Mutant Girls Squad is what would happen if Tokyo Gore Police and X-Men met up one night, got knock-down drunk, made sweet, sweet love, and had an abortion together.
I mean that in the best possible way. Amazingly, it’s easily the most coherent work from Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura (Machine Girl, Robo-geisha, etc.) yet, even with the added insanity of Tak Sakaguchi (Versus), and that’s probably because it follows the X-Men story almost to the letter. This focuses on the bad mutants of course, but even the Brotherhood didn’t have members like this- a girl with sword blades for nipples, for example, or a cheerleader with a chainsaw that shoots out of her ass. They also didn’t kill civilians at this fast a clip.
The story revolves around young Rin, a schoolgirl who gets picked on by her peers. She’s an awkward and shy teen that’s about to find out how different from everyone else she really is. On her sixteenth birthday after being bullied yet another time she starts to feel some weird changes in her body…. violent urges that scare her. She gets home only to have her parents sit her down to reveal that they’ve kept a secret from her all these years- she’s really a mutant. Her father demonstrates this by pulling off his shirt to reveal his malformed nipples and penis, and poor Rin has barely any time to get properly terrified before an anti-mutant task force (wearing nose-machineguns!) storms in and kills both her parents.
Rin soon gets angered and finds out what her power is- her hand transforms into a giant robot claw. She puts it to work, chopping everyone in sight into pieces and embarking on a rampage of destruction throughout a nearby mall. People don’t take too kindly to mutants round these parts so many try to stop her, but she ends up slaughtering dozens of shopkeepers and customers before being “rescued” by members of the Mutant Girls Squad. They take her away to their school and show that there are many more people like her out there in the world, and they’re all training to take over the world. They hate humans and the way that they mistreat mutants, though they’re clearly the next evolutionary step. (One might call them a Sisterhood of Mutants…) They teach Rin to control her powers and begin to send her and her classmates out on terrorist acts to bring humanity to its knees.
If you’ve been following you’ll know what’s going to take front row here, and that’s heaps and heaps of cheesy, disturbing, yet hugely entertaining gore. The film itself is ultimately shallow but just the right kind of ridiculous fun that you’ve come to expect from their films. Where else are you going to see a baker getting sliced and diced into a meaty loaf of bread, or a giant monster that squirts acid breast milk?
But the film actually has a little more substance to it than you’d expect. One striking moment is Rin’s rampage, which has multiple repercussions. Not only does it give the viewers a chance to revel in gratuitous bloodshed, but later on poor Rin has to deal with what she’s done before she knew how to control herself. It’s something that feels like it’s been missing from most superhero origin tales- a disturbed teen with mutant powers would most likely amass a decent body count. It adds a whole new level of darkness to her story.
But don’t expect anything too serious here… as I mentioned before, she’s being pursued by cops that wear friggin’ machineguns on their noses. This is sexually-charged extreme violence at its best.
Like the other movies in their filmography Mutant Girls Squad is definitely not for the majority of people, but those of you in the right mind-set will be pleased to know that each successive film is getting stronger.
Mutant Girls Squad is playing at the New York Asian Film Fest on July 3rd and 5th. This is one to see in theaters, folks. Check here for tickets! It will also be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in early 2011.