Review for Chanbara Striptease

Introduction

Once, long ago when I was a teen and interested in such things, Manga Video was renowned for anime with sex and violence in extremis. It was enough to make tabloid writers bleed from their eyes, it made little kids' heads explode, it made Mary Whitehouse spontaneously evolve into a Medusa and turn all liberals within a five mile radius instantaneously into stone. Manga Entertainment isn't like that anymore. They've gone all respectable, and started selling anime about little orange ninjas, and cybernetic policewomen. Or so you thought. Now that Manga Entertainment have started up the Manga Live Action label, they've got a whole new source of filth to bring to the UK masses, and there's none of that 'cartoons are for kids' stigma attached to it. Chanbara Striptease is about naked girls, with swords. I did the honourable thing and took one for the team.


Lili is the heir to the Sayama Hashinryu sword style, a lethal method that has been passed down between women for 300 years, a style so lethal that no one has ever survived. On her 20th birthday, Lili received the succession ritual from her grandmother. It consists of the sacred nightwear (a box that can only be opened in the direst of emergencies), a blindfold, and a sip of sacred tea. Lili puts on the blindfold, sips the tea, and removes the blindfold to suddenly find herself 300 years in the past, in a forest, naked. It isn't long before trouble runs by, a pregnant girl being chased by a group of ninja. It's time to don the clothing and unsheathe her sword. But the Sayama Hashinryu only works when the breasts are exposed, and able to emit the right pink coloured chi. Yae is grateful for the rescue, as is her brother Hikoichi, and Lili learns that their village is being plagued by rogue ninja, who demand protection money from the poor villagers. It will be up to Lili to protect them, but she runs straight into a temporal paradox when she meets the leader of the ninja, a woman named Okinu, who is also a bare-breasted Samurai warrior maiden. Well maybe not so much of the maiden…

The Disc

The disc gets just the basics, with an animated menu, a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer, DD2.0 stereo Japanese sound, and optional English subtitles. The film was shot digitally, and it shows, with the added snag of an NTSC-PAL conversion. The image is clear enough in brightly lit, more static scenes, but add some fast motion, and you see a couple of compression artefacts appear. Darker scenes lack clarity and sharpness, and in brightness, whites are over-exposed. With the film just taking up 65 minutes of a single layer disc, I doubt that the problems are down to a DVD transfer; rather it's the source material. It remains watchable enough though. The dialogue is clear, and there is a hint of ambience in the exterior environments, while the music is cheap and cheerful.

Conclusion

Fun but crap!

I suppose that I could go into greater detail about my opinion of this film, but those two descriptives sum it up best. It's short and sweet at 65 minutes, and indeed were it any longer, it would outstay its welcome. The story is a cosmic bit of fluff, a time travel device used to get a modern day college girl with an aptitude for sword-swinging back to the Edo period where such sword-swinging comes in handy, and the time travel plot and culture clash adds to the bare minimal story of topless girls swinging swords around.


Chanbara Striptease isn't going to win any awards for acting, indeed given that its cast list has a couple of Japanese Adult Video stars given top billing, the acting is surprisingly good. The action on the other hand isn't, played more for laughs, and never really convincing as anything too visceral or brutal. The effects are just as under-budgeted as well, but let's face it. You're not going to buy this film for acting, effects, or production values, and if there are a couple of things distracting you from the action, you're not going to be bothered by that either.


You're here for the boobies! With two sword-wielding women disrobing for combat, you want to see whose boob-fu is strongest. And this film delivers on that count, complete with obligatory 'sproingy-boingy' comedy sound effect when Lili charges into action. Of course Okinu being a little more endowed in the chesticle area get a deeper, more resonant sound effect. So we have bare breasts, we have a cameraman who's been briefed on the correct camera angles for best fan service value, and we have soft-focus sex scenes. Yay!


My outer, evolved, civilised gentleman sat there disapproving of the exploitation, vaguely interested in the time travel plot, but otherwise turned off by the low production values and cheesy acting, but my inner Neanderthal was in charge, and ensured a silly grin remained in place during the film's duration. Chanbara Striptease really is fun but crap, and the world would be a far duller place without it.