The Machine Girl

aka Kataude Mashin Gâru

2008
Directed by Noboru Iguchi

One day people will be able to detect awesomeness with a Geiger counter type device. When this Awesomeness Detector is used to measure DVDs of The Machine Girl, it will overload by so much, the explosion will destroy half the universe. This film simply rocks. It is beyond cool. We have a girl with a machine gun for an arm, evil ninja yakuza, and more blood than a Red Cross warehouse. There will be blood. Lots and lots of blood. Blood that sprays forth at like a firehose. Let’s just say that if any woman in this universe ever had her period, the force of the blood exiting her body would cause her to launch up into the air like a rocket and she’d crash into the moon. There’s that much blood.

Much of this film is beyond description, only pictures and video will be satisfactory. It’s an explosion of visual images and over the top-ness that will make your jaw drop and your pants moist. A low-budget original film from Fever Dreams/Media Blasters, hopefully the first of many awesome productions. It was actually released in the US before Japan, which is a first I can get behind. The DVD has both subtitles and an English dub, so of course we will jump right to Japanese with subtitles. Because we are out and proud geeks.

Ami Hyuga (Minase Yashiro) – A normal basketball-playing girl becomes the instrument of vengeance known as The Machine Girl after her brother Yu is murdered by the son of Yakuza. After losing her arm, she is aided by fellow victims and given a machine gun as replacement, which allows her to blast her way to total vengeance. Ami’s parents killed themselves when they were framed for murder. Miki (Asami Sugiura as Asami) – Miki was in a biker gang with her hubby. Her son Takeshi was killed by Sho, and afterwards helps Ami on her quest of vengeance. Married to Suguru. Asami is an AV actress, for those of you who don’t speak Japanophile, that means she’s a porn star (Mosaic only.) Yu Hyuga (Ryôsuke Kawamura) – Ami’s little brother, who is killed by Sho Kisuma, son of a Yakuza boss. Appears as a ghost helping Ami and applauding her efforts. Thankfully, not as a scary long-haired ghost like most Asian horror films. Sho Kimura (Nobuhiro Nishihara) – Killed Yu and Takeshi for kicks. Snotty and sarcastic. Has a flair for wearing outfits that make him look like a gay pimp. He and his mom are almost like they share brains… Ryuji Kimura (Kentaro Shimazu) – Dad Kimura is head of a ninja clan that is the Hatori Hanzo clan, which now is yakuza. Crazy. Wears his hair in demon horn style. Uses the flying guillotine, mouth masks, swords, and intense praying powers. Violet Kimura (Honoka) – Mom Kimura is formerly of the Kanto Beasts, this woman beats her husband for being soft, kills maids as punishment, makes a chef eat “finger food”, and wears metal undergarments. Just your average Japanese woman! Suguru (Yûya Ishikawa) – Takeshi’s dad, Miki’s husband, mechanic, and builder of machine gun arms. The son of a surgeon, and a former biker gang member (where he met his wife.) He doesn’t seem to have the temperament of a biker gang member, unless they are much calmer in Japan, which I doubt based on their many other depictions in movies. He’s a nice guy, so of course he gets killed violently. Abraham Lincoln (???) – Abraham Lincoln is alive and well, living as a Yakuza bodyguard in Japan. Until he’s killed in the movie, so I guess he is dead. Damn you, Japanese John Wilkes Booth!!!

We open with a boy with apple on head, and the apple hit by knife. For he is being bullied by other youths throwing knives at him. In Japan, throwing knives at someone is only considered bullying, not a major felony. Their fun of role-playing William Tell as a knife act is interrupted by a girl. A girl who lost her brother Yu Hyuga. For this is the girl Ami, the Machine Girl, who has a machine gun for an arm! She chops off the arm of the lead bully, and brags that now they have the same number of limbs. She attaches her machine gun and precedes to kill all the bullies one by one in graphic, bloody goodness. Blood squirts everywhere! It rules. There are more geysers than Yellowstone here. Blood geysers. Old Faithful has gone berserk! With blood.

We flashback to six months ago when Ami had an arm and a living brother, basketball playing Ami is cheered by her friend Yoshie. Ami’s brother Yu comes to visit, and ask for money to buy a new game. Except it is really to pay off bullies, but nowhere near enough for him and his friend Takeshi to get off. The head bully Sho Kimura burns up the money they gave, because he’s in it just to see them suffer. Sho Kimura wants 200,000 yen by tomorrow or they will put Ami in the whorehouse to work it off. I don’t think Ami will approve.

