Tag: japan

Chanbara Striptease

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★★★
“If you ever wanted to see topless swordfighting, you’ll be in heaven.”

Lili is a devotee of Sayama Hashinryu, a deadly form of swordsmanship passed down from woman to woman. She goes through the initiation rite, which involves being blindfolded and given a drink which knocks her unconscious. She comes to, about three hundred years in the past, in feudal Japan, naked. When she gathers her senses, she rescues a local village-girl from some ninjas, but to cut a long story short, discovers in the process that when Lili exposes her breasts, they emit a pinkish glow, and she becomes far better at swordplay. Turns out the poor villagers are suffering extortion from the evil Lady Okini (Asa), so Lili turns into the Magnificent One [or Magnificent Two, if you know what I mean, and I think you do], while also falling for Hikoichi (Matsuda), the brother of the girl she rescued. However, it turns out that Lili is not the only one in possession of a supernatural bosom; Lady Okini is also so equipped. Battle cleavages are thus drawn…

It says something about this film that I am still not sure who actually plays the heroine in it. The DVD has no credits to speak of – though Manga Video did bother to translate the closing song lyric – and the IMDB doesn’t list anyone playing Lili. So, if it’s not Akanishi – and I think it may not be, from what I can tell on a quick Google Image search – then I’ve no idea [Hooray! Reader A.R. comes through, confirming it is Ruru Anoa who plays Lili]. Anyway, it’s every bit as silly as it sounds, and made all the more palatable by being played dead-serious by all concerned. Despite the copious nudity, it’s mostly very innocent, though there are a couple of sex scenes which do bring the film to a bit of a halt – the lead actress isn’t even all that pretty, in my opinion, though Asa has a nice “bad girl” thing going.

The action is fairly basic, but edited in a decent way, hiding the limited skills of those taking part, and it barely runs an hour – likely a good thing, as one suspects much more of this could be outstaying its welcome. Incidentally, “Chanbara” basically means “sword-fighting movie”; the original title translates as “Breast Chanbara,” which is certainly closer to the truth than the Manga title, as the film contains no striptease whatsoever. The same creators had previously done two Chanbara Beauty films, about a bikini-clad zombie-killer, based on a video-game; I think I’ll be fast-tracking those for future consumption, and may even be able to watch them with Chris!

Dir: Akira Hirose
Star: Ryo Akanishi, Ruru Anoa, Yôichi Matsuda, Mina Asa, Sasa Handa

Lady Snowblood 1 + 2

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★★½
Lady Snowblood

I’ll be honest: I was disappointed. I’d been looking forward to seeing this for a long while, but when we finally cranked it up on Monday, found it pretty dull. Truth be told, Chris was giving it loud Z’s by the end of the film, and I spent a few minutes closing my eyes and just listening to the dialogue. Which, since it was in Japanese, isn’t a good sign either. This was a surprise. A lot of people, whose views I generally respect, really like it, such as mandiapple.com, who called it “nothing short of a masterpiece.” Reading that, I had to check they were reviewing the same film. Because, personally, while its influence on Kill Bill is undeniable, that is a far more effective piece of work.

The plot in both is needlessly-convoluted, but it has much more of a negative impact here. Here is the story, in chronological order. In late 19th-century Japan, a mother sees her husband and young son slaughtered by a group of four con-artists; she is kidnapped and raped over a period of several days before being abandoned. She vows revenge, but is arrested after killing only one of the four, and sent to prison for life. There, she has a baby daughter, Yuki, spawned for the sole purpose of continuing the revenge. After the mother dies in jail, Yuki is released with another prisoner, and begins her training under a tough Buddhist priest (Nishimura). When she reaches her twentieth birthday, she leaves, to start her mission.

The problems here are multiple, not least that Yuki is just too cold. She might as well be an automaton, as she progresses on her vengeance, showing no emotion or feeling, and it’s hard to feel empathy for her. Yes, she is supposed to be a cold-hearted killing machine, but the performance here is devoid of all humanity. There’s nothing personal here either. Yuki is not the victim; the events in question occurred before she was even conceived, giving her no direct stake in proceedings – she is simply a tool, wielded from beyond the grave by a mother she never really knew. Contrast Kill Bill, where the Bride sees her husband-to-be slaughtered at the altar. As motivation, it’s far superior and resonates much more with the audience.

