Unsheath Your Katana ... It's Bikini Babe Time

Oneechanbara: The Movie
aka Chanbara Beauty

(2008/Japan)

 

It’s Zombie High Noon Japanese manga in motion style, as a bikini clad cowgirl beauty slices ‘n dices better than a magi mix, with buttons in all the right places.

Eri Otoguru stars as Aya, a sword wielding vixen of vengeance out to serve justice upon her sister Saki and the maniacal Doctor Sugita. Releasing a compound that virulently attacks the blood molecules of humans, Dr. Sugita turns the world into a planet of the living dead. His most despotic deed, however, is in indoctrinating a very young Saki, as he leads her to clinically kill her own father !. Elder sister Aya, hiding nearby, witnesses the execution and from that moment the two sisters destinies are indefatigably defined !. They grow into young adulthood, honed in fighting skills taught by their father and furthered to the point of perfection, one for the virtues of good and the other in the pursuit of evil.

As Dr. Sugita perfects his serum he creates a personal army of super Zombies, more aggressive than the legions of un-dead rambling the surrounding regions beyond his laboratory, and ably equipped to do battle at their creators behest. With her portly male companion, also in search of a sister taken from him by Saki to experiment on by the nefarious Sugita, the sexy cowgirl Aya dispenses with the dead like a super short order chef at a Sushi bar. Her lithe body censored only by matching bra and panties, draped by a faux fur white boa under her sleek Stetson, and adorned by a poncho. A hybrid take on the man with no name from Director Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western variation A Fistful Of Dollars (1964) . A wondering female samurai brandishing a Katana rather than a six shooter, and also unlike Clint Eastwood completely stubble free. Even in a world overrun by Zombies this Chanbara babe follows the traditional ways of ‘wax on, wax off’!. The only bikini line showing here is likely the queue to the store to purchase the not so furtive gear, sported by Eri Otoguro in the movie, by fans looking to perhaps imaginatively expand upon their viewing experience.

The background story plays out in short interludes amidst the arterial blood letting and limb lopping dished out by the Zombie slaying Aya. Her skill with the sword is evenly matched by her speed of motion, as she evades the swarms of human flesh craving creatures back from the dead. Even the superiorly evolved super Zombies are no match for the bladed babe, with a skill for separating sinew from skin and bone from body in a siphon of splattering blood. In true comic book style even the camera gets bloodily blotched from the close up action with a Manga mayonnaise.




Saddle up with cowgirl Aya, her supply carrying man servant and voluptuous shotgun sidekick Reiko, as together they take on the might of the evil Dr. Sugita and his hordes of Zombies. It’s sword fight at the O.K corral come closure as the sisters are doing it for themselves. Good and evil never looked so ‘Wicked’ together.

Review: Paul Cooke / Source Japanese DVD Region 3 NTSC

2008 CN Entertainment LTD

Director Yôhei Fukuda
With Eri Otoguro, Manami Hashimoto,

Chise Nakamura & Taro Suwa

Delivering final rites to the dead is a heavy toll for one to bear though, so when another agile babe of the realm gate crashes a night of the living dead ghoul gathering, it’s a twofer tango to take out the trash !. Enter Chise Nakamura as Reiko, set astride a motorcycle and dispensing never ending bullets of death from a short barrelled double shot gun. A leather clad courier delivering packets of pain upon hapless customers who’s post codes don’t mean zip anymore !. These two babes will put a smile on any predominantly male orientated audience, as together they raise the dead with body and soul. As for any further Clint Eastwood references, my mistake, make that three hundred coffins !.

This is J-Cinema, shot on video greatness that stands out in a sea of throw away trashiness. Movies such as the recent The Machine Girl (2008) are gory delights, enjoyed best with your brain put in neutral, delivering outlandish moments of pure shock schlock, but Oneechanbara: The Movie sets a higher standard of overall entertainment in Asian budget film making.
Fans of Japanese horror and Kung Fu will delight in the fantastical cross references to many recognisable themes from genre classics. There’s even a Kill Bill (2003) Chiaki Kuriyama homage to her character Gogo, as an enhanced Zombie takes on our heroes with a lethal spin on the deadly spiked ball on a chain.