Doguchan: The Ancient Dogoo Girl

Here is another interesting limited series out of Japan that was shown on TV at midnight.

Dogu-chan is an energetic goddess from ancient Japan who was dug out of the ground by teenage-boy Mokoto while accompanying his father on an archaeological dig. Mokoto is a troubled youth who has dropped out of school and this expedition was his father's way of getting him out of the house. Because Mokoto touched her breastplate Dogu-chan has sentenced him to be her servant. Dogu-chan is accompanied by a living Dogu statue named Dokigoro. Dogu statues are from Japan's prehistoric past and look like humanoids with big goggle eyes.

Dogu-chan's job is to capture yokai monsters and seal them in her breastplate. Each episode is about some poor soul who has gotten involved with a monster. The gimmick of the show is Dogu-chan's transformation sequence. Ordinarily Dogu-chan wears a leather bikini and boots. When Dogu-chan needs extra power her partner Dokigoro disassembles into pieces of body armour that magically attach to her body.

Even though the monsters look cheesy the stories are meant to be serious. The actors treat their roles seriously. People who are killed by rubbery monsters don't come back to life. Even the main character isn't invincible. So if you want to see a Japanese monster show with a slightly adult tone then look for episodes of Dogu-chan on the Net.

And watch/enjoy some of her gravure images available online instead of sinking your teeth into this acid fart by Noboru Iguchi who, like in Robogeisha and in the movie with the bear lady, didn't get the memo that he is no Toshiki Inoue, no Riku Sanjo, no Yuya Takahashi (the latters being imitators of the former) and not even Buronson/Susumu Takamu (I'm referring to the 1986 Hokuto No Ken anime Masterpiece, of course) and he just can't make romantic drama in a proper tokusatsu form, meaning by seemingly meshing together soap opera romance with cool fights and cool action (think of the minion saying a subtle romantic remark in my favourite Kamen Rider of all times, the Kiva, during a fight scene) and NOT by putting on the screen fully-fleshed soap operas lasting the entirety of a 25-minutes runtime that would be more apt to proper J-Dramas than the output of a former JAV director trying to carve a niche for himself in the tokusatsu department. Something that happened in the second half of this show, after a couple of dreadful episodes repeating the same starting ones (with the guy who portrayed Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 1997 Taiga dedicated to him appearing in episode 8, funnily enough) and a senseless episode based around the "it was all a dream" trope. Also, the main reason why you started watching the show, the lady in the title of my review, who supposedly is the main protagonist, after episode 6 gets brutally sidelined (and I mean literally brutally, since she also gets killed) because again, I get it, Noboru wanted to make J-Dramas and big breasted gravures sporting also tasty bellies and asses who act in tokusatsus are not enough for the J-Drama standards (for him, at least). Really, if you were a fan of Noboru's first outings like Machine Girl and Deddo Sushi, avoid this entirely. Hell, avoid it entirely if you're into tokusatsus mixed chirurgically with emotional shoujo and romance elements that don't forget to provide the action when it's needed, fanservice included.