Then there’s the action, which is second-rate at best. It may have seemed cutting-edge when the film was released in 1973. Approaching forty years later… Not so much. There’s little sense that anyone – good or bad – has true sword skills, and the battles are largely brief and perfunctory. Admittedly, the arterial spray is enthusiastic – clearly the high blood-pressure epidemic affecting Japan is not a new phenomena – and looks very pretty on the snow backdrop which is frequently used. However, that can only go some way to overcoming the flaws in the characterization: one suspects the original manga, by Kazuo Koike (who also did Lone Wolf and Cub), perhaps had more room to be better developed in this area. And while we’re at it, what’s with the anachronistic jazz soundtrack, dating from a good half-century after this is set? Any sense of period atmosphere is completely destroyed, every time it cranks up.

What works is mostly the visual style, and it’s soundly put together from a technical aspect. Kaji, who plays the adult Yuki, is also solid enough, though was probably better – even if she said less! – in the Female Convict Scorpion series [I must get round to reviewing the excellent Jailhouse 41 here some time, though it won’t be till after we move house in October, and the DVD re-surfaces…]. I also liked the chaste purity here: Yuki doesn’t have any real relationships at all – she lives purely for revenge. However, I feel much the same way about this, that I did about the original Night of the Living Dead. While it certainly deserves to be respected for its influential place in the history of the genre, it feels as if the elements seen here have been revisited with greater success, by those who followed in its foot-steps.

Dir: Toshiya Fujita
Star: Meiko Kaji, Ko Nishimura, Toshio Kurosawa, Masaaki Daimon

★★
Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance

I was hoping that the second film would show me why this series has such a solid reputation, but was even more disappointed by the sequel than the original. There’s a striking opening, where Yuki basically walks out of an ambush, hardly bothering even to pay attention to the men circling her – except to slaughter them. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much downhill from there, with proceedings getting badly bogged down in even more of the political shenanigans that we saw in part one. Yuki is arrested and sentenced to death for her 37(!) murders, but is rescued by the chief of the secret police, Kikui Seishiro (Kishida), who sends her on a mission against nihilist Ransui Tokunaga (Itami), perceived as a threat to the order of things.

That’s because Tokanaga and his wife are in possession of a document that could seriously embarrass the government, by proving their involvement in the deaths of Tokunaga’s partners. When Yuki discovers this, she switches sides, though Tokunaga is arrested, tortured and, when he fails to give up the document’s location, injected with bubonic plague [interestingly, this is a decade before the biological weapons work of Unit 731 during WW2 became public knowledge in Japan] and dumped in the slums as a warning to others. Yuki teams up with Tokunaga’s estranged brother, and sets out to take revenge on the government forces responsible for his death.

This is set just after the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, and I’ve a feeling is meant in some way to parallel the political situation of the 1970’s. However, all such sentiment is entirely wasted on Western viewers watching it almost forty years after it was made. If you’re looking at this as an action movie, it plays out in a manner best described as turgid, with very sporadic action, to such an extent that it hardly qualifies as such at all – if it weren’t for the original, I doubt I’d be covering it here. Even the arterial gushiness seems to be less unenthusiastic and sprayful than previously.

On the other hand, Kaji’s portrayal is more emotionally-disengaged this time, and it’s even harder to develop sympathy for a character engaged in some kind of obscure political activism, rather than personal revenge. It’s what perhaps makes this one’s closest cousin V For Vendetta, with samurai swords. And, in case you were wondering, that is not meant to be much of an endorsement. I’d say you are far better off watching the futuristic remake, The Princess Blade or even the better entries in the Crimson Bat series than either of these films, and given my high hopes coming into these, based on their reputation, that’s extremely disappointing.

Dir: Toshiya Fujita
Star: Meiko Kaji, Juzo Itami, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Shin Kishida

Hard Revenge Milly

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★★★★
“In which the ongoing problem of high blood-pressure in Japan apparently reaches epidemic proportions.”

In the near(ish) future, Japan has become a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which only the strong survive. Initially, that does not include Milly (Mizuno), who is tortured by the Jack brothers and their gang: her baby is set on fire, while she has her breasts sliced off and is left for dead. However, she survives, albeit in a partially-mechanical form, and has now devoted her life to revenge on those responsible. Her artificial enhancements include a shotgun leg, a sword up her sleeve and a chest that… Well, that has to be seen to be believed, let’s just leave it at that, shall we? That’s Hard Revenge Milly, the first of the two films on the Western release DVD.

