I planned to review Blood Friends for this year’s Spooktacular Eight, after finally seeing and reviewing Vlad Love earlier this year, but since i can’t manage to find some actual english subtitles for the thing and time is a-ticking, instead of a Mamoru Oshii film we’ll feature a Noburo Iguchi one, with Mutant Girls Squad.
Which is also co-directed by fellow gore-tastic filmmaker Yoshihiro Noshimura (Tokyo Gore Police, Helldriver, Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl) but also Tak Sakaguchi, better known as an actor in many films, like Versus, Godzilla Final Wars, the Azumi films, and even some of the aforementioned Iguchi-Noshimura gore flicks, but he also directed a live action Otokojuku film adaptation and Yoroi: Samurai Zombie.
Here they direct a chapter of the three the movie is divided in, and you can tell which one did, definitely if you have previous experience with their works.
One hell of a trio for a movie about Rin, a 16 yo mutant girl who meets and joins a gang of rebel mutant girls planning to exact vengeance on humans for having persecuted their race over the millennia, and given the people involved and sharing the directorial chair, “extreme violence” doesn’t even begin to cut it.
Also, since i happen to have it, towards the end of the review i will briefly talk about the short prequel film they made for the japanese DVD release, Mutant Girls Squad- Yoshie Zero, based about said character.
Interestingly, most of the cast would later go on to play parts in newer Super Sentai and Kamen Rider shows, not that surprising since – gore and blood aside – it’s still tokusatsu stuff, the music and coreography really has many similarities, there are many references, for example a mutant girl suicide bombing herself in a buddhist temple by using a “legally distinct Kamen Rider” belt make that does trasform the user in many little pieces to be scooped up, after the explosion, that is.
It almost seems a parody of the genre, since it starts with anti-mutant police squads using “nose guns” to shoot (and the logo looking suspiciously like the Dynasty Warriors one), the way the usual cliches are used (the bullying schoolgirls, the suspect school nurse, the traumatic home incident, etc), which might not be saying much because these movies continuously live on the edge of taking themselves serious in spite of the supreme ridiculous they show, or indulge on the self-piss taking with the goofy gore effects and more deliberate, straight comedy.
Sometimes it works, like the PSAs about mutant safety in Tokyo Gore Police, sometimes, like Bloody Deliquent Chainsaw Girl, it doesn’t quite, arguably makes the experience worse, but here i feel the balance and the comedic timing are just right, and know when to insert some honest drama, which works even despite some absurd visuals.
If i’m not describing the plot in any detail, it’s because it’s a whole cascade of stuff that would lead to me describing every scene or so, like the main girl, Rin, trying to get help only to have the people of the block believes she’s a frigging UMA and the locals form a mob to hunt her down and taxidermy her so people would go see it and they would fight recession that way… and also there’s a little bit more i don’t wanna spoil.
effects are good, though it always a clever mix of fun (and here pretty good) practical gore effects and crappy CG ones, that might be done lame on purpose or they just were cheap but we’ll pretend its on purpose, and gallons of blood spurting out like a hose, mostly digital blood, but it delivers the fun, might as well since when we get down to it the movie is a lot of fighting and the mutants making easy work of the stupid ass everyone that decides to thrown down with the girl donning a mutant wire arm, and then eventually fighting more prepared weirdos and other mutants.
And it’s definitely creative with the absurd gore, to cite some random examples: the father having mutan nipples-mouth, the flesh baguette, and i think the “piece of resistance” of the extra ridiculous mutant power being the ass chainsaw (this one is new, we hade The Machine Girl with anal gatling gun cannon, so it was just a matter of time). But the senate is still debating that, since it’s arguably not even the top of the body mutations’ iceberg.
You don’t always know what ridiculous bloody output will turn out of a fight, which isn’t easy, i expect stuff like flaming vaginas as the regular offering of delirium from these movies, and we get a lot of that but unlike some crap (the Oneechanbara movies, for example), there’s an actual story to follow among the carnage, there’s actual characters going through arcs, fairly good acting and while the main appeal of these IS seeing how absurd they can get with the weird, the excessive and the unplausible, the fact that the plot becomes more compelling than one would expect, and you’re not just killing time before the fights (despite still being quite well coreographed and fun in themselves) for the sake of pumping up the runtime.
Speaking about the short prequel, Yoshie Zero, is curiosly told by the leader of the mutant girls, Kisaragi, and aside thanking you for buying the DVD, it does give an explanation to why he has a Noh white paint make up job and – more importantly – why Yoshie goes around cosplaying as a nurse. It’s a cute short backstory of Yoshie being a complete airhead and discovering her mutant powers while having the classic anime school cliches scenarios, which lead to her cosplay as a nurse because she wanted to help people that way, and how she met Kisaragi, etc.
“Explain” because it barely does, deliberately, of course, but it does have some good laughs, genuinely good jokes (and some unexpected references), and Suzuka Morita as Yoshie it’s delightfully goofy. so it’s worth seeking out in order to have the full Mutant Girls Squad experience.
If you already partook in many films of this genre and somehow managed to miss Mutant Girls Squad, you’re strongly invited to rectify it at your own convenience.
Wise Cafe (International) 