KG Karate Girl (Review)
KG – Karate Girl
2011
Directed by Yoshikatsu Kimura
Written by Fuyuhiko Nishi
KG – Karate Girl is the followup to High Kick Girl!, and once again follows Rina Takeda around as she beats up people and kicks them in the head. This time, the movie is more Rina-centric, and we even get another female fighter in the form of 14 year old Hina Tobimatsu. Much of the creative team is back, High Kick Girl! director, producer, fight choreographer, and cowriter Fuyuhiko Nishi wrote KG, while High-Kick Girl!’s other writer Yoshikatsu Kimura takes the director chair this time out. Tatsuya Naka is also running around, but as he gets killed pretty quickly he isn’t in the film nearly as much as High-Kick Girl!
As a sophomore effort, KG shows signs of improvement, the story is easier to follow, though it is still steeped into the culture of karate and honor. The family dojo is on Okinawa (where karate began), one of the main plot points involves seizing a clan belt, and the evil Shu Tagawa has his own gang of karate thugs who dress in all black and invade dojos. Several of the bigger fighters are semi-famous martial arts champions, such as Richard Heselton and Tatsuya Naka.
A lot of time was spent making sure this was going to be filled with great action, Rina spent a year training for it (in addition to being an Ancient Dogoo Girl, and prepping for a slew of other film roles), and the training shots during the credits show the time that was taken to make sure the choreography was action packed.
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Categories: Bad, Movie Reviews Tags: Fuyuhiko Nishi, Hina Tobimatsu, Japan, Keisuke Horibe, martial arts, Noriko Iriyama, Rina Takeda, Tatsuya Naka, Yoshikatsu Kimura
High-Kick Girl! (Review)
High-Kick Girl!
aka Hai kikku garu!
2009
Directed by Fuyuhiko Nishi
Written by Yoshikatsu Kimura and Fuyuhiko Nishi
High-Kick Girl was one of four films that came out or were announced close together that featured new female fighting talent as the leads, the others being Coweb from Hong Kong, Fighter from Denmark (review forthcoming), and Chocolate from Thailand.
For what is undoubtedly a low-budget flick, it does mush of what it sets out to do. The main goal is to showcase the karate skills of the stars, with plenty of real karate action and moves. Forget your wire work and CGI. The amount of prep work required must have been enormous for such a low-budget affair. Rumors abound that stunt people had to go take MRIs for having so many kicks to the heads and were really upset that the fighting was all “real” and they didn’t do takes where punches and kicks were pulled.
One constant stylization that High-Kick Girl uses is the different angle slow-mo instant replay. Many of the more brutal hits are instantly replayed from an alternate angle slow enough for you to enjoy them. This happens often enough that it probably added 20 minutes to the length of the film
Many of the characters are given introductions with their names when they first appear on screen. One problem is the fact the intros are in Japanese with no subtitles. I can read some of the characters, so there will be a few actual names below, but some of them I didn’t catch.
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Categories: Bad, Movie Reviews Tags: Amano Koji, Fuyuhiko Nishi, Japan, Japanese Schoolgirls, Rina Takeda, Sudo Masahiro, Tatsuya Naka, Women who kick butt, Yoshikatsu Kimura
