Rating: **
Review Date: 6/3/03
Cast: Mayuko Iwasa
Only in Japan can you get away with crazy shit like this. I have no idea what to make of this incomprehensible mess, but its sheer lunacy had me in fits of laughter. The story opens with our adorable protagonist Mayu (17 year old Mayuko Iwasa) being raped by some thug in a police station (!!!). Mayu's superior officer shows up, beats the rapist to a pulp, and scolds Mayu for not being able to defend herself. "You'll never be a member of SWAN unless you shape up!" she bellows (or something like that - it's all in Japanese so I have no idea what they're really saying). This makes Mayu cry and also makes her put on a plush chicken costume. Okay... To vent her frustration, she changes into her schoolgirl uniform and goes to the video game arcade for some recreation. While there, she receives a note from a wrestling dojo and decides to check it out. She meets a crazy wrestling coach who wears a bandolier of bullets and is always yelling into a microphone, and a referee who is always chewing on a chicken leg. Coach starts training Mayu in the all "hip attack", which involves a rigorous workout with a hula hoop. Things start to get complicated when the referee turns out to be an underwear thief as well as an assassin (???), and his chicken leg conceals a hidden gun. Stepping up to the plate, several well placed hip gyrations and a flying butt attack take down of all the bad guys and earn her a well deserved spot on the SWAN Special Task Force.
Stuff like this just makes my brain melt. It makes absolutely no sense at all and is merely gratuitous girlie fluff. But the Japanese feel compelled to add goofy plots and silly characters to their fluff, giving it a sense of fun and innocence that evokes both bewilderment and laughter. I normally wouldn't bother watching stuff like this, but the box art featuring Mayuko Iwasa with a gun lured me in. Unfortunately, it doesn't deliver on the girls 'n' guns front, but the picture sure is nice. Mayuko Iwasa is utterly adorable and a fairly decent actress as well. She must also be very courageous to humiliate herself making videos like this, but maybe it's the norm for Japanese idol videos. The video itself is only twenty-one minutes long and was probably shot and assembled over a weekend. The production values are low, but the video quality is pretty good. Everyone hams it up to the extreme, and it looks like everyone had fun making this harmless waste of time.