Fernando Ramos is Editor-in-Chief of Anime3000.com. Hailing from beautiful San Diego, California, his incurable addiction to cartoons has led him to his current residence of Saitama, Japan, where staying up late winter nights editing articles only reminds him that SD would never get this cold. An avid photography and video fan, he also produces occasional videos and he also writes the photography/rant column Japan Jumble for the site. Find him as Saitamarama on Flickr and HelloNavi on Twitter.

Anticipation for Assault Girls has been mixed, to say the least. While it has Mamoru Oshii on the marquee line and implications of being a follow-up to 2001’s brain-teaser Avalon, most fans (like myself) were skeptical about just how utterly mainstream everything looked. Dune “inspired” sandworms and gals with fetish-tastic outfits packing heavy firepower to blow them up are fun and all, but it just lacks the depth and psychology by way of sociopolitics that drenches Oshii’s work and makes it stand out from the glut of countless Japanese-girls-with-guns pieces. It didn’t help matters that the previous two shorts that form the basis of Assault Girls were little more than flashy (and hilarious) action set-pieces with, you guessed it, hot girls.

However, the aforementioned shorts were virtually devoid of any context. We barely knew who our characters were or what they were after besides one last bite of KFC. It was boom-boom-bang-bang night after day and roll credits. This left Oshii open to take the characters in virtually any direction he so wished; and boy did he ever.

Simply put, he shoehorns all the chaos of the shorts into the timeline of his previous live-action film, Avalon. A lengthy voice-over prologue explains (in many big words) to us in no uncertain terms what that goulash was all about: capitalism had reached it’s brink due to our technological advances and society has been pushed to its logical limit. Now we are in the age of Pax Technologica: in short, a world-wide Neo-Communism. Having settled fanboy arguments over just what parts of Avalon actually did happen, we find that the Avalon game has also gotten itself some upgrades since the days of Polish MMORPGers, now seeming to run on Windows Vista instead of Commie-DOS.

Also of note is that, where Avalon was constantly jumping between and blurring the line between the real world and the online one, here we are firmly in the virtual. Outside of a few select throwaway lines and a single scene lasting less than a minute, there is little suggestion of there being a world outside the game. When Avalon was first released in 2001, World of Warcraft was in its infancy, Google was just a search engine and Wikipedia had just begun to be noticed. Humanity was still able to exist disconnected. Things have changed. “We are wired and there’s no getting out now,” is what Oshii seems to be saying. Furthermore, instead of the overexposed yellow slosh over everything in the previous film, Assault Girls opts to merely mute all but the loudest colors if to acknowledge that that the binary may well be just as just tangible as the physical.

Similarly, the tone of the film is much more colorful than the somber Avalon, at times having more in common with Takashi Miike or Quentin Tarantino than with the man who brought us Ghost in the Shell. Characters are introduced with campy still-frame title cards and the furious fun of the action screams for a wild saxophone score instead of the Kenji Kawai mood-synth that does. As icing on the cake, the film is separated into pretentiously titled chapters, Kill Bill-style.

In fact, despite writing the script himself in lieu of his frequent collaborator Kazunori Ito, this is probably Oshii’s least “Oshii” work since Beautiful Dreamer. Basset hounds are nowhere in sight (we do get dogs, but more on that later), the fisheye lenses are put in storage and, prologue notwithstanding, the movie is, much like the trailer promised, mostly concerned with hot chicks blowing shit up real good, visually if not thematically. The three leads jump, run and gun with beauty and grace. While Meisa Kuroki makes for a foxy heroine in her skin-tight rear-accentuating battle gear, it is Babel beauty Rinko Kikuchi as the cute mute mage Lucifer who steals the show for this reviewer. She gets no dialogue beyond a few dubbed-over crow calls (don’t ask), her Harajuku-influenced attire and playful ethereal dancing had my and my equally silent fellow theatre-goers’ full attention.

Yet beyond the absurdity lies a subversive shadow. Oshii has never been beyond playing with the audience. This is the man who threw Hitler and Christ into Urusei Yatsura for crying out loud. The most noticeable of these subversions lies with the fact that we have an all-Japanese cast speaking English. It is well-written modern English peppered with slang, but the performances are stilted and frequently garbled by a Sky Crawlers-esque static filter. However, unlike that film, it is not a mere atmospheric flourish. Here, it is made apparent that this is a rule imposed by the game: only English is permitted with “local languages” being verboten.

It doesn’t take a political science major to see the subtext of political subjugation via linguistics. Sealing the deal is the abundance of Japanese symbology in the landscape of Avalon(f): a statue of Ninomiya Sontoku (a fixture at Japanese schools but historically noteworthy for his economic and humanistic philosophies) and, instead of the infamous basset hound, a shiba inu, one of the domestic breeds of Japan, sniffing around at it. Also, randomly, a character takes out an antagonist in a direct visual quote of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon. It’s not subtle symbolism or commentary, but it stands out in the parade of explosions and live-action fanservice. It’s Oshii throwing yet another middle finger to the Establishment, much like the undertones of cultural warfare in the Patlabor movies.

