Robo-geisha

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.

Shy beauty Yoshie Kasuga (Aya Kiguchi) lives in the shadow of her older sister, renowned Geisha Kikue (Hitomi Hasebe), who undeservedly treats her sibling with disdain. While Kikue is entertaining businessman Hikaru Kageno (Takumi Saitô), a pair of Tengu spirits attack, forcing Yoshie to display her impressive fighting skills. Pleased with the young woman's performance against the Tengu, Hikaru, a megalomaniac intent on ruling the world, abducts Yoshie and forces her become one of his Geisha assassins; he also operates on Kikue, giving her machine-gun tits. On seeing her sister's awesome weaponry, Yoshie opts for an upgrade, getting herself equipped with Wig Napalm and armpit swords, and soon becomes a top assassin.

When Yoshie is sent to kill a group of people who are searching for their missing relatives—the other Geisha assassins in Hikaru's army—her conscience kicks in and she refuses her orders. Displeased, Hikaru has her blown up. Luckily for Yoshie, one of Hikaru's ex-employees is on hand to piece her back together, giving her a few extra modifications in the process, after which she seeks out Hikaru, who promptly transforms his headquarters into a giant castle robot and heads for Mount Fuji where he intends to detonate a massive nuclear bomb.

RoboGeisha is another massive helping of bonkers action from Noboru Iguchi, the director who gave us the amazingly entertaining splatter-fest Machine Girl. But where that movie delivered an excess of impressive practical gore FX along with the insanity, this one opts for much more cartoonish violence, most of which is achieved via rather cheap looking CGI, making it a bit of a disappointment for those expecting more of the same. Poorly rendered digital blood is never an acceptable substitute for genuine splatter.

Thankfully, the film's relentlessly silly plot, OTT visuals, and hot Japanese babes ensure that the film is consistently entertaining, regardless of the gore. With such unique sights as a psycho nurse being sprayed with acidic breast-milk, Yoshie turning into a tank, ass shuriken, a man blinded by shrimp, and office buildings that bleed, boredom is definitely not an option, and there's always a little more fun to be had from trying to guess what Hollywood movie soundtracks are being referenced (I heard music that sounded suspiciously like the themes from RoboCop, James Bond and possibly even Rocky).

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.

Noboru Iguchi's films have a reputation. You know people are going to die in them, but you are never entirely sure who will be next. Or what the weapon will be. Or from what orifice the weapon protrudes from. Robogeisha carries on this fine tradition, but as a teensy-weensy spoiler, there's more use of CGI blood this time around. I guess it saves on the cleaning bills.

So two sisters, one a geisha, the other the attendant, get invited to perform at a dinner for the big bad guy, and end up being recruited into his army of highly-trained female killers masquerading as more geisha. Oh and there's a few cybernetic upgrades on the way as well.

I can't really say much more to this movie that you can't already tell from the trailer. So I'll just say that I, and practically everyone else in a tiny cinema in the backstreets of Shibuya, was in fits of giggles throughout this movie as we were regularly surprised at what Iguchi's imagination would throw at us. Think of Wacky Racers with cast-iron Shimadas, comedy instead of splatter and only a slight feeling of disappointment when some of the set pieces are cut too short then there's still laughs to be had. Anyone for fried shrimp?

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.