Starring: Yuka Ogura, Himena Yamada, Kanon Hanakage, Tak Sakaguchi, Satsuke Mine, Joey Inagawa
Director: Takahiro Ishihara
Action Director: Makoto Sakaguchi, (opening sequence) Yuji Shimomura, Tak Sakaguchi, Yoshitaka Inagawa, Ryoma Muto
I didn't really know what to expect when I sat down to watch this. So, I was pleasantly-surprised when I got something close to the "Ninjas Only"-era version of Dr. Wai and the Scripture with No Words (or a shot-on-video version of The Pagemaster, but moved to the Sengoku era). I am real sucker for these kinds of stories where normal people from our world get a chance to go on fantastic adventures (or perform martial arts in the same forest where most Japanese action films made after Versus are set).
Mako (Yuka Ogura) has a crappy life. She gets bullied at school by queen bee Miki (Satsuke Mine) and her gang. Her parents are always arguing. Her personal issues are ruining her track-and-field performance. And things reach a tipping point when her dad agrees to be the fall guy for whatever corruption his company is guilty of*, which makes the news and gives her bullies even more reason to be assholes. Mako's only solace is cutting class and going to a library. She finds a light novel (or manga) about ninjas doing ninja things and becomes enamored with it.
One day, she meets a pair of kunoichi from the novel: Hiro (Himena Yamada, of Shogun's Ninja) and "Ultraman Blazar") and Yu (Kanon Hanakage, Rise of the Machine Girls). Suddenly, she is transported into book world where she meets their master, the super-deadly ninja Saizo (Tak Sakaguchi, who needs no introduction). He agrees to teach her ninjitsu and months pass--albeit little time in her own world (similar to The Beginning Place by Ursula K. Le Guinn). After completing her first job, she returns to our world. But then she discovers that the main villain of the book, Kansuke Harada (Joey Iwanaga, of The Furious and Rurouni Kenshin: The Final Battle), is also the same corporate cutthroat that got her dad arrested. And she must stop him in order to keep the worlds from merging and changing everybody's destiny.
Like I said, I'm a sucker for these sorts of plots, so I was invested. I did find it amusing that the book characters realize that they're in a book and interact with Mako as such. There is a training sequence which shows Mako failing to do the most basic ninja arts and then gradually getting better. It's not Invincible Shaolin or 36th Chamber level of creativity, but it follows the logical progression. I also like that the three ninja girls (including Mako) have their ninjato (ninja swords) and their own personal weapon of preference: Yu has a pair of twin daggers (or kunai, the video quality was such that I couldn't really see), Hiro wields a pair of kama (or sickles), and Mako wields a knotted rope weapon, probably a kyoketsu-shoge. Watching her twirl the weapon around is always fun.
The fight scenes were staged by Makoto Sakaguchi, who also staged the action in Rise of the Machine Girls and Sion Sono's Prisoners of the Ghostland. The fight sequences are generally pretty good, although nothing spectacular. The last fight was pretty cool, although it gets a bit melodramatic, before leading into a final twist. My major issue with the action is that the foley team and sound effects editors did an awful job of inserting sound effects for the impacts of punches and kicks, and then mixed it so you can barely here the effects in the first place. It makes the fights feel very weak.
Also, the action never gets better than the 10-minute opening sequence in which Tak Sakaguchi kills about three dozen ninja. That scene is choreographed in a way similar to vintage Japanese chanbara films in which it is attack-block/evade-death blow. Very quick and direct, like most samurai films tend to be. But the camerawork and overall staging is dynamic and the action sequences with our ninja girls never reach that level of excitement. This sequence was designed by Tak Sakaguchi and Yuji Shimomura, with help from Yoshitaka Inagawa (Re:Born) and Ryôma Mutô (Demon City). After this scene, the rest of the film is fun fluff, but keep your expectations in check.
Black Fox: Age of the Ninja (2019)
Starring: Chihiro Yamamoto, Maimi Yajima, Sakurako Okubo, Mami Fujioka, Yasuaki Kurata, Yûki Kubota, Hideo Ishiguro, Kanon Miyahara, Masayuki Deai, Kôji Nakamura
Director: Koichi Sakamoto
Action Director: Koichi Sakamoto
As I have surmised elsewhere, I wonder if Koichi Sakamoto's approach to filmmaking is to use Tokusatsu as his bread and butter and then use the money he makes from those to fund his own martial arts-heavy fare. Black Fox is interesting in that it gives me the feeling of a pilot to an unmade martial arts show with Tokusatsu overtones, right down to the fact that the main bad guy is sorta shown, but is still hanging around and ready to send new villains after our heroines.
The first of those heroines we meet is Miya (Maimi Yajima, of Black Angels and Zombvideo), a young lady who is being chased through a forest by a band of warrior monks led by bad-bitch Uto (Kanon Miyahara, of Shogun's Ninja and Tatsujin Warriors). Miya apparently falls to her death and Uto leads her band of ass-kicking monks in rice hats out of forest. Miya survives her fall and makes her way to the inner sanctum of the Fox Ninja Clan. The first person she meets there is Rikka Isurugi (Chihiro Yamamoto, of Under Ninja and "Ultraman Geed"), the granddaughter of the clan leader, played by the legendary Yasuaki Kurata. We learn that Miya has been looking specifically for the Foxes in order to request their services in eliminating the Warrior Monks, who are all under the command of Lady Haku (Mami Fujioka).
