RoboGeisha

Ah, geisha. Beautiful. Alluring. Mysterious. Robotic. Yoshie is the archetypal younger sister, overshadowed in all ways by her elder sibling. Sis is confident. Yoshie is not. Sis is climbing through the ranks of a local geisha house. Yoshie scrubs the walls and performs menial tasks. Sis is in love with the young head of a local steel outfit. Yoshie ... wait a minute ... Yoshie is the one that he actually prefers! This is a recipe for conflict ... The latest effort from the crew behind cult titles Machine Girl, Sukeban Boy, Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl Versus Frankenstein Girl, you pretty much have to know going in exactly what you're going to get with RoboGeisha - a violent, unrepentantly silly b-film loaded with wildly over the top set pieces hatched from the fevered mind of perpetual adolescent Iguchi. A self- professed ass-man Iguchi was asked by producers to tone the violence down a touch for this one and so he did before compensating more than amply for the reduced amount of blood by inserting a wide variety of weapons into his female stars' posteriors. Simultaneously a parody of bad melodrama and an explosion of cult excess, RoboGeisha takes a (very) basic sisters-competing-for-affection storyline and lifts it out of the standard domestic setting and replaces it with extreme body modification and a clan of geisha-assassins. The girls glare and stomp their feet at each other, then they go and replace their breasts with machine guns. Just when you think Iguchi and Nishimura must have run out of bizarre scenarios and weapons after producing so many of these films they come up with something truly bizarre. Bizarre like bleeding buildings, castle robots, throwing stars and katana's bursting from women's asses.

To enjoy this you have to take it for what it is, a movie made for fun with a low budget and no pretensions to be anything other then a campy B movie.

If you enjoyed the 70s-80s Japanese monster and robot movies with the rubber costumes you will enjoy this. I don't think the producers intended this movie to be taken seriously. It had robot geishas with swords from their bums, automatic weapons from their head gears, breast gatling guns and acid squirter's, giant robot castles, gun toting grannies etc.

Story wise its not bad either; mad scientist intending to blow up japan creates killer geishas with the top geishas turn into killer robot geishas. There isn't a lot of gore....unless you count the buildings that gushes blood when the robot smashes them. I think they must have had fun writing this movie.

Good movie. I liked it.

Yoshie (Aya Kiguchi) is the put upon younger sister of geisha Kikue (Hitomi Hasebe) and she accompanies her sibling to a job for rich young industrialist Hikaru (Takumi Saitô), who runs Kageno Steel Manufacturing. The company is a front for his sinister plans to control the world via a bomb he is making and his robot geisha army. The duo is kidnapped and transformed, but Yoshie finds herself thriving in the training and bypassing her sister's shadow. Soon she is the top assassin RoboGeisha, who kills Hikaru's enemies with ease. Of course, she has a change of heart when her latest target - a group of old folks searching for their kidnapped family members - tells her of Hikaru's sinister plans. I think I can only handle one of these deliberately campy, cute girl Japanese action pictures once every 5 years. This plays like a Troma film, but with a no nudity. It is pretty much a non-stop marathon of oddity. Director Noboru Iguchi previously did THE MACHINE GIRL (2008) and this carries on the tradition of showing wild, never-seen-before gags. You get bizarre stuff like breast milk that melts faces, a robot castle, chest guns, knee guns, shoulder guns, and AssSwords (exactly what you think it is). Unfortunately, if you saw the long trailer, it showed you pretty much all of these things.

The first thing that comes to mind when sitting down and watching "Robo-Geisha" is probably: only in Japan! At least that is what rang true for me. This particular genre of movies is something that usually only rears its head from the bowels of Japan.

And it takes a certain kind of mindset to be able to fully appreciate these particular types of movies. I enjoy them for the campy, cheesy over-the-top entertainment that they are. Don't put too much into them, because they are not really meant to be taken seriously.

The story is about two sisters, one being a Geisha and the other living in the shadow of her Geisha sister. When they are both recruited by the Kageno steel company, a rivalry develops between the sisters in order to prove to be the better Geisha warrior/assassin. The Geisha women are trained to be deadly killers and are enhanced with robotic parts. But there is a sinister secret stirring beneath the surface of the Kageno company.

Yes, it is bizarre and odd, but still fun and entertaining for the campy movie that it is. Sure, this is somewhat of an acquired taste, and as such the movie will not prove appealing to every viewer. Mind you that this is not Shakespearian thespian acting in the least bit. You know what you get here, and "Robo-Geisha" delivers exactly on that account.

The acting in "Robo-Geisha" is as to be expected for a movie such as this. Personally, then I found it to actually be adequate acting for the genre. So that was a good thing.

However, the overall movie experience is a mediocre one. The movie fails to really impress in comparison to many others of this particular odd genre. And as such, then the movie failed to rise above the mediocre waterline. I am rating "Robo-Geisha" a mere five out of ten stars.

There are far better choices to pick from if you enjoy this particular genre of Japanese movies.

The picture quality is amble, it looks very digital. Shot in a reminiscent way to Crank (2006) and this is effective in hiding a smaller budget and creating excitement. The sound design was a little odd but effective and dynamic which pleased me. This is just taking a simple idea to the maximum insanity. Occasionally the pace slowed down and became a little boring but mostly pressed forward with crazy visuals, mad situations and breast-guns. Just my kind of film. Fast pace and lots of insanity. Also blood everywhere. This is a production of the time, where nonsensical over-the-top insanity was popular.