Chanbara Beauty (aka Oneechanbara: Movie)

Title

Chanbara Beauty (aka Oneechanbara: Movie)

Language - Japenese

Genre -  fighting, Zombie, Chanbara, Video game

 

Chanbara Beauty is the first of 2 films based on the Oneechanbara & Zombie hunter video games and follows Aya as she hunts for her sister Saki who killed there farther.

Chanbara Beauty is set in the near future; about 10 years after the D3 company has released Zombies upon the world, It’s not fully explained why D3 released the zombies but Dr Sugita, the man who is creating them (and the only person we ever see working for D3) hints that they are looking for Aya.  At the opening of the film we see Zombies attacking a small settlement of humans, just as the Zombies seem to be winning Aya and her sidekick Katsuji enter the fray and Aya kills most of the Zombies, shedding the coat she was wearing to revel her trademark look from the games, a bikini, cowboy boots and hat and a feather bower. A mysterious woman on a motorbike who shoots a zombie that Aya is about to interrogate also joins the fight, I’m not sure what Aya hopes to gain from interrogating the zombie as there is no other point in the film where any of them speak.  Aya and the woman start to fight but Katsuji, who has come out of hiding now all the zombies are dead, breaks this up, the woman introduces herself as Reiko and tells Aya that her sister is with Dr Sugita and she will take her the Doctor if she will help kill him.  The party of three then set off to find Dr Sugita and Saki, apparently leaving the motorbike behind.

The imagery in Chanbara Beauty stays close to the game, you have Aya in her bikini and cowboy boots, Saki in her schoolgirl uniform and Reiko in her cleavage revealing biker leathers and shotgun that never needs to be reloaded.  The journey that the characters take is also like the games, they are in on place and then the next without actual travelling and most of the action takes place in abandoned buildings that soon fill up with hordes of zombies.  The film also uses other imagery form the games, during big fight scenes the camera becomes covered in blood and we get aerial views of Zombies limbs flying through the air.  There is also a ‘boss’ zombie in the form of another girl in a schoolgirl uniform wheedling a ball and chain, possibly a symbolic weapon due to her relationship to one of the other characters is what is chaining them down.  (I could just be seeing too much into this though, I’m not sure that the movie is quite that intelligent)

  The one problem with the film is that it seems to rely on some knowledge of the games, when fighting the zombies Aya pulls off some pretty good moves which could be put down to theatrical license but, as the film progresses she (and Saki) start to blast the area around them with energy from their swords and, at the end of the film they become surrounded with energy and gain super speed and flight.  In the games this is because the two sisters have cursed blood, which enables them to activate their powers, the more they fight and the more they get covered in blood.  The cursed blood is mentioned in the film, indeed it is why Dr Sugita needs Aya as he believes that it is needed to bring the dead back to life without them being total zombies although it’s not explained why Saki’s blood isn’t good enough, but there is never anything mentioned about the blood giving either sister any powers.

Over all I found Chanbara Beauty an enjoyable movie, it’s not high on scares but if you like zombies, action and scantily clad women then it is a good way to kill an hour and a half.