Sukeban Boy (Oira Sukeban) review

Guilty pleasures don’t get much guiltier than Noboru Iguchi’s geeky 2006 fleshfest, Sukeban Boy. Iguchi, who’s sort of a 14-year-old trapped in an adult’s body, caters to a fanbase of likeminded otakus by putting out no-budget releases that incorporate elements from his porn background, goofy comedy, and copious amounts of gore. His cheaply produced, easy to market style of exploitation is probably the reason Fever Dreams/Media Blasters tapped him to direct their recent DVD hit, The Machine Girl, but if you really want to understand what the guy is about “Sukeban Boy” is probably a purer representation (i.e., free from the influence of US expectations).

In the movie—which is actually an adaptation of a long-running Go Nagai manga serial—AV/pink actress and Iguchi favorite Asami plays Suke Banj (aka Sukeban), a thuggish high school boy cursed with the looks of a teenage girl. In an attempt to overcompensate for his girlish looks, Sukeban brawls his way to expulsion from just about every boys high school in Japan. That’s when his creepy-as-hell biker dad (Demo Tanaka) steps in and forces Sukeban to dress up like a girl and attend an all-girls school.

Unfortunately for Sukeban, the all-girls school he transfers to has even more vicious gangs than any of his old schools and he finds himself on the bad side of Kanko (Saori Matsunaka), leader of “The Pantyhose League” right off the bat. Kanko’s gang flexes their dominance over fellow classmates by forcing them to strip off their clothes while being watched. This form of humiliation is typically accompanied by high-pitched whines and phrases like “This is so humiliating” or “We’re dying of shame.” Of course these lines are uttered half-heartedly in a trailing-off, disinterested tone and even the actresses themselves seem to have a hard time not laughing while delivering them.

When Sukeban objects to his new friend Mochiko (Emiru Momose) being stripped down (she has a complex about her showing her butt) he gets in a confrontation with Kanko and the resulting fight is predictably goofy as hell. Kanko gains the upper hand with her “Can-can Dance Kick”, which consists of high-pitched grunting and repetitive camera zooms ‘twixt her nethers. But ultimately Sukeban’s crotch punch/fart in the face combo wins the day.

Kanko ends up so utterly impressed by Sukeban’s fighting prowess that she develops a lesbian(?) crush on him/her. However, her new infatuation worries her older sister and makes the increasingly obsessive Mochiko jealous. Later on, a mostly-naked masked terrorist attacks Kanko, severing both her legs above the knee with a dull hand axe. The brutal attack eventually leads to an all-out gang war in the school, with the “No Bra” and “Hoichi” leagues joining the fray. This is where the gore effects of Yoshihiro Nishimura come into play, but at times Iguchi goes for a more simplistic approach, such as actors haphazardly smacking each other with handfuls of blood to signify a gunshot hit. This method becomes particularly amusing when Sukeban’s sailor suited male bodyguards play belly bongos with each other in a futile attempt to keep up with machine gun sound effects.

As you may have figured out by now, “Sukeban Boy” is quite possibly one of the schlockiest movies ever made. Much like “The Machine Girl”, most of the comedy is in being completely over-the-top and unnecessarily informative at weird moments. The actors also seemed to enjoy the stupidity of it all; routinely breaking character to mess around in what would be considered outtakes in more professional productions, but definitely not in this one. AV actresses obviously revel in spoofing innocent schoolgirls, punctuating obscene insults with cute puffy cheeks and feigning humility while repeatedly flashing the camera and whining. The “tits and gore” crowd—and you know who you are—will probably want to build a shrine to Iguchi after watching this one, as it offers a ton of both with virtually no pretext or delay. People who prefer a cleverer brand of comedy should probably steer clear.

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Availability: US distributor Eastern Star released “Sukeban Boy” on region 1 DVD with English subtitles on October 28, 2008. Picture is really grainy (see screencaps), but that's most likely a carryover from the original DV footage. For full specs, see this link.

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