Karate Girl

When Rina is fighting, the movie is exciting. The rest is dull, talky and mostly wooden. I recommend fast-forward for everything between the sisters' action sequences, to avoid boredom that can dilute the impact of her artistry. Rina deserves better vehicles.

Having just seen "High Kick Girl", it was with a certain amount of dread of expectation of disappointment that I sat down to watch "Karate Girl" (or "K.G."). However, those disappointments and fears were quickly swept away, as this movie was a rather nice step up compared to the other movie - both story-wise, production-wise and entertainment-wise.

The story in "Karate Girl" was rather enjoyable and had quite more depth to it, than what was seen in "High Kick Girl". The story is helped along nicely but more well-choreographed martial arts and better acting. The story told in this movie is about a legendary martial arts master whose belt is coveted by some 'bad guy'. He invades a dojo and kills the martial arts master here in order to obtain it, as well as killing one of his two daughters, while kidnapping the second to raise and turn into a killing weapon. Having survived the ordeal, Ayaka (Rina Takeda) grows up carrying around her family secret, and comes face to face, literally, with her past.

And one of the best things about the movie was the fact that they had moved away from having to show the same scene two times over, in either slow motion or in a slightly different angle. Sure, it does still happen every once in awhile here in this movie, but not like "High Kick Girl".

If you have seen "High Kick Girl", I strongly suggest you forget all about it and move on to watch "Karate Girl", as it is better in every single aspect, despite having a fair amount of faces appear from "High Kick Girl" in this movie as well.

"Karate Girl" is actually good entertaining, though not amongst the highest ranking martial arts movies, but still, it delivered and entertained.

The worst part about being a Rina Takeda fan is that you will never find a movie properly showcasing her abilities, because nobody ever made one (and, by now, probably never will).

She's awesome. Very talented, and a great screen presence, which are the most important traits of an action star. But she just doesn't have any writers/directors/producers caring to capitalize on that. High Kick Girl was a nice if deeply flawed first effort. Fans were hoping Karate Girl would be the one to get it right, but it ended up being a huge step backward, as too were her subsequent films, but let's stay focused.

What is wrong with KG? Problem #1: not enough Rina! We want to see Rina taking up as much of her film as Jackie Chan takes up of his films. This was a noticeable problem in High Kick and even worse in KG.

Problem #2 is what KG fills the holes with: a lot of plot. Plot isn't inherently bad, but it is when it's so repetitive and boring. I don't know how many times I can listen to the bad guys have the same conversation. I don't know why they want me to try.

Problem #3 is her co-star, the fourteen-year-old Tatsuya Naka. For a fourteen-year-old, she's extremely talented. She has some remarkable acrobatic moves. But the issue is she reads as having impressive agility, not impressive force, and the movie asks us to believe in her force. We watch her incapacitate a room full of large, muscular adults by lightly kicking each of them once, and it just doesn't work. She should be in the movie, just not in this way, and not for this much screen time. The film treats her with the same importance as the person used to market the film, both on the cover and in the title!

A lot of martial arts films are enjoyable with fast forwarding (for example, High Kick Girl). KG is disappointing even then. It has a couple of good moments, and Rina does the best one could hope for with this material, but the final product simply isn't a good one, unfortunately.

If I had reviewed this when I first saw it in 2011, I'd end with "I can't wait for her third film-maybe they'll get it right next time!" But since I'm writing this after my 2018 rewatch, we already know how that one turned out.

The acting is either wooden or scene chewing over the top with almost nothing in between. The plot is paper thin, generic, and illogical even by martial arts movie standards. Overall, the movie feels low budget....but none of that is probably why you're interested in this movie. You probably care about the fighting and I'm happy to report that this movie has plenty of excellent fight sequences.

The movie doesn't have the budget or the creativity for big action set pieces, so they wisely keep the action sequences as simple as possible. That puts the actor's very cool karate fighting styles front and center. The movie does not use quick cuts or shaky camera so you really get to see the details of the fight choreography. Overall, that's the main appeal of the movie. Hand to hand combat. It elevates an otherwise bad movie into watchable territory.

Bonus points for including behind the scenes fight and stunt footage during the ending credits. Not enough action films do that these days.

In my IMDb list of all time greats, I have several martial arts entries. Properly done, they can be fun, even exhilarating. This entry, which loosely follows HIGH KICK GIRL, is literally the lowest possible level of movie export. No real budget. No real story. No real dialog. No real choreography. Rena Takeda does have a legitimate fanbase, and she has skill, but even in her native Japan she tends to get cast in B- and C- films. Even the English dubbing is terrible. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))