Chanbara Beauty

It’s a movie based on a Japanese videogame series I don’t think we ever got over here, OneChanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers, which is about a bikini-clad sword-wielding girl who runs around slicing through zombies. And that’s fairly true of the film, which is also mostly about a bikini-clad sword-wielding girl who runs around slicing through zombies. It’s alright. Nothing mind blowing, but it’s entertaining for what it is and there’s a stylistic commitment that works pretty well. It’s a small film in terms of length, scope and scale but it is pretty entertaining. The problem is the tone. It’s a movie that seems almost determined to not have fun with its premise. It mostly plays it completely straight, which is simply baffling. With a more playful tone and better sense of fun then it’d be a much better movie.

In the near future, the large D3 Corporation was researching a way to resurrect the dead which ended up causing a zombie apocalypse, destroying civilisation and turning the world into a horrible wasteland where survivors struggle to fight off the undead. Travelling through this wasteland is Aya, the stoic bikini-clad swordswoman/zombie killer. She’s searching for her sister Saki, who might be evil. Travelling with her is a fat comic relief sidekick Katsuji. They’re joined by Reiko, a badass biker wielding a sawn-off shotgun who claims to know where Saki is – in the clutches of Dr Sugita, the scientist behind the zombie outbreak. She’ll lead them to D3 headquarters, and Saki, if they help her kill Sugita.

Not too much happens. I mean we get scenes of the two girls fighting zombies (fatty sort of bumbles around and hides for the most part), but between all that it’s a weirdly character-focused meander through fairly bland locations. The main three characters all get some sort of downer sadness moment. It’s weird, because one would assume that this movie would go for light and ridiculous action and comedy considering the premise and its videogame origins, but instead it plays it straight and tries to go emotional. It’s also largely what is used to fill out the film’s length – the mid-film action scene is specifically tailored to deliver emotional moments for the cast. Everyone has a scene where they cry because of something sad and personal happening. It’s a pretty short movie, but they manage to drag certain parts out. Within an hour the movie will mostly be over, barring a fifteen minute final fight between Aya and Saki that has a lot of flashbacks, contemplating and stoppages.

Another issue is the characters – Aya is stoic and serious for the entire movie, never smiling, rarely talking and always with a plain expression on her face. It sort of saps the fun out of the movie. It also causes a weird sort of divide between her character’s personality and design – I mean she’s in a freaking bikini for the entire movie. If she could have at least cracked a smile or made a joke a few times she’d be more memorable and likeable, but instead she’s just sort of boring. The comic relief guy isn’t actually funny, and doesn’t really give and relief, while Reiko doesn’t have much going on – she does at least seem to have something of a personality and actually cares about what happens to other people (while Aya doesn’t care). The villains have simplistic motivations. While I’m still unsure what exactly the nefarious Dr Sugita wanted, Saki’s motivations are so basic it’s astounding.

The zombies here are a mix of the slow shambling kind and much faster ones. Every now and then they shove in some additional weirdness, but they never go all out with it. The beginning scene has a knife-wielding karate zombie covered in chains, while the mid-film action scene has a ‘we just watched Kill Bill’ schoolgirl zombie with a spiked ball/chain combo weapon. I feel as though the film needed to go a bit more insane and creative with its silliness, instead of trying to go serious.

 

The production itself is actually pretty decent. It is nothing mind blowing, and one suspects the budget wasn’t massive, but it has a much better level of polish and style than other J-horror flicks. It’s a small movie in terms of scope and ideas, but they do it pretty well. Some scenes do tend to be dark and seemingly poorly lit, which is true of most of the night scenes. The locales are also quite dull and bland – while Aya and her attire is vibrant and ridiculous, the world of the film is sadly grey and drab. Not that it looks bad, just sort of uninteresting – abandoned schools, slums buildings, factories and prisons look ok but we’ve seen this sort of thing dozens of times before in other similar movies.

The action scenes are generally fun and stylish, sort of channelling the feel of the videogame inspiration I suppose. Fake CGI blood gushes plentifully from zombies as they’re cut down by Aya, splashing onto the screen as Aya flips and spins around swinging her sword impossibly fast. Sometimes she uses special attacks, where her blade glows and every slice explodes zombies (its less impressive than it sounds). Sword clashes cause sparks to fly out and in the finale Aya even throws out a fireball. It’s never given much of an in-film explanation, other than that Aya was from some kind of clan that involved teaching children how to fight with swords. Reiko, on the other hand, blows enemies away with her rapid-fire shotgun, which never seems to need to be reloaded.

There is something almost endearing in its design, though some goofy fakery shows up. Aya’s tattoos are obviously fake henna tattoos (you can see the edges where they’re peeling off), while the CGI blood is goofy.

The movie is alright, and has a decent level of polish over it. The action scenes are mostly fun, with the stylistic nonsense working pretty well. But the tone is what brings it down – they should have had a lighter, more fun tone to fit the premise. Instead they played things out seriously, which was to the films detriment. It scores points for trying though, especially considering this is a game-to-film adaptation.