‘Cinderella’ Meets Japanese Cyber-Splatter in ‘Robo-Geisha’ – Film Review
Robo-Geisha (2009)
Distributor: Cine-Asia
Directed by: Noboru Iguchi
Starring: Aya Kiguchi, Hitomi Hasebe, Takumi Saito, Taro Shikagi
Review by: Ben Bussey
Ah, it’s the classic Cinderella tale. Young girl looked down upon by spoilt older sisters, forced to do menial tasks while the elders live the life of riley, until along comes a handsome prince… only in this particular instance there’s just the one older sister, Kikue (Hitomi), who is in training to be a geisha, and rather than being whisked away by an actual prince, the devalued younger sister Yoshie (Aya) is enlisted by a young businessman (Takumi – who, to be candid, is prettier than most of the girls in this movie) to join his company’s elite academy of cybernetically enhanced geisha assassins. Ultimately both sisters enter training, and are soon bona-fide superpowered killing machines with a weapon for every occassion tucked neatly away in every orifice. But, wouldn’t you know it, soon enough Yoshie has cause to suspect she might be fighting for the wrong team.
Here’s the thing with Robo-Geisha: it’s positively swollen with pride in its own absurdity. Time and again we are invited to stare agape at how weird, wild and wacky it all is. And if you’ve seen the trailer we posted here not so long ago (read here), believe me, you’ve seen the bulk of it. Breast machine guns, armpit-swords, shuriken-firing arses: perhaps once upon a time all that would have indeed been hilarious and unexpected. But as of 2010, all that shit has gotten old extremely quickly. And I say that as one who at the time of writing has only seen a couple of these Japanese cyber-splatter movies (Tokyo Gore Police and Samurai Princess, since you ask).
This movie is like the class clown or office joker who goes on about how “crazy” s/he is and pulls the same piss-poor pranks day after day; that which is intended to appear wild and anarchic just feels stale, predictable and wince-inducing. There’s a scene in which three girls do battle with butt-swords – yes, it wasn’t enough for them to shoot shurikens from their backsides, they have retractable two-foot blades in them as well – and rather than provoking fits of laughter, it succeeds only in making the viewer feel profoundly embarrassed for everyone involved. Likewise, by the second or third time Yoshie cries “wig napalm!” you’ll feel as though you’ve already heard it a dozen times and that, frankly, it wasn’t even that funny in the first place.
So if the ridiculous robotic bodypart replacements don’t provoke a smile, what’s left? The plot? As a certain class of Italian-American male is renowned for saying, forget about it. While there is a surprising amount of work put into the plot and characters, with some attempts seemingly being made to say something about the nature of family and big business in Japan, very little of it is particularly involving. You know that whatever seemingly dire situation the protagonists might find themselves in, they’ll just pull some life-saving lethal implement out of their arse (not just a figure of speech, in this instance). And what about that element which should be the saving grace, which has been so pviotal to the endurance of this subgenre to date: the gore? Believe it or not, they’ve dropped the ball on that one too. Far from the fountains of practical blood spilled in Tokyo Gore Police, Robo-Geisha boasts only the occassional spurt of the ever-crap CG blood, most of which results in little more than a few drops hitting the on-looking characters. If the robotic effects are largely produced by cheap-looking CG – a geisha splitting open and two bikin-clad killers stepping out, for example – then so be it. But if you’re not actually going to hose your cast down with red dye and syrup, then you’re wasting your time making a movie like this.
If you’ve never seen one of these Japanese cyber-splatter flicks (I’m not trying to coin a phrase, honestly), then perhaps Robo-Geisha will hold some novelty value. But I’d strongly recommend you look elsewhere. Yes, there’s something inherently appealing about cute young Japanese ladies in skimpy outfits chopping people up with robotic appendages, but as Robo-Geisha demonstrates, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. This is one subgenre that is getting very repetitive very quickly. Iguchi and co. had better get back to the drawing board, and soon.
Trailer:
