Saikyô heiki joshikôsei: Rika - zonbi hantâ vs saikyô zonbi Gurorian

Asian zombie movies almost always suck. "Onechanbara" (2008), "Junk" (2000), "Bio Zombie" (1998), "Stacy" (2001), "The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers" (2007), "Wild Zero" (2000), and "Sars Wars" (2004) were all lame. Ryuhei Kitamura made the only great one with "Versus" (2000) and the fairly recent "Tokyo Zombie" (2005) was goofy fun, but that's about it in terms of entertaining zombie fare from East Asia.

That said, I've been anticipating a U.S. DVD release of "High School Girl Rika: Zombie Hunter" (aka "Rika: The Zombie Killer") (2008) for over a year now. No such luck. The only DVD release that currently exists is the uber-expensive unsubbed Japanese version. If this movie gets the same DVD treatment as "My Sassy Girl" (2001), I'll probably get the chance to watch it in the year 2015. So yeah, I bit the bullet and bought the Japanese DVD. A major risk given this country's rather dismal history of zombie movies, but it's a chance I was willing to take.

Luckily, "High School Girl Rika: Zombie Hunter" (hereafter "Rika") turned out to be a moderately entertaining flick. This movie wastes no time getting to the zombie action. Within the first 60 seconds, I kid you not, there's a zombie attack. More zombies quickly follow and the viewer is treated to two short, albeit funny action scenes – one involving a clumsy acrobatic punk and the other involving an old swordsman who is in a vegetative state. The middle section slows down as the protagonists are held up in a suburban household, but there are still some truly hilarious events to be had. I won't ruin them for you, but this is another one of those movies that tosses in lots of little bells and whistles that tickle the funny bone. Most surprisingly, it's the *effective* bits of humor (as well as the fast pacing) that propel "Rika" above the aforementioned titles. Sure, there's a bit of silliness, but the scriptwriters definitely added some imagination to this one, and it benefits greatly regardless of its ultra low budget.

The gore effects are quite good and sufficiently disgusting. The action scenes use a mix of camera angle shifts and slight shaky cam for effect, but they are used in moderation. There's nothing mindblowing about the action sequences, but they are fun to watch – especially given one amusing turn of events near the midpoint that made me grin continuously afterward whenever the lead actress was on screen. There's also a zombie protagonist who's really funny to look at. Some of the woodland environments that are shown near the beginning and end are also very pretty, by the way.

Let me dispel any assumptions regarding possible comparisons to recent Japanese gorefests like "The Machine Girl" (2008) and "Tokyo Gore Police" (2008), because this is a very different movie. "Rika" is not a high-octane action film by any means. There is an adequate amount of enjoyable fighting, but it's more of a low-key, quaint zombie flick that's similar to "Onechanbara" but does everything a lot better. It gives you what you want, and some cool stuff that you won't see coming.

A fun movie, plain and simple.

Risa Kudo might have been bit too old to play this role. She's just passable as a high school student.

Zombie infest Toyama prefecture of Japan. Rika goes to see her senile father who's a master surgeon. She gets bitten by a zombie. Her father cuts her arm off and replaces it with another arm that belonged to a famous zombie hunter. She then goes to hunt for the boss zombie with her friends and a zombie who claims to have self restraint on killing humans. If the boss zombie is killed everyone will return to normal - or would they ?

Blood gore and creep with unbelievable plot marks this movie - but what else do you expect ? As a zombie movie it has more plots and story than the average, but in the end, it didn't count.

This movie could have been better if they took out the meaningless American military involvement, hired more sexy girls, reduced the number of zombies, and go more with the beautiful scenery they had of the forest. It had too much of a production of average drama. They're making a zombie movie, so they should have taken the ball and ran with it.

"Zombie Hunter Rika" was actually a fun enough movie, I just have a hard time believing that these type of zombie movies are really what passes for horror, or even more so as zombie movies, in Japan. But hey, guess that must be a cultural difference.

