By Keri O’Shea
“Why is there a knife blade in the tip of your umbrella?”
It’s fair to say that when the Japanese get hold of a youth subculture they like, they more than make it their own – and the ‘Gothic Lolita’ phenomenon is a good case in point. A pretty mash-up of I suppose what you’d call ‘trad Goth’ and far more cutesy, frilly add-ons, it was perhaps inevitable that the visually-arresting style would make its way into cinema eventually – particularly the sort of cartoonish, frenetic vengeance flicks that we so enjoy, because nothing catches the eye quite so much as a well-turned-out angel of death (see also: Geisha Assassin, by the same director Gô Ohara). The reasoning doesn’t really go any further than that here, to be perfectly honest, and there’s no especial reason why lead character Yuki has adopted the clothes she has, but what the hell. This film is a lot of fun.
The year is 20XX (?) and the location is Tokyo: Yuki (played by the apparent winner of the 2007 award for Best Buttocks, Rina Akiyama) – under the watchful eye of her father, who seems to be an out-of-work vicar, is about to raise hell as a method of avenging her mother’s death. Mother was dispatched in a particularly nasty way on her daughter’s birthday by a group of cowled assassins; Yuki has had a costume change since that fateful day (well to be fair, white was not the colour to be wearing) but she knows who was responsible, and she’s coming for them – armed with an array of killer parasols. Starting out by paying a visit to a nightclub which boasts synchronised Geisha dancing, a fighting pit and a gambling den (though they only serve Budweiser, so you can’t have everything), Yuki is quick to put her blade to good use. We only see the back of her head for the first ten minutes, but rest assured, the choreography and OTT special effects are glorious: arterial spray, severed heads and flailing bodies abound.
Of course, all of this is plot-lite. The reason that Yuki’s mother met the fate she did is not really explored until the very last handful of scenes, but then it’s not really important; we know enough to know that Yuki is justified to lop off a lot of limbs and that’s enough, no further philosophy needed. More of a computer game with end-of-level bosses than a film with a subtle story arc, the film is a sequence of overblown, worthy opponents, each one marked off by Yuki on a corresponding Gothic tarot card. Everyone playing here has superhuman abilities and ridiculous weapons; gambling den owner and Gothic geisha Sakie rolls her dice in a skull and decapitates people who get in her way, for instance, and perhaps the most jaw-dropping adversary, Lady Elle (Misaki Momose) has a sparkly pink mobile phone built in to the handle of her pistol so she can talk to her bae whilst she’s stamping on someone’s ribcage. As you do.
As you may expect, the film is choc-ful of action sequences, and these consist of some fairly challenging martial-arts style fights as well as masses of firepower and improbable stunts. Rina Akiyama looks like she’s properly out of breath in some of the scenes and I’ll bet she was – but, she holds up admirably, and certainly isn’t let off the hook just because she’s wearing good boots. The film doesn’t take itself too seriously either (the Kamikaze Gang are a comic highlight) and manages to find the time to add in a few fart jokes, gratuitous ass shots and a teacher who’d almost certainly end up on some kind of a list. Really speaking, it does a hell of a lot in less than ninety minutes.
Whilst Gothic & Lolita Psycho doesn’t cast Asami in a starring role (though her appearance, replete with a head tattoo, is pretty damn memorable anyway) I think it’s still an interesting role for her, because by this point she was clearly a go-to girl for horror-comedy and had established herself as a name in this kind of quasi-mainstream – whilst certainly not AV – movie world. A lot of the visual effects in Gothic & Lolita Psycho are put together by the team who also worked on, for instance, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl – so there’s a lot of commonality of aesthetics and approaches throughout a hell of a lot of these films. Remember also that by this stage, Machine Girl was A Thing and Asami had enjoyed some starring roles elsewhere; 2010 was also a hell of a busy year for the actress, with a staggering 13 projects reaching completion. She also played an eye-patch wearing assassin in Mutant Girls Squad that year, so maybe it would have been a push to see her do it twice had she taken the role of Lady Elle here, but still. A decent project to have under your belt whatever you happen to play in it, though, Gothic & Lolita Psycho is one film in a now relatively busy market for splattery, gratuitous body horror comedy. Like Gothic Lolita generally, Japan is good at adding aesthetically pleasing flounce to traditional forms, and having a blast along the way.