The second, Hard Revenge Milly: Bloody Battle, has Milly being sought by some colleagues of the Jack brothers, led by Ikki (Tsujimoto), a flamboyantly gay psychopath with an attitude. “That’s why I hate bisexuals,” he says, after crushing one minion’s head into a wall for making a sexual advance on a female hostage. However, Milly now has a sidekick: Haru (Nagasawa), who wants Milly to help out with her own mission of revenge, tracking down whoever is responsible for the death of Haru’s lover. However, it turns out that her and Milly’s missions may be rather more directly aligned than initially seems the case.

If you enjoyed The Machine Girl, then this should be right up your arterial alley, as it has much the same gleeful, fire-hose approach to the carnage, at times literally painting the camera lens red. This isn’t quite as good, mostly because the pacing is off, especially in the first movie, which has too much of Milly wandering about an abandoned factory that serves as the main location. The low-budget is occasionally painfully obvious, particularly for one CGI decapitation which is less convincing than any latex head could ever be. The overall plot is also just a bit too close to Kill Bill for its own good,

The pacing is less of a problem in Bloody Battle, where the post-apocalyptic world is more fully drawn, and the production values seem to be significantly higher. The addition of Haru provides something of a mirror in which Milly can see herself – there’s an interesting question raised as to whether her revenge may be an artificial construct, and the villains are also given a bit more depth. However, you will not be watching these for subtle characterization, and Mizuno acquits herself admirably as an action actress in both installments, showing solid martial-arts and swordplay skills. While unquestionably not for the faint of heart, there’s energy and inventiveness to spare, and it’s certainly unlike anything coming out of the West.

Dir: Takanori Tsujimoto
Stars: Miki Mizuno, Nao Nagasawa, Mitsuki Koga, Kazuki Tsujimoto

Ayane’s High Kick

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★★★
“Because every Japanese schoolgirl wants to grow up and become a professional wrestler. “

Ayane tries out for the All-Japan Women’s pro-wrestling federation, but is rejected. However, on the way home, she meets a mysterious trainer, who recruits her for his indie group, promising that if she does well, AJW will likely pick her up. What Ayane doesn’t know, is that her trainer has no interest in pro-wrestling, but wants to use our heroine’s lethal leg skills to make her a kick-boxing champion. Ayane eventually discovers the truth, literally in the ring at her first bout; after the inevitable struggles, she wins, in spectacular style, but vows to quit the sport. However, her victory grabbing the headlines infuriates a rival, who turns up at Ayane’s school to issue a challenge. Which is not good, since the vice-principal is just looking for an excuse to expel her.

This is full of the usual OTT mugging familiar from light-hearted anime fare, such as Project A-ko, and is clearly not to be taken seriously. That said, there are some nice references and cameos, not least by Manami Toyota as the reigning AJW champion – in the subtitles, she’s referred to as ‘Toyoda,’ which I think is probably just an alternative translation, rather than an effort to avoid a lawsuit, since she’s portrayed in a positive light. However, this angle seems to be seriously diluted in the second episode, where Ayane is more fully engaged in her role as a kickboxer.

The fights use all the trickery available to animation to enhance them, though a passing Chris commented, “Looks like Speed Racer,” due to all the lines in the background when portraying movement. That said, they’re used because they work, and the results are quite effective. Less successful are the too-broad attempts at comedy, and outside of Ayane, the characters don’t really grab your attention, such as the schoolmate, or “whiny lesbian” to quote the passing Chris once again. That said, I was entertained for fifty minutes: the version released here has two episodes, and the way it finishes seems to imply more to come – however, nothing seems to have been made. That’s something of a shame; seeing the Japanimated dreck which clogs up the shelves in Best Buy these days, I wish Ayane had gone on for a few more rounds.

Dir: Takahiro Okao
Star (voice): Yûko Miyamura, Akio Ôtsuka, Kumiko Nishihara, Maria Kawamura

Black Magic M-66

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★★★½
“Aliens meets The Terminator in a brisk, head-on collision.”

Shirow has certainly done his fair share of anime works that are regarded as classics – his best-known creation is probably Appleseed. This is from relatively early in his career; indeed, coming out in 1991 made it one of the first anime to be ‘properly’ distributed in the West [and, by that, I mean subtitled and not cut down for a child audience]. It centers on the titular pair of military androids, who are released after their transport craft goes down in the middle of a forest. The army cordon off the area, which draws the attention of Sybel (Sakakibara), a reporter, unwilling to let anything stand in the way of her story. She witnesses a hellacious fire-fight in which one ‘droid is destroyed, while the other escapes, and discovers the goal for the android is to kill the inventor’s young grand-daughter, Ferris. As the only person who knows the current location of the daughter, it’s up to her to save the child.

