MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD (aka SENO SHOJO: CHI NO TEKKAMEN DENSETSU, 2010)

Directed by Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Tak Sakaguchi.
Written by Noboru Iguchi, Jun Tsugita.
Starring Yumi Sugimoto, Yuko Takayama, Suzuka Morita, Naoto Takenaka, Chiharu Kawa.

When will we ever get sick of seeing hot Asian girls in schoolgirl outfits?

Never, if MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD has anything to say about it. The film owes a lot to American comics such as X-MEN in terms of theme, but sits up there with the greats when it comes to gore and batshit craziness.

If you liked films like TOKYO GORE POLICE, and VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL, then this is the type of film for you. MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD starts small, focusing on Rin (Yumi Sugimoto), a single, shy teen finding out that she is different from her schoolmates who ridicule her and make her life hell. On her birthday, she complains about pains in her hand, which cause sideways glances from her parents. After accidentally lashing out at her classmates for bullying her, she returns home to find her parents revealing to her that she is the half-breed offspring of a human and a race of mutant that existed long before humans. Before Rin can process this, her house is stormed by armed forces who kill her family and force her into defending herself using her mutant power and then go into hiding. Soon she finds the alluring Kisaragi (Tak Sakaguchi), a transvestite mutant who teaches a school for mutants that call themselves the Hiruko. Each of her fellow students are weirder than the next. When Rin discovers that Kisaragi’s plot is to take revenge on the entire Japanese population, she teams with a few of her classmates, and the Mutant Girls Squad is born.

After this extremely comic booky origin story, apeshit loony stuff happens and happens and happens.

As with most of these Japanese horror flicks, the highlight here are the gory special effects. Blood gushes out in geysers as Rin’s mutant claws swipe at the enemy. Heads explode, body parts are used as weapons, and all kinds of cartoony dismemberment not unlike Peter Jackson’s DEAD ALIVE climax occurs. The gore is not meant to gross out. Instead, it’s meant to cause laughter and head slapping astonishment. Everything is for spectacle, and as these films often do play out, everything leads to a final special effects bonanza blowout in the end with gallons of blood, body parts, and various other fluids dousing the actors and the stage they are filmed on.

The highlight of this film for me was the goofy powers each of the girls have. One has tentacles for arms. Another has little arms growing out of her head. Another has the ability to turn her face red (WTF?), while another carries around the head of her dead brother. The two standouts, though, are the chick with swords coming out of her breasts and, last but not least, the girl with a retractable chainsaw coming from her ass.

Yes, you read that right.

Not to be taken seriously. Not to be plumbed for thematic depth. MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD is a fun and gory messterpiece that follows what has become a tried-and-true formula of introducing one crazy body cartoon after another and then smashing them together in a bloody climax near the end. Although this time the mayhem is caused by Asian girls in school girl outfits—which I don’t know about you, but it only makes it all the more appealing to me.