Robo-geisha

Yoshie (Aya Kiguchi) is the put upon younger sister of geisha Kikue (Hitomi Hasebe) and she accompanies her sibling to a job for rich young industrialist Hikaru (Takumi Saitô), who runs Kageno Steel Manufacturing. The company is a front for his sinister plans to control the world via a bomb he is making and his robot geisha army. The duo is kidnapped and transformed, but Yoshie finds herself thriving in the training and bypassing her sister's shadow. Soon she is the top assassin RoboGeisha, who kills Hikaru's enemies with ease. Of course, she has a change of heart when her latest target - a group of old folks searching for their kidnapped family members - tells her of Hikaru's sinister plans. I think I can only handle one of these deliberately campy, cute girl Japanese action pictures once every 5 years. This plays like a Troma film, but with a no nudity. It is pretty much a non-stop marathon of oddity. Director Noboru Iguchi previously did THE MACHINE GIRL (2008) and this carries on the tradition of showing wild, never-seen-before gags. You get bizarre stuff like breast milk that melts faces, a robot castle, chest guns, knee guns, shoulder guns, and AssSwords (exactly what you think it is). Unfortunately, if you saw the long trailer, it showed you pretty much all of these things.

Shy beauty Yoshie Kasuga (Aya Kiguchi) lives in the shadow of her older sister, renowned Geisha Kikue (Hitomi Hasebe), who undeservedly treats her sibling with disdain. While Kikue is entertaining businessman Hikaru Kageno (Takumi Saitô), a pair of Tengu spirits attack, forcing Yoshie to display her impressive fighting skills. Pleased with the young woman's performance against the Tengu, Hikaru, a megalomaniac intent on ruling the world, abducts Yoshie and forces her become one of his Geisha assassins; he also operates on Kikue, giving her machine-gun tits. On seeing her sister's awesome weaponry, Yoshie opts for an upgrade, getting herself equipped with Wig Napalm and armpit swords, and soon becomes a top assassin.

When Yoshie is sent to kill a group of people who are searching for their missing relatives—the other Geisha assassins in Hikaru's army—her conscience kicks in and she refuses her orders. Displeased, Hikaru has her blown up. Luckily for Yoshie, one of Hikaru's ex-employees is on hand to piece her back together, giving her a few extra modifications in the process, after which she seeks out Hikaru, who promptly transforms his headquarters into a giant castle robot and heads for Mount Fuji where he intends to detonate a massive nuclear bomb.

RoboGeisha is another massive helping of bonkers action from Noboru Iguchi, the director who gave us the amazingly entertaining splatter-fest Machine Girl. But where that movie delivered an excess of impressive practical gore FX along with the insanity, this one opts for much more cartoonish violence, most of which is achieved via rather cheap looking CGI, making it a bit of a disappointment for those expecting more of the same. Poorly rendered digital blood is never an acceptable substitute for genuine splatter.

Thankfully, the film's relentlessly silly plot, OTT visuals, and hot Japanese babes ensure that the film is consistently entertaining, regardless of the gore. With such unique sights as a psycho nurse being sprayed with acidic breast-milk, Yoshie turning into a tank, ass shuriken, a man blinded by shrimp, and office buildings that bleed, boredom is definitely not an option, and there's always a little more fun to be had from trying to guess what Hollywood movie soundtracks are being referenced (I heard music that sounded suspiciously like the themes from RoboCop, James Bond and possibly even Rocky).

Ah, geisha. Beautiful. Alluring. Mysterious. Robotic. Yoshie is the archetypal younger sister, overshadowed in all ways by her elder sibling. Sis is confident. Yoshie is not. Sis is climbing through the ranks of a local geisha house. Yoshie scrubs the walls and performs menial tasks. Sis is in love with the young head of a local steel outfit. Yoshie ... wait a minute ... Yoshie is the one that he actually prefers! This is a recipe for conflict ... The latest effort from the crew behind cult titles Machine Girl, Sukeban Boy, Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl Versus Frankenstein Girl, you pretty much have to know going in exactly what you're going to get with RoboGeisha - a violent, unrepentantly silly b-film loaded with wildly over the top set pieces hatched from the fevered mind of perpetual adolescent Iguchi. A self- professed ass-man Iguchi was asked by producers to tone the violence down a touch for this one and so he did before compensating more than amply for the reduced amount of blood by inserting a wide variety of weapons into his female stars' posteriors. Simultaneously a parody of bad melodrama and an explosion of cult excess, RoboGeisha takes a (very) basic sisters-competing-for-affection storyline and lifts it out of the standard domestic setting and replaces it with extreme body modification and a clan of geisha-assassins. The girls glare and stomp their feet at each other, then they go and replace their breasts with machine guns. Just when you think Iguchi and Nishimura must have run out of bizarre scenarios and weapons after producing so many of these films they come up with something truly bizarre. Bizarre like bleeding buildings, castle robots, throwing stars and katana's bursting from women's asses.

To enjoy this you have to take it for what it is, a movie made for fun with a low budget and no pretensions to be anything other then a campy B movie.

If you enjoyed the 70s-80s Japanese monster and robot movies with the rubber costumes you will enjoy this. I don't think the producers intended this movie to be taken seriously. It had robot geishas with swords from their bums, automatic weapons from their head gears, breast gatling guns and acid squirter's, giant robot castles, gun toting grannies etc.

Story wise its not bad either; mad scientist intending to blow up japan creates killer geishas with the top geishas turn into killer robot geishas. There isn't a lot of gore....unless you count the buildings that gushes blood when the robot smashes them. I think they must have had fun writing this movie.

Good movie. I liked it.

The first thing that comes to mind when sitting down and watching "Robo-Geisha" is probably: only in Japan! At least that is what rang true for me. This particular genre of movies is something that usually only rears its head from the bowels of Japan.

And it takes a certain kind of mindset to be able to fully appreciate these particular types of movies. I enjoy them for the campy, cheesy over-the-top entertainment that they are. Don't put too much into them, because they are not really meant to be taken seriously.

The story is about two sisters, one being a Geisha and the other living in the shadow of her Geisha sister. When they are both recruited by the Kageno steel company, a rivalry develops between the sisters in order to prove to be the better Geisha warrior/assassin. The Geisha women are trained to be deadly killers and are enhanced with robotic parts. But there is a sinister secret stirring beneath the surface of the Kageno company.

Yes, it is bizarre and odd, but still fun and entertaining for the campy movie that it is. Sure, this is somewhat of an acquired taste, and as such the movie will not prove appealing to every viewer. Mind you that this is not Shakespearian thespian acting in the least bit. You know what you get here, and "Robo-Geisha" delivers exactly on that account.

The acting in "Robo-Geisha" is as to be expected for a movie such as this. Personally, then I found it to actually be adequate acting for the genre. So that was a good thing.

However, the overall movie experience is a mediocre one. The movie fails to really impress in comparison to many others of this particular odd genre. And as such, then the movie failed to rise above the mediocre waterline. I am rating "Robo-Geisha" a mere five out of ten stars.

There are far better choices to pick from if you enjoy this particular genre of Japanese movies.