This is all well and good, but the film does have infuriating aspects that keep it from being an instant classic. Like Oshii’s earlier live-action work in the Keroberos Panzer Corps universe, it feels more like a salad bowl of ideas than an actual good movie in its own right. The lack of actors and no major sets adds to the feeling that this was just a side project Oshii wanted to bang out in a few months than his next opus. Perhaps the most infuriating thing is the absence of an ending. This is not an exaggeration. We tune into this world for 80-some minutes and then, just when things are looking to really get heated up, we’re thrown into the credits. As the ending theme by otaku favorite KOTOKO starts cranking up and the audience around me starts getting cranky, we are reminded of a possible rationale:

“GENEON UNIVERSAL PRESENTS: A FILM BY MAMORU OSHII”

Figures.

More information on Mamoru Oshii’s upcoming live-action flick Assault Girls have emerged, this time via the film’s official Japanese language website. Finally we have a clue to what is going on in that crazy trailer showing girls-with-guns fighting sand-whales, and it’s pretty damn exciting. Based on Google Translate and my most trusted of Japan based operatives Fernando Ramos it seems that the film is set in the same world as Oshii’s sublime live-action movie Avalon – that is to say it appears to be set around another massively multiplayer, virtual reality video game. In fact, the text seems to be suggesting it’s a new, or different, version of the game from the earlier film, known as ‘Avalon (f)’.

This is the google translation of the first few paragraphs of the story page on the site:
Virtual space “Avalon (f)> already there, that mimics the desert wilderness after thermonuclear war =” Desert 22 “monsters that haunt the” Sunakujira “aims to show his players —— Gray , Lucifer, kernel, and Yeager. Three men and one woman, in their arms “Sunakujira” a flock of whale. Next we had the players and make a kill during the war, Yeager is possessed for a chance to pet one of them was gobbled up, stuck in the kill. That time, three other people before the end of the target is very big in this field = “Madarasunakujira” that was on the scene. That, prior to its overwhelming strength, they are forced to retreat …

Return to base in the crater of a volcano, Gray settle the battle outcome. Terminating target “Madarasunakujira” but missed, Gray is not a bad score. And such for her master had said the game cold. “You can knock down levels of the target can not be terminated,” “Look at other players and formed a party if” and.

Well, make of that what you will. If you have elite Japanese skills and can provide a better translation then PLEASE give me a shout. I was already pretty excited about Assault Girls based on what I’d seen already, but the idea that it may be a continuation of one of my favourite sci-fi movies of the last decade is just thrilling. As always, more info when I get it.

UPDATE: See below for the first two Assault Girl shorts – the first taken from Oshii’s own Shin-Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden, and the second from Kiru ~ Kill – a movie made from climatic fight scenes from non-exist films by various directors – of which Oshii was one. Plus get this: Twitch are reporting that during a press conference in Shibuya today to promote the release of the full-length film that Oshii announced that Hollywood had already approached him about a US remake. Wow. Lets hope the his head doesn’t get too big for that dope hipster hat of his.

Special thanks to Brian Ruh, author of the excellent book Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, for the tip off on this one.

Last month we had the first details of Mamoru Oshii’s new live-action flick Assault Girls – today we have a teaser trailer, courtesy of Nippon Cinema. The site also has some more details about the plot:
In the aftermath of global thermonuclear war, the Earth’s surface has been turned into a desert battlefield. Three beautiful female hunters: Gray (Meisa Kuroki), Lucifer (Rinko Kikuchi), and Colonel (Hinako Saeki) traverse the barren landscape armed with powerful assault rifles to fight a group of deadly sand-dwelling monsters called “sunakujira” (sand whales). When the the epic battle eventually seems to be coming to an end, the sparkle of muzzle flash dies down and assault ship flies overhead. Suddenly, a gigantic super mutation called “Madara Sunakujira” attacks.

To me it looks like Oshii might be letting off some steam here, and making a balls out, low budget action movie – but that might just be editing and the clips that have been used here. Hopefully we’ll also get some of the moody, down-tempo stuff he did so well in Avalon. Wither way, the Dune influences still seem pretty strong. So what do you think? Hit the comments below and let me know.

Regular readers will know about my fanatical love for the animated works of Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Sky Crawlers), but they might not realize how much I also bug-out for his live action films. His last feature length work Avalon came out in 2001, and became an instant favourite in my household, the film getting played so much by me and my better half that we nearly wore out the DVD. Which is a good thing, considering how much I paid to import it from Japan. Anyway, with that in mind you can imagine how excited I got today when the first details were announced about his latest work, due to hit Japanese cinemas in December.

Assault Girls is a sci-fi action film about three female hunters battling huge ‘sand whales’ in a desert setting, the costume design and themes obviously referencing another great love of mine; Frank Herbert’s Dune. Anime News Network has some more details:

Elsewhere, as part of promotion for both the Sky Crawlers Blu-ray/DVD release and the cinema release of his latest project, Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai, the usually shy and quiet Oshii has been making far more media media appearances then normal. Akibanana sat down with him and talked about the new release:

Check out the full interview here, and keep an eye on this site – as always I’ll be bringing you news and details on all Oshii’s projects as soon as I get them.