Barely half the length of an average movie, this fairly gallops along, towards an extended climax in a high-rise block, where Sybel is the only thing left standing between the relentless robot and its target. This is when the film is at is best, with action sequences that wouldn’t shame most Hollywood action movies. Less successful – in fact, basically absent (admittedly, no real surprise given the running time) – is any real effort at developing the characters. We know Sybel is focused, because she leaves her apartment with her camera, yet forgets to put on clothes. That’s about the extent of it, and she is the best-served of anyone in the film; Ferris, for instance, does little but squeal in an irritating manner. It’s also a product of its time: originally made in 1987, animation has changed radically in the more than two decades since, and the style now looks somewhat clunky, especially when it tries to simulate camera movement.

Still, the storyline holds up nicely, and given America’s fondness for remaking Japanese genre films, one wonders why they haven’t bothered to mine the animation vaults further [though Speed Racer probably acts as a good counter-argument!]. It’d certainly be very easy to see this as a James Cameron movie.

Dir: Masamune Shirow
Star (voice): Yoshiko Sakakibara, Shinji Ogawa, Yû Mizushima, Chisa Yokoyama

Dirty Pair Flash, Mission 3: Random Angels

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★★★

The final – to date – installment of Dirty Pair adventures on the screen, is a bit of a mixed bag. Of the five episodes here, two are pretty good, one mediocre, and two are more than a tad creepy, thanks to the level of, from what I recall of my days in anime, used to be called ‘fan service’. There is an entire episode centered around beach volleyball, which is nothing more than a flimsy excuse to see Kei and Yuri in a variety of miniscule costumes, bordering on the fetishistic. Now, I just don’t find cartoons sexy – no, not even Jessica Rabbit – and given both of them are technically under-age, it all gets a tad sleazy. Things get worse in the fourth episode, when an even younger boy, rich and clever, but very weird, builds a mechanical replica of Yuri and falls in love with it.

That’s the bad news. The good news is, when they keep on track, the show has the right mix of goofy humour and collateral damage that we love. Witness the second installment, where our pair find themselves being hunted by Monica De Noir: someone younger, deadlier and with an even more saccharine approach to life, whose weapons include things like a giant killer teddy-bear. That’s got some nice jabs at the Sailor Moon school of anime, though since Flash takes some aspects of that show on-board, it does count as biting the hand somewhat. Also enjoyable was the final episode, where Berringer, a villain in a military hard-suit who was jailed thanks to Chief Poporo, lays siege to WWWA headquarters, with vengeance atop his list of priorities. It’s kinda Die Hard crossed with The Terminator, and I was sorry to see that one finish. Completing the set is an episode where Kei has to nurse a baby through a hostile landscape; emphasis on a) ‘nurse’ and b) ‘hostile’, which is also kinda odd to Western eyes. Having always preferred Yuri to Kei, this was never going to be one of my favorites.

All told though, it is a significant improvement on the dire previous series, returning the focus to what made the Dirty Pair entertaining, in a cheerfully destructive way. It certainly feels something of a mis-step to separate Kei and Yuri, as in a couple of the pieces: the interaction and character contrast between them is part of the show’s appeal. However, when they’re together and working in synch, they still represent one of the best double-acts in anime history, and I hope there will perhaps be more Dirty Pair available down the road.

Dir: Takahito Kimura
Star (voice): Rika Matsumoto, Mariko Koda, Shigezou Sasaoka, Mika Kanai

Dirty Pair Flash, Mission 2: Angels at World’s End

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★½

Where are Kei and Yuri, and what have you done with them? That might be the anguished cry of the Dirty Pair fan after watching these five episodes, most of which eschew any efforts at high-octane action, in favour of generally unamusing comedy and tedium. All five parts are set on World’s World, a theme-planet that recreates 20th-century life for tourists. Our heroines are sent there because the computer is virus-infected, to bodyguard the network engineer Touma (Ono) who is going to fix it. Their presence becomes necessary, as it’s soon clear someone is out to stop Touma from doing his job. That only occupies the bookend episodes: the middle three are, while still set on the same planet, largely unconnected. In them, Kei and Yuri must look into ghostly goings-on at a girls’ school, help Touma with his love-life and bring a con-artist to justice.

