”

It isn’t terribly ahead of its time, but one senses this could have done better later in the career of leading lady Mihara – she’d go on to movies such as the unforgettably-titled School of the Holy Beast. Here, however, exploitation largely stops at the title, with no sex to speak off [a cutaway to a gramophone needle is as salacious as it gets], female flesh is strictly limited to underwear, and the violence consists of bloodless gun-battles and a plethora of backhand slaps. With admirable equality, these are administered both to the square-jawed Japanese office hero, Lt. Suguwa (Sugawara), and the dozen women on whose ship he ends up, as World War II winds towards its end.

He was carrying crucial radar plans, when his plane is shot down. He gets picked up by a white-slaving vessel, taking a dozen women to Shanghai for sale – most are hookers, but there’s also Rumi (Mitsuya), who thought she was signing up as a combat nurse. Oops. Operations are overseen by the “queen” (Mihara), who is clearly a bad girl, since she smokes and sits with her legs crossed. However, the plan is derailed when the boat is hijacked by pirates: the girls, under Sugawa, mount a rebellion, but they are, frankly, a bit crap at it, and the pirates reverse the coup inside two minutes. It turns out the Americans wants Sugawa and the plans, so the pirates head for an island, to cut a deal with a Chinese spy for the officer, and auction away the curvier cargo. Can Sugawa and his bevy of beauties escape, despite the queen’s efforts to play both sides?

While not unentertaining, as noted above, it’s a film that would likely have been more successful made in 1970 rather than a decade previously. That said, Mihara is an excellent villainess, right from the first time we encounter her, as Sugawa tries to stop Rumi from getting a whipping for having the temerity to go on deck. She’s far more fun that the bland hero, and the film’s needle moves appreciably toward “Interesting” whenever she’s on screen. Unfortunately, that’s not often enough.

Onechanbara: Vortex

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★★
“…and now, everything bad about a movie based on a video game.”

If the original film was a pleasant surprise, being shallow entertainment and mayhem of the most fluffy kind, the sequel is a real disappointment. It doesn’t help that it behaves entirely as if the first movie hadn’t happen at all. Different director, different cast, and the story here fails to acknowledge anything that happened previously, dead people being resurrected with no explanation. Not that some of this makes all that much difference – one Japanese actress swinging a sword in a fur-trimmed bikini and cowboy-hat, is much the same as another. But the story is laid out here with a horrific lack of clarity that makes it perhaps the most confusing zombie film of all time. Yeah: it takes a special kind of talent to screw up “Dead come back, hungry, so we have to kill them.” Instead of focusing on essentials, the movie lobs in a bunch of tedious guff about Himiko, a new threat, who is seeking to use the blood of Aya and her sister to… mumble something mumble. If they ever explained it clearly, by that stage, I’d lost interest.

However, far and away the film’s biggest single mis-step is the director’s total obsession with splashing digital blood on the lens. Once or twice, it can be cute, in a ‘breaking the fourth wall’ kinda way. But here, every slice leads to you having to peer through a red fog for a bit. It gets old after about five minutes, and after 10, you’re wishing desperately for a pair of digital windscreen-wipers. Rarely has a visual trick been so badly mis-applied, through monstrous over-use. The only thing keeping the movie going is the basic concept, but the film proves that, yes, even with a film about a bikini-clad zombie-slayer, it is possible to go badly wrong. Chris may have snorted during the original, but only once: for the pseudo-sequel, it felt like the living-room had been invaded by a herd of buffalo, and I am largely with the derision being expressed. If they ever make a third, I’m only interested if the original director, etc. come back.

Dir: Tsuyoshi Shoji
Star: Chika Arakawa, Kumi Imura, Rika Kawamura, Akari Ozawa

Onechanbara: Zombie Bikini Squad

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★★★★
“Because nothing says post-apocalyptic zombie killer like a maribou-trimmed bikini and a cowboy hat.”

The Japanese title Onechanbara [variously Oneechanbara], is a portmanteau word, combining “onee-chan”, which means “big sister”, and “chanbara”, the term for sword-fighting movies. But, since this aspect would be lost on a Western audience, who can blame US distributors Tokyo Shock for adding the helpful subtitle, “Zombie Bikini Squad”. Y’know, in case the sleeve left doubts in this area. It’s based on a very popular series of Japanese video games, which consists of the heroines, in a variety of costumes, slicing and dicing their way through an apparently endless line of the living dead. With admirable faithfulness to the source material, the movie also consists of the heroines, in a variety of costumes, slicing and dicing their way through an apparently endless line of the living dead.

There’s Aya (Otugoro), the stoic sword-wielding one seen on the poster, and Reiko (Hashimoto), the leather-clad one with the infinite-ammo shotgun. Along with fat sidekick Katsuji (Waki), they’re looking for Aya’s sister, Saki – and also Dr. Sugita (Suwa), the mad scientist responsible for the zombie outbreak which has swept the world, setting sister nibbling on brother, daughter on mother, etc. On the way to their goal, they meet other survivors, a zombie version of GoGo Yubari from Kill Bill, and several million gallons of digital blood, including a good chunk sprayed onto the camera lens. Now, I’ve never played the game at all, so can only assume everything makes perfect sense in that universe. Still, as adaptations go, this seems to capture the inherent spirit of mindless slaughter admirably, with Aya’s power-up the most devastating video-game weapon since the Defender smart bomb. I just dated myself horribly, didn’t I?

Anyway. Is it any good? Not by objective standards, no. But it is a hell of a lot of fun, soundly kicking the ass of the last two Resident Evil movies there. While the characterization is, of necessity, composed of broad strokes, that’s forgivable, and it touches all the necessary zombie bases e.g. a character who gets nibbled and has to be put down as a result. An escalating series of encounters helps provide copious action, and despite the clear CGI, this is well-staged and edited, with the actresses doing a more than credible job. Besides, Chris’s snort of disbelief when Aya threw off her cloak to reveal the fur-trimmed bikini was priceless.

Dir: Yohei Fukuda
Star: Eri Otoguro, Tomohiro Waki, Taro Suwa, Manami Hashimoto