We learn that Miya was raised by her father, who had both raised her and experimented on her until she developed the super power (yes, "super power") of firing lightning, Raiden (or Electro) style. But the warrior monks, in the employ of Shigetsugu Kuboto (Yuka Kubota, of "Kamen Rider Gaim"), killed him in order to whisk her away and use her as a weapon for the local Daimyo (who would become the series's Lord Zed had this become a show). The warrior monks storm the Foxes headquarters and a huge fight breaks out. Although Rikka is powerful enough to defeat Uto in combat, she is too kind-hearted to kill her outright. This incurs the ire of her grandfather, who refuses to accept the notion of a merciful ninja. He eventually sells out Miya when he finds out who Shigetsugu is working for.
So, Rikka is left with no choice but to rescue her new friend by herself. But her late father, an inventor, left her with a special inheritance: a black leather ninja outfit that feels like the Sengoku equivalent to a Super Sentai costume and a non-lethal energy sword. Will Rikka, her martial arts skills, and her equipment be able to defeat all of the Warrior Monks, Shigetsugu's legions, and Kuboto himself? And what exactly are Kubotu's plans for our Nihongo Storm girl?
I was expecting more and better action from a Koichi Sakamoto film. The film has its moments, but those moments are often overshadowed by 90s-TV-show CGI effects, especially once the titular Black Fox starts fighting with her energy katana. There is a warrior monk, Jin (Masayuki Deai, of "GoGo Sentai Boukenger"), who does a lot of kicking in his fights, but he doesn't get much altitude in his bootwork. The final fight between the Black Fox and Shigetsugu is pretty decent and I like her patented multi-stroke finishing move (the kenjutsu equivalent to the Power Rangers joining their weapons and firing them at the end of each fight). The build-up to that fight, which involves Miya and her lightning abilities, does strain credibility, however. Yasuaki Kurata gets to fight a little bit during the raid on his headquarters, so watching him crack a few skulls is welcome.
In the end, Sakamoto fans may get a little out of his patented choreography style, but he's done far better work elsewhere.
Starring: Julia Nagano, Koshu Hirano, Kanon Miyahara
Director: Koichi Sakamoto
Action Director: Koichi Sakamoto
Ninja vs. Shark feels like one of those "Ohtaku Fan Wank" films that Japan was churning out by the dozen at the end of the aughts. You know, the sort of fan-service film that felt deliberately made and marketed to Western fanboys of Japanese pop culture and trash cinema in general. Although you can argue that it started with Versus (2000), the sort of film I'm referring to really got moving in 2008 with Tokyo Gore Police. Four the next four or five years, we got a slew of films starring pretty girls (often AV actresses) in school girl outfits showing their tits, being bathed in fake blood, and fighting ninjas, zombies, monsters, or any combination of the three. So, stuff like The Machine Girl; Robo Geisha; and Dracula Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. This film feels like a return to that sort of film in a lot of ways.
The film opens with a girl being murdered at sea and her mutilated corpse washing up ashore. She is a member of the Okitsu Village, who has been plagued with disappearances and sea-related killings. Although everybody knows that the devil-worshipping ninja cult known as the Crimson Devil Clan, led by Mizuchi, the villagers like to use Sayo (Julia Nagano) as the scapegoat. She is considered to be the village jinx after she murdered her drunken, abusive, and incestuous father for killing her mother--I guess it didn't help that dad was the mayor's brother. Anyway, Sayo's only friend and protector is Shinsuke (Shun Nishime), but only he can do so much.
The village mayor knows that they won't last long against the Crimson Devil Clan, so he hires a wandering fighter named Kotaro (Koshu Hirano) to be their bodyguard (the word yojimbo is used a lot in the dialog). When we meet Kotaro, he has just gotten done raping the wife of the mayor of another village for not paying him for his services. He kills the mayor and his flunkies, which the Okitsu Village mayor is willing to turn a blind eye to in order to secure his services. Kotaro sets up shop at Shinsuke and Sayo's house and starts digging up the bodies from the cemetery to find out what killed them.
When Sayo gets attacked by a shark the next day, Kotaro rescues her and figures out what is happening: the local "Sea God" is an actual entity and can manifest itself as a shark. And Mizuchi has found out how to control it using black magic--he can also transfer his soul into the bodies of younger men (thus the disappearances), Angel Heart style. Mizuchi also gets a new ally in the form of Kikuma (Kanon Miyahara), a kunoichi from the Mountain Ninja Clan, of which Kotaro used to be a member. She wants revenge against him for abandoning the clan and spurning her advances. She and Crimson Devil Clan kidnap Sayo to sacrifice to the Sea God. Only Shinsuke and Kotaro can rescue her...
Ninja vs. Shark feels like the Japanese equivalent of an Asylum film, especially in the sense that the titular battle doesn't account for more than 3 to 5 minutes of actual screen time. And like the Asylum, when that battle does happen, it is mostly questionable CGI. And the denouement is right out of a Sharknado film. However, where this film gets a leg up on the Asylum is the filler: instead of washed-up 80s singers or 90s sitcom actors (or Eric Roberts) standing around staring at screens for 80 minutes, the filler here is ultraviolent swordplay. Koichi Sakamoto and his Alpha Stunts team did the action design and it is "alright" by Sakamoto standards--certainly no Broken Path or Drive. Some of the fighting at the end is pretty good, like when Kotaro uses a katana against Kikuma's two-fisted tanto daggers.
Yeah, this is one of those movies like Machine Girl where you can spout off a list of the off-kilter things that show up in the story and the viewer can decide if they want to watch it or not: Ninja Magic! Zombies! Ultraviolence! Giant Land Sharks! Possession! Swordplay! Shark Men! Zombified Necrophiliac Lesbianism! My thoughts on this are that it was okay, but the version I watched on Youtube (via 24-7 Samurai Ninja channel) had all the bloodiest moments censored, so I wasn't able to appreciate its nuttiness to the fullest.
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