An angry Yu makes a list of the bullies, and we find out from Ami that their parents killed themselves with the father was framed for murder. What is weird is that in America, if a bullied Yu was to make a list of people he wants to die, he would be the one expelled from school, not the yakuza spawn who murder for fun. Zero tolerance sucks, but back to the film. We then get a glimpse at another family. A screwed up family. The Yakuza family that Sho Kimura belongs to. Sho and his father are meditating, and his father mentions they are the Hattori Hanzo ninja clan who have now become Yakuza instead of ninjas. Why not? Dad attacks his son, and they swordfight, because his son should always be on guard. Then Dad cuts his arm to feed his blood to Sho (because blood gives you power, see!) and then a maid interrupts. Mom is seen beating the maid’s dead body later. There is no severance pay in Japan.

Yu meets up with Takeshi at his house, and we see that Takeshi’s mom is Miki, who tells Yu to stay away from her son because she thinks Ami’s framed parents were actually guilty. Takeshi and Yu decide to run, but they are grabbed by some of Sho’s cronies. Ami sees this and rushes to help, but she’s grabbed by some random guys who attempt a rape-train as Takeshi and Yu are beaten by the bullies in a parking garage. Sho declares he wants Ami has his plaything, while Ami turns super-mad and beats up the guys who tried to rape her. Yu also becomes mad and fights back for once, landing a blow on Sho. He made Sho bleed his own blood! Yu and Takeshi fight the goons around Sho, but they are no match for them. Ami is successful in defeating her foes. She is too late to save Yu, as he and Takeshi are tossed over the side of the parking. Several stories up. So they are dead. And the cops claim it’s suicide!

Ami is rebuffed by Takeshi’s parents when she tries to tell them it was murder. Then Ami finds Yu’s diary with the list of bullies. She goes to talk to parents of one of the kids listed, Ryota Fujii, and his father doesn’t want to hear it (while the crazy mom blames Yu for being bullied) and then the dad tries to attack Ami with a golf club. Perfectly reasonable parents. Ryota’s mom fries Ami’s arm in a tempura fryer (complete with crazy laughter and a WTF ridiculous payoff when the arm is pulled out!!!) Ami punches the mom and splatters dad with hot grease. She runs off while dad says he will find and kill her.

That night, Ami gets name of Sho Kimura from Ryota (which she should have had already thanks to her brother’s diary, but whatever), then lops off his head and puts it in pot that’s found by mom, who is also wasted with a knife through the back of the head. This causes mom to bleed and vomit all over her son’s head. For almost a minute straight. Big chunks come out. So over the top it is back on the bottom again.

As for dad, “Wash your hair in your son’s blood” about sums it up.

Ami will then give Sho a visit. His parents are currently making their sushi chef eat his own fingers as punishment over spilling soup on Sho. Strict bosses. Wait for the joke…..this gives a new meaning to…FINGER FOOD!!!!! HaHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ami grabs Sho in the hallway, but his parents find her, resulting in a running fight with bodyguards using ninja stars (also known as shurikens.) Several dudes get wasted, but Ami is eventually cornered and gets her arm stabbed into the wall by Dad Kimura. She’s taken to the dungeon where she is beaten (on her future missing arm…the film keeps making you think her arm is going to go, but it keeps staying put!) Mr. Kimura realizes her arm is messed up and decides to attack it as the next phase of torture. He chops off three fingers, than five, and then says he will quit for the day, but Mom trips him and he accidentally lops off Ami’s arm. During all this, Ami kept having blood spray out of her like she was a power washer. Every new cut would cause another massive spray of blood. She must have had 1000 gallons explode out from her, and yet she’s still alive. And active enough to escape by killing a guard who tries to feel her up when everyone leaves for the night.

Wounded Ami is guided by the ghost of her brother Yu to Takeshi’s house, where Miki and Suguru find her, collapsed. While looking for Ami, the Yakuza visit Ami’s friend Yoshie, and kill her when she says she doesn’t know Ami. Then they have sex with her. In that order. Japan is frakked up.

Ami is stitched up (because Suguru is the son of a surgeon, so of course he inherited the skill by crazed Lamarkian evolution.) After that, Ami and Miki fight, because they have to make things right, and as Ami wins they are now friends. I don’t get it, but whatever. Suguru will make new arm for Ami out of steel, and Miki helps train Ami for revenge

The Kimuras have moved into hiding during this time. When Miki stops by to find this out, she is followed home. As she tells of the Kimuras hiding, three ninjas attack the family in the garage with dozens of shurikens. They declare themselves to be the Junior High Shuriken Gang. What the frak? Sho is there as well with two bodyguards to make sarcastic comments. The two girls fight the three ninjas while Suguru tries to finish the gun on time. But the two girls are captured by the ninjas as Suguru finishes the gun, he throws it to Ami while he is killed by shurikens, to his wife’s horror. He’s shurikened to pieces. Ami gets her new machine gun arm. With bullets. Which are now used on the ninjas! The ninjas are killed horribly and violently, which also means hilariously. One is blasted to the bones, another becomes very holy. In addition, the bodyguard with the beard that looks like Abraham Lincoln is injured. Miki has got a tiny cut on the stomach during this fight, which I mention because it is a plot point later. So take note.

