Robogeisha [R] - Japanese

Yoshie is the beautiful, but overlooked younger sister of the geisha Kikuyakko. Together they are recruited by the handsome and rich Hikaru to join a secret underground operation to overthrow the corrupt Japanese government by agreeing to mechanise parts of themselves and become cyborgs in his geisha army: the Tengun army. For a while Yoshie excels in assassinating corrupt leaders but then she discovers Hikaru and his army are actually a group of mass murderers with aims to take over the world. Armed with the mechanic body that Hikaru gave her, Yoshie now turns back on her creator and fights to take down the entire Tengun army and becomes… Robogeisha. 

Weird, this movie is weird! Aside from maybe Reefer Madness the Musical, this has to be the weirdest movie I’ve seen to date. Having worked in a video shop, I’m aware that the Japanese particularly come out with some weird and bizarre films: Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl are two that immediately spring to mind (I haven’t seen either just to be clear). Normally I wouldn’t have opted to watch a film called Robogeisha, but it just so happens that it’s a screening text for uni and the screening itself was cancelled, hence why I made the effort to watch this on my time and turf. This is all not to say that this is a bad film, it’s just a very strange and ultimately weird film that I’m sort of in two minds about whether I like it or not. 

Yoshie is the beautiful, but overlooked younger sister of the geisha Kikuyakko. Together they are recruited by the handsome and rich Hikaru to join a secret underground