Robogeisha (Japan-2009; dir. Noboru Iguchi)Reviewed by Robert HoodSpurred on by the possibilities for excessive imagery inherent in current SFX technologies, the Japanese independent film industry has produced a string of particularly OTT (Over The Top) genre extravaganzas in recent years. Yoshihiro Nishimura’s
Tokyo Gore Police (aka Tôkyô zankoku keisatsu) and
Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (aka Kyûketsu Shôjo tai Shôjo Furanken), along with Noboru Igushi’s
The Machine Girl (aka Kataude mashin gâru) and
The Ancient Dogoo Girl (aka Kyôretsu môretsu! Kodai shôjo Dogu-chan matsuri!) are all excellent examples of the sexually exploitative, SFX-driven, imaginatively gore-drenched exuberance that characterizes the sub-genre. The Japanese have never been averse to going Over The Top, but these films display a particular enthusiasm for surreal bodily enhancement and distortion that partakes of David Cronenberg’s “body horror” sub-genre from the 1970s-1990s, but replaces his seriousness with often crude humour and throws aside any pretense to restraint or good taste.
Noboru Igushi’s curious 2009 hybrid sci-fi/fantasy/comedy
Robogeisha features assassin geishas sporting an array of robotic enhancements that goes beyond the pseudo-scientific into a sort of fantasized otherworld. Yoshie (Aya Kiguchi) has a problematic relationship with her older sister, Kikuyakko (Hitomi Hasebe), who is a trained geisha but is also, behind the scenes, abusive and hurtful. Yoshie would like to think that she, too, could be a geisha but is never able overcome a lifetime of being told she can’t do anything right. Yet she harbours a repressed physical aggression that comes out at an opportune moment and results in the two of them being more-or-less forcibly inducted into the ranks of the assassin-geisha squad being trained by evil corporation Kageno Steel.
After being forced to fight her sister, who shows no reluctance to kill Yoshie in order to escape, she really gets into the swing of the assassination-and-sex gig and even embarks on a regime of physical enhancement -- so much so that she is transformed into a fully fledged cyborg, just like the Tengu Squad and the other assassin-geisha, thereby becoming the self-styled Robogeisha.
The enhancements the assassin-geisha adopt are many, varied and weird. Anger-controlled arm-guards that sprout a katana, breast machine-guns, swords that spring from butt, armpit (whenever Yoshie adopts a “sexy pose”) and mouth, hidden rocket-launchers, large spinning blades erupting from the mouth, the ability to split in half to reveal the assassin within, Tengu acid-milk that squirts from the geishas' breasts and causes faces to melt, and eventually, once Yoshie is further adapted by rebels after losing her legs in an explosion, the ability to transform her lower half into a mini-tank ("I didn’t know I was a transformer!”). None of it makes much sense even in the field of B-flick science fiction technology, but who cares? It’s bizarre, it’s insane, it’s often tasteless and if it has meaning, that meaning lies in the sheer absurdity of the whole thing.
Does it work? Much of the time. The acting is as extreme as the gore and weirdness -- loud, gaudy and in-your-face in the manner of Japanese slapstick comedy -- yet it calms down into a relatively more subtle mode every now and then, when necessary. The effects are at a good B-film exploitation standard -- largely make-up FX and low-budget prosthetics enhanced with OK-but-not-quite-first-rate CGI. The plot wanders from set-piece to bloody set-piece with minimal logic, but with an underlying social humanism that is, at times, almost convincing. Sometimes the pace falters. But the negatives aren’t going to matter too much if the above description of what’s in the film seems appealing to you.
Robogeisha gives what the title suggests it should, and if it fails to gel into a film that might have been a cult classic, it’s nevertheless entertaining -- and undeniably odd.
And did I mention that during the last act a pseudo-feudal castle turns out to be a gigantic robot that goes on a daikaiju-like rampage during which it smashes buildings with the same blood-splattery result that the Tengu Squad manage to cause when they slice into their human victims?
With
Mutant Girl Squad (2010) (aka Sentô shôjo: Chi no tekkamen densetsu) and
Karate Robot Zaborger (2011) (aka Denjin Zabôgâ: Gekijô-ban) on the horizon, there’s no sign that Igushi’s enthusiasm for visually distorting the genre -- and the audience’s psyche -- is on the wane.
Robogeisha is released in Australia by Madman Entertainment.
Jason S. Hornsby, Permuted Press, 2010.
