Rating: C
Dir: Yoshihiro Nishimura.
Star: Eihi Shiina, Anna Nagasaki, Miyuki Torii, Yudai Uenishi.
Despite the mediocre grade, I must say I laughed harder at a single moment in this splatstick movie, than at anything else I’ve seen this year. It comes near the beginning, after trans heroine Maria (Nagasaki) has just shown up out of nowhere – possibly descended from heaven. She lands in the middle of a battle between Chinese criminals and the Japanese group run by the super-sadistic Hime (Shiina). Taking the side of the former, she takes all four limbs off one of the Japanese attackers. Maria then rides the poor bastard to a higher floor, using the resulting blood spray, ridiculously implausible in both volume and pressure, to propel her up like one of those watersport toys. It’s awesomely stupid.
Unfortunately, it’s largely downhill from here, especially in terms of narrative. Admittedly, you are talking about a film by the director of Tokyo Gore Police and Mutant Girls Squad. With titles like that, you might not expect much story. But Squad in particular, hangs together with unexpected coherence. This has a lot of bloody imagination, for sure. But once you’ve seen someone riding an arterial-propelled flyboard? Yeah, you might as well pack it in. The pleasures to be found elsewhere are limited. Shiina is about the only performer to make an impression, riffing off her most famous role in Audition, and at one point specifically referencing her “Kiri kiri kiri…” line from there. Everyone else just pulls faces while being drenched in fake blood.
It feels as much an excuse for Nishimura to work out some apparently dubious issues with women. I mean, the only sympathetic one here, doesn’t say a word, and was born male. Beyond Maria, the others are all on Hine’s side, most notably a pair whose legs are a giant jaw with its mouth at their crotch. Similar creatures showed up in Police, so yeah – I guess it’s an alternative to therapy for the director. There’s also Cloud Girl, whose head is largely covered in cumulus. She, at least, seems pleased to be there, and her scenes have a certain goofy charm and energy. Too many others drag on, serve no notable point, or try to make some kind of clunky social point, about tolerance or (against) religion.
For example, Hime calls her enemy “Chinks”. Which is bad, m’kay, because she is a villain. Or harassing Maria, which gets your dick ripped off and stuck on your face, for a quick Pinocchio reference. [This moment is much touted in Letterboxd reviews: get your trans empowerment where you can, I guess] Never mind that, regardless of past or present genital configuration, she is a bizarre-looking creature, truth be told. To be blunt, there’s good reason the film needed more than three years to get a release even in its home country, after the world premiere in April 2022. This is saying something, considering the bizarre material which does get released in the Japanese market. I can certainly imagine distributors watching it, then stoically refusing to take Nishimura’s calls.