Tag: japan

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

Operation Pussycat

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★★★
“Superfluous if harmless remake, smaller in every way than Russ Meyer’s original.”

Faster, Pussycat is one of the icons of the action heroine genre, literally entire decades ahead of its time. This Japanese version uses a lot of the same elements, starting with a trio of go-go girls on the lam, under their macho leader. They stumble across a wheelchair-bound man and his muscular if taciturn companion, who appears to be stashing a large sum of money somewhere on the premises. If only they could find it… There’s also an innocent who gets entangled in the web of deceit and counter-deceit – in the original, it was because she witnessed them kill her boyfriend, while in this case, it’s after she apparently witnesses the three beat up a policeman, who stopped them for speeding, and discovered the dead body stashed in the back of their pick-up truck.

The main problem is likely anyone trying to step into the shoes – make that, boots – of Tura Satana. It’s probably a lost cause for anyone, trying to capture the complete commitment of Satana, who took the role by the scruff of the neck and shook it, like a Rottweiler mauling a rag-doll. It’s this which was largely responsible for lifting the original to its heady, dizzying heights. Much as Mizutani gives her all, in the parallel role of “Harry”, she’s inevitably going to come up short, and the film never reaches the same heights as a result. The dialog in the original was another highlight, cheesily fragrant like the ripest cheddar, and while it may be the translation at fault, none of the lines here stick in the mind the same way.

That said, while a pale imitation, this is still fun enough on its own terms, and was clearly made with a lot of love for the original, which I can only respect. At a mere 43 minutes, it gallops along at a brisk pace, and the areas where it diverts most sharply from Faster – particularly the end – were interesting and offered scope for future development. All told, while there’s really no point to this, that isn’t enough to condemn it, and if treated as a homage to Meyer, it’s a pleasant, if brief, diversion.

Dir: Ryuichi Honda
Star: Kei Mizutani, Nao Eguchi, Yukari Fukawa, Eguchi Nao

Assault Girls

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★★
“20 minutes of acceptable entertainment gets stretched very thinly.”

A loosely-related sequel to Oshii’s last live-action film, Avalon, this is similarly set in a VR world, and muses on the relationship between real life and game life. This one is a lot less populated; there are only four people in it, roaming a desert landscape, with the targets being giant sandworms (think Dune) and the “boss” Madara, the mother of all sandworms, whom the game helpfully informs contestants, cannot be killed single-handed. The four get together to launch an attack on it, having agreed to split the game reward equally. Is that quite how things are going to turn out?

That’s it, plotwise: describing the story as “slight” would be an insult to slight things. Opening with a burst of the most pretentiously incomprehensible voice-over in cinema history, this is only 70 minutes long, but still manages to outstay its welcome. This is mostly due to horrendous pacing; we watch one character do nothing but sit and fry breakfast for several minutes, while there’s an interminable sequence in the middle, where the characters trudge around the game landscape and stare at a snail. I get the point: these are archetypes depicting different styles of game player. No, really: I get the point. Move on. Please. I was ready to gnaw off a limb to escape, by the time that ended. Matters are not helped by the characters largely speaking English, apparently phonetically, and without much grasp of meaning. I’m pretty sure I’d not win any Oscars performing in Japanese, and while one admires the effort, couldn’t Oshii have found actors with some ability in English as a second language?

Things do perk up in the final act, when Jager (Fujiki, the only male) and Gray (Kuroki), have a battle over how the spoils will be divided. She kicks his ass, to his increasing annoyance. And I certainly appreciated the visual style here, which is easily the best component on view. This, along with the potential in the idea, saves it from being a total waste of your time, and I would not be completely averse to a further installment. Just as long as someone else writes the script.

Dir: Mamoru Oshii
Star: Meisa Kuroki, Yoshikatsu Fujiki, Rinko Kikuchi, Hinako Saeki

Silver

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★★
“It’s not precious, and has very little mettle.”

