The story follows Ami Hyuga, an athletic college girl whose parents committed suicide after they were falsely accused of homicide. Because of their family's history of violence, Ami and her brother Yu have since vowed to always resolve their problems in a civilized manner. But trouble follows the Hyuga family and Yu is killed by a group of bullies. When Ami investigates, she gets into trouble with the bullies parents who are all part of a gang of Yakuzi ninjas. She loses her arm but manages to escape inches from death. She is nursed back to health by a married couple who run a machine shop. They create an eight barrelled mini gun to replace her missing limb and then the bloodbath begins.
Ami's path of revenge follows the same basic structure as many RPG platforms. She encounters battles of increasing difficulty until she finally defeats the leader of the Yakuzi ninjas. This method of structure allows for a simple flow and translates onto the movie screen without slowing down the story at all. I found myself laughing when the fight about to occur onscreen was announced in the sub titles. Similar to Pokémon when "A wild Zubat appears!" in the Nintendo game.
The film's gore is incredible and the blood never stops flying throughout the full duration of the film. Although the carnage is nowhere near that of Tokyo Gore Police or Samurai Princess, the gut-flinging is still jaw dropping and disgusting. At several points in the film the kill-o-metre gets cranked pretty high as people are literally shot to pieces. The creativity of the slaughter in this film however is pretty bland and doesn't get much more violent than that. Fans of Tokyoshock productions have come to expect destruction in ways they have never thought of before. A fountain made of human body parts or a blood propelled rocket man are just a couple of hellish ideas that have come from the minds of Japanese gore film-makers in the past, so seeing someone get shot into a pulp seems fairly normal in comparison.
To accomplish the over-the top brutality, realism is thrown out completely and you’re left with a shower of body parts and painful torture scenes that can never be taken too seriously. For example, when Ami visits one of the bully’s parents and they attempted to kill her by frying her arm in oil. The woman restraining Ami says "Hope you like tempura" as she dips Ami's arm into the boiling oil. It's cheesy lines like this mixed with buckets of blood and guts that make the Japanese gore flicks bearable to watch.
Production wise this film is leaps and bounds above others in the genre. The whole film was shot in HD, which I haven't seen in any other movies like it. The film makers actually seemed to understand how to shoot the film and create comprehensive story. In other shock films I've noticed that the stories have all been hard to follow and usually just ends up being a bunch of people blowing up or being disembowelled for no real reason. In Machine Girl this is not the case, I actually found myself getting attached to characters and finally understanding the conflicts that were occurring instead of just waiting for someone’s head to fall off. The characters are not emotionless bags of meat but have some basis in reality that most people would be able to relate to. I was only confused a few times in the film after missing a subtitle, which is the only misgiving this film has. The subtitles are simple enough to follow but the translations are sometimes off and I really wish that the film was offered with English voice acting. I'm sure that if the film becomes popular enough the studio will record the movie with voiceovers.
Though Machine Girl lacks the creative appeal that other films in the genre contain, it still delivers and makes for one hell of a good movie. Leading the way for a new wave of high resolution gore and hilarious cheesiness that I don't think the world is ready for. If you are fairly savvy with the internet then I highly recommend you download it.
Peace and Love
Joey
JAPAN = FUCKED
ReplyDeletelove it tho