The Junior High Shuriken Gang is put in garbage bags and left by the side of the road. The parents of the Junior High Shuriken Gang are told who killed their sons by Yakuza goons. Miki’s tiny wound is now infected, but refuses to go to the hospital, so she will probably die. So, loss of limbs and gallons of blood = makes you weak. Tiny cut = death in 24 hours by horrible infection. So now you know, use neosporin. To get info where the gang is hiding, they bang a nail into the head of the Abraham Lincoln goon until he tells where the Kimuras are. He gets nailed. A lot. Four score and seven nails are beaten into his head by Ami and Miki. Finally we find out the Kimuras are hiding at Ichinooka Shrine. They take him there, also Miki gives Ami some new bullets that are powerful, to use to finish off an opponent, but if used they might destroy the gun. Abraham Lincoln is then assassinated by someone in the trees, but I’m not making a second John Wilkes Booth joke.

The parents of the Junior High Shuriken Gang, as well as the father of Ryota that Ami burned earlier, now exit the hideout dressed in sports equipment and declare themselves the Super Mourner Gang (WTF???) They have united to avenge the deaths of their kids, who were killed in the middle of an avenging of another death. So we got clashing avenging going on here, and somebody will disappoint their slain relatives so they can never find peace. The Super Mourner Gang have guns on their arms, so they are like mini-Machine Girls. In addition, they have bullet proof vests under pictures of their slain children on their chests. So shoot them in the head, don’t be like the people who fight the Punisher and never figure that out!

What to do in this fight…the girls break out the chainsaw! This movie went from awesome to FRAKKING AWESOME!! In addition, Dad Kimura also breaks out the flying guillotine! Rock! Dad Shimura uses this weapon, but accidentally nails one of the Super Mourner Gang, who are dropping like flies anyway. Miki is fighting one Mourner Mom with a sword in one hand, and the arm of the dead gang member the sword came from with her other hand. So it’s dual blades, in a way, which puts her on par with Anakin Skywalker. Miki kills the Mourner Mom, then tries to helps Ami with Dad Kimura, but loses a leg to the flying guillotine. This means she’ll be dead soon, but not just yet. Infected wounds plus missing leg = death in ten minutes. Ami and Dad Kimura fight again, this time the flying guillotine grabs on the end of her gun, but as Ami has loaded the super bullets into it, when she fires her gun explodes and the giant iron bars that were the bullets fly forward and impale Dad Kimura into a tree. So he’s dead, impaled by giant rods. Which I’m sure isn’t a new experience for him, ha-HA!

Please don’t send the yakuza to kill me then rape me.

Miki has to use a chainsaw attached to her now missing leg to cut Ryota’s dad in half lengthwise(where was he hiding all this time?) but then she also dies. Ami is now on her own. Ami goes inside to fight the son Sho, but he’s hiding behind three hostages. His Mom is there as well, but she has on…a Steel Drill Bra! Yes! This film keeps surprising with a new WTF each scene! There are drills on each boob. There is no other way.

Mom Kimura drills Ami in the chest, so now Machine Girl has gone from B cup to no cup! Mom declares she will now drill Ami in the face, because it is always good to announce your plans in battles to the death. During all of this, one of the hostages peed himself, so Ami throws Mom on the pee pool, which shorts out her bra and electrocutes mom. Not to death, but that will be soon enough. The lights in the room are now in strobe light form, like we are in some fancy Euro club (but without any terrible techno music) and in the flashing light, Ami chops through heads of both Sho and his mom! Both heads then land on other’s body, so you could say they are of two minds.

Ami frees the hostages, who want to be like her one day. She tells them to never let the bullies win. So if bullies attack you, murder their whole family! Thanks, Japan. The ghost of her brother claps, and she’s about to kill herself when bushes move, so she readies to attack as we end!

We know she’s not going to be dead anyway, because all of this was a flashback after the first scene, so if she killed herself it would have never happened! And that’s it for The Machine Girl. Until the inevitable sequel.

If you haven’t seen this movie, then what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Well, it got lost in the mail, so go see it anyway. Everyone should see this movie! Men, women, little children, 90 year old women, crazed Al Qaeda terrorists, your neighbor’s cat, and Nintendogs. Okay, not everyone, but anyone can take one look at the poster and realize if they would like something like this. And you would be right.

Rated 10/10 (William Tell, Dead parents, Finger Food, Super Mourner, Super Mourner, Super Mourner Mom, Super Mourner, Mask, Mouthful of death, Infected)

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