Wow, this is bland and forgettable. Two of the episodes are closer to shaggy-dog stories, with twists in the tail that might as well open with flashing neon signs indicating their presence. This is not the Dirty Pair I signed up for. I signed up for the ones with the large weaponry, capable of taking out entire cities with a shrug of denial and an oversized weapon. Not these…bimbos, more interested in the romantic dalliances of a feeble supporting character than in a bit of the old ultraviolence. Really, the direction taken in this slate is a good example of why I started to lose interest in anime after the mid-90’s: a dumbing-down and kiddification of the medium, that largely removed everything that attracted me to it to begin with. I blame Pokemon.

The setting has a lot of scope: the creators could potentially have thrown Kei and Yuri into any era and any location [can you imagine them in, say, the Wild West or feudal Japan?]. Appreciating that, dumping them into modern era Tokyo demonstrates a dearth of imagination that borders on the sad. There are occasional flashes of what you would expect from the series, such as the final episode, which becomes a moderately-rousing chase after the perpetrator behind both the computer virus and the attacks on Touma. That just simply throws the failings inherent in the rest of the episodes into even sharper relief. I never previously thought that the Dirty Pair could ever be boring; I guess I have this set of OAVs to thank for convincing me otherwise, as I spent far too much of them wondering how much longer there was to go.

Dir: Takahito Kimura
Star (voice): Rika Matsumoto, Mariko Koda, Kenichi Ono, Akio Ootsuka

Dirty Pair Flash, Mission 1: Angels in Trouble

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★★★½

The surprising thing about this, is that the six episodes, basically, form a single plot, a radically different approach to the first phase anime, where the individual OAVs stood on their own, with little or no ongoing story arc. Here, the parts mesh, starting with the pair, off-duty, coming into possession of an encrypted card, which they must get back to 3WA headquarters, in the face of significant opposition. From this develops the uncovering of a galaxy-wide conspiracy involving the malevolent Lucifer group, which must be foiled, since they have control of galactic communications. However, a significant subplot involves Lady Flair, a sniper who humiliates Kei in the second episode, provoking her into a fury which leads, later on, to our redheaded spitfire quitting the 3WA in order to pursue Flair on her own terms.

There’s some interesting background provided, in that Kei and Yuri are not the first to bear the “Lovely Angels” name for their employers. It seems to be more like the “Double 0” prefix, though perhaps limited to one pairing at any given time. Anyway, it seems the reign of the previous incumbents, Molly and Iris, ended when the former was killed on the job, and Iris quit, to vanish from the scene. Savvy readers may be already making a connection to the previous paragraph, but you’ll find no spoilers here. No. Not at all. I can neither confirm nor deny any such thoughts.

I can’t help feeling this wasn’t as good as it could have been, given the components, which have potential. Maybe’s it’s the relationship between the heroines which is the problem; efforts to show them changing, from initially dislike into devoted partners, never convince on any significant level. All the rest of the elements are certainly present, from the major urban renewal scheme initiated by the demolition company of Kei+Yuri, Inc. in the first episode, through lightly-cheesecakey costumes to wholesale mayhem at an airport where everyone is packing heat, and there are enough good moments and fun to keep me amused. But the pair (Kei especially) are less heroic, savvy women, than two peeved, heavily-armed, teenage, girls. As we already have someone in the house who fits 3/4 of that bill – thankfully, not “heavily-armed”! – the appeal of this series is naturally diminished.

Dir: Takahito Kimura
Star (voice): Rika Matsumoto, Mariko Koda, Hazime Koseki, Yumi Touma

Yo-Yo Girl Cop

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★★★½

“Yo-yo. Girl. Cop,” said Chris, burdening those three words with sarcasm, as only she can, and giving me one of those sidelong glances, heavy with additional meaning. Hey, what can I say. This was an unexpected revival of the series, from 2006, with the lead played by pop singer Matsura. She is a wild-child coerced into undercover work by Kazutoshi Kira (Takeuchi, from Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy), to save her mother who is being held on espionage charges in the US [in a nice touch, Mom is played by Yuki Saito, who was the first live-action Sukeban Deka, in the original TV series]. Her mission – should she choose to accept it – is to go into a high-school and uncover those behind the threatening Enola Gay website, a neo-terrorist URL that now has a counter on it, with less than 72 hours remaining. She befriends Konno Tae (Okada), the meek victim of relentless bullying, and also encounters the school’s queen bee, Reika Akiyama (Rika Ishikawa – shown right, and another pop singer, like Okada part of the v-u-den group) and her clique. Can she work out what’s going down, and pull the plug on it?