Miike has provided some of our favorite Japanese films of all-time, including Audition, Ichi the Killer and The Bird People of China, but this entry in his prolific output has to count as a misfire, being nowhere near as interesting as it sounds. Heroine Jun (Sakuraba) is abroad when her entire family is killed by Yakuza: three years later, after working as an FBI agent (!) and continuing her karate education, she returns home, to track down those responsible. She does this by going undercover in a pro wrestling promotion (!!), on the basis they can tour the country without suspicion, letting her investigate as her wrestling alter-ego, Silver. However, she’s not the only one on the hunt, with a dart-using assassin contracted to stop Jun.

Let me repeat, however: nowhere near as interesting as it sounds. Initially, this starts off looking like it is going to be a Japanese version of those Santo movies (wrestler by day, crime-fighter by night), and it’s nice to see real wrestlers, like Shinobu Kandori. However, that angle is completely ignored, as if Miike got bored and drifted of. Instead, Jun heads into the seamier side of the Japanese underground, taking on a dominatrix and her slave, leading to a series of scenes which certainly have the Miike twisted sensibility. This is not necessarily a good thing, however; unless you’re into S&M, they far outstay their welcome, as does the tedious, soft-core (and pretty un-Miikeesque) sex sequence between Jun and her handler. As the film progresses, the main thing keeping it afloat is simply to see how weird it’s going to get, after the forced urine-drinking and someone getting their (digitized) dick smacked with a paddle.

Matters are not helped by the vague, nondescript ending, which clearly indicates this was supposed to be the first in a series. That no second installment ever materialized, even given the low cost of producing this, indicates that even the Japanese were uninterested. Given the huge volume of Miike’s work – at time of writing, the IMDB has 83 directorial credits for him – I suppose it’s no surprise some, like this, will be uninteresting at best.

Dir: Takashi Miike
Star: Atsuko Sakuraba, Kenji Haga, Rumi Kazama, Hisao Maki

Ichi

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★★★
“Ichi the not-quite so much a killer as we hoped.”

This unofficial spin-off from the Zatoichi series had us wondering if there’s a Japanese studio version of The Asylum out there – the people who specialize in knockoffs of popular films, including such classics as Snakes on a Train and Sunday School Musical. We’ll cut the makers of this some slack, since we’re of the opinion that all action films are improved with a heroine in the lead. That’s the main switch here: Zatoichi becomes Ichi (Ayase), a blind swordswoman and entertainer, who is roaming the country in search of the man she believes is her father. She is quite capable of taking care of herself, but the resulting trail of bodies is blamed on travelling companion Tomo Fujihira (Ôsawa), who becomes bodyguard to a town under assault from a gang, led by Banki (Nakamura). Unfortunately, since he accidentally blinded his mother, Tomo is unable to pull his sword from its scabbard, and the Banki gang are ready to wreak revenge on him for the members killed by Ichi.

The main problem is that Tomo is the focus of the film more than Ichi. This is somewhat understandable, since Ichi takes “stoic silence” to much the same level as the corpses she leaves behind. We get some fragmentary glimpses of her past, and what makes her the way she is, but as far as her current personality goes, she’s never going to be accused of talking too much. Or at all. Making matters worse, during much of the climactic final battle between the Bankis and the townsfolk, Ichi is nowhere to be found. We’d been hoping for something like the climax of Azumi, with her slicing and dicing her way through a host of bad guys. Ichi had showed a nice economy of effort early on, maintaining a close to 1:1 ratio of slashes to kills (and never having as much as a hair out of place), but it turns out Banki has dealt with her style before, hampering its effectiveness.

On the plus side, it’s very-nicely shot, and as sidekicks go, Tomo is an amiable character, sliding from comic interest to love interest to tortured-hero interest with ease. This is as much a case of managing expectations as anything. It’s a solid samurai drama, and if it had been called Tomo, we would likely have been less disappointed in the way the film concentrates on him. Admittedly, if that had been the case, we probably wouldn’t have bothered getting a copy…

Dir: Fumihiko Sori
Star: Takao Ôsawa, Haruka Ayase, Shido Nakamura, Yosuke Kubozuka