The story in "Zombie Hunter Rika" is about schoolgirl Rika who travels to a small town to visit her grand father, but upon arriving there with her friend, they find the town overrun with zombies. Battling the zombies and discovering the reason behind the outbreak becomes a race against time, as the US have launched missiles to destroy the contaminated region.

For a Japanese zombie movie, then the effects were actually adequate. They have a tendency of painting the zombies ashen gray and dark around the eyes in their zombie movies, as is the case with "Zombie Hunter Rika" as well. So don't expect it to be Romero style zombies shambling around here. There were some minor gore and mutilation effects on some of the zombies, and it worked out well enough. I especially like the eye on the doctor. The killing of zombies were adequate as well, some alright effects here and there. Lots of blood though. There were some laughable effects as well, such as the super-fake latex grafted arm that Rika received; it just creased and wrinkled up in all the wrong places as the actress moved her own arm inside the prosthetic. And when the doctor had consumed on of the people, the size of the skull on the forest floor was so small and could never have come from an adult male.

The people cast for the movie were actually doing good enough jobs with their roles. Nothing overly memorable here, to be honest, but still, they did good enough jobs, which is more than what can be said for many low budget zombie movies produced here in the Western world.

One thing that I did enjoy and find amusing in "Zombie Hunter Rika", was the in-you-face spoof of the 2008 Japanese zombie movie "Oneechanbara". Having some male zombie hunter in little clothes and a cowboy hat brandishing a katana was just hilarious. And it was a real clever spoof on the whole thing that "Oneechanbara" is about (though "Oneechanbara" was a good movie, don't get me wrong).

Moving on though, "Zombie Hunter Rika" was actually fun to watch, because it throws you into the zombie mayhem right from the very beginning, and the movie is fast paced, keeping up a good pace all through until the end.

Speaking of the end, that had me shaking my head in disbelief and I was laughing at it. It was without a doubt the worst ending to a zombie movie that I have ever witnessed, and I have seen a lot of zombie movies in my 35 years.

"Zombie Hunter Rika" is a good addition to any zombie aficionado's DVD collection, especially if you also like Japanese movies. Just don't compare it to the zombie movies we are used to here in the Western world, because the Japanese zombie movies are more comical and over the top.

I respectfully disagree with the other reviewer that said that "Rika" is better than titles like Onechanbara" (2008),"Junk" (2000),"Bio Zombie" (1998),"Stacy" (2001),"Wild Zero" (2000) and "Sars Wars" (2004)...they are all different,and for the most part,far more better than Rika.

"Sars Wars" is Thai,and not Japanese,so really different in style (and BTW a great movie!);

"Bio Zombie" is Chinese,different here too (it's for the most part humorous);

And "Onechanbara","Stacy","Junk" are really better than Rika because of the fighting scenes...Rika fighting sux.

"Rika" is not a bad movie,some moments are nice,the story is not bad (except the awful ending) and it's funny sometimes, BUT the fighting are under the level of decency...really bad! And in a movie like this (action/gore) the fighting are really important! I suggest to watch all the titles i said on the top,plus "Zombie Self Defense Force" (a great one).

I agree with the other reviewer only for "The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers" (2007),this one is REALLY worse than "Rika"...it's totally crap.

My final rating for Rika 6- out of 10

Zombie Hunter Rika (2008) is a comedy horror film from Japan, the film was released on February 18, 2008. Tells the story of a girl named Rika who is still in school should visit his grandfather, with his friend named Nami, Rika's grandfather lives in the village, Rika and Nami are attacked by a bunch of bloodthirsty Zombies, fortunately a mysterious man takes them away, Rika finally arrives at his grandfather's villa, he is surprised to learn that his grandfather is married to a beautiful young woman, but his grandfather does not recognize Rika, Rika is sad and Suddenly the whole house was surrounded by Zombie, the three maids had been killed and become Zombie, Rika was bitten by her grandfather also cut off rika's hand so as not to spread throughout his body, after finding his grandfather's final hand was to connect the hand that holds samurai who have great power and rika Must fight the Zombie king to get things back to normal.

Zombie Hunter Rika is entertaining, so ridiculous and weird, a silly character character filled with cute jokes and a little crisp ... But enjoy this movie ..