The movie has a distinctly split-personality. Early and late, it has the straight-laced but extreme camp aspects you’d expect, with much meaningful staring, po-faced declarations and radical costuming decisions. However, for most of the middle, such angles are all but discarded for an earnest examination of contemporary social realities in Japanese educational establishments, with special focus on the problem of bullying. It isn’t bad, on its own terms – and handles the dehumanizing nature of the Internet particularly effectively – yet appears to have come from an entirely different film, and the two aspects fail abjectly to mesh, resulting in a startling unevenness of tone. Fortunately, Matsura is surprisingly good in the role, with a gutter-mouthed toughness quite at odds with her background in the entirely artificial world of J-pop idols.

Fukasaku’s father was the director of the infamous Battle Royale, a film still unreleased officialy in the US, but the son brings an entire bag of other influences to this work. There’s the ticking clock intertitle of 24, the Bond-inspired opening credits, Hannibal Lecter’s mask, used to restrain our heroine before her recruitment, and a good chunk of the central plot appears borrowed from Heathers – or, probably more likely, Suicide Circle [a.k.a. Suicide Club, a film most renowned for its opening scene]. When it moves onto its own territory, this is somewhat less effective: if Fukasaku had decided whether or not he was going for serious drama [and given the yoyo-esque aspects and its ancestry, I’d have recommended going with “not”], then the results would likely have been better. Instead, you get something that, while having its moments, won’t quite satisfy trash fans like ourselves [though it wasn’t as bad as Chris feared], and anyone else will likely give this a wide berth.

Dir: Kenta Fukasaku
Star: Aya Matsura, Riki Takeuchi, Yui Okada, Shunsuke Kubozuka

Sukeban Deka 2: Counter-Attack from the Kazama Sisters

  By

★★½

Perhaps the most startling thing here is the amount of political subtext, albeit likely somewhat unintentional. Saki Asamiya (Asaka) is part of the student police force, but feels they are overly brutal, beating anyone who “isn’t a straight arrow”, to quote Asamiya. This leads her to quit, heading off for a spot of slow-motion horse-riding more befitting a feminine hygiene commercial. However, she returns, teaming up with her sisters, when she discovers that her erstwhile colleagues are staging terrorist attacks, and blaming them on a group called the Outcast League, a with the aim of strengthening their position and gaining even greater powers. Asamiya joins the League, only to find the full force of the law now turned on her.

From a post-9/11 and Patriot Act world, this has acquired a weird resonance that, presumably, was nowhere in the creators’ minds at the time. This reminds me somewhat of Demolition Man, in which Stallone teamed up with those beyond the pale, to take on the authorities; here, the head of the League is a drug-dealer; that he is portrayed even vaguely sympathetically, is remarkable for this kind of movie. Unfortunately, the other aspects of the film are a great deal less interesting, and Asaka’s deficiency as any sort of credible action heroine are painfully obvious – she doesn’t get to do very much except look stern and repeat the same yo-yo throw over and over again. I was amused by the scene where she and her sisters are tagged with grappling hooks, swept off a balcony and towed along a river for a bit, before Asaka somersaults out of the water to land – completely dry – on the deck, to battle the bad guys with highly-mediocre martial-arts.

The movie also slows to a crawl for about twenty minutes after she teams up with the League, though Things do perk up somewhat down the stretch, with the student cops launching an assault on the Outcast League compound [shades of Waco here!], starting with water hoses and escalating up to a flamethrower-equipped tank, against which our heroine’s yo-yo proves ineffective. However, she escapes and has to catch a lift from a conveniently passing Kodak blimp – no, I couldn’t make this kind of stuff up – in order to stop another of the fabricated terrorist attacks. There, we learn the answer to the burning question of the day, “Is it possible to bring a light-aircraft down, using only a yo-yo?” Though if you’ve read the synopsis to the previous movie, you are probably a good way along towards working out the answer.

Dir: Hideo Tanaka
Star: Yui Asaka, Kosuke Toyohara, Minako Fujishiro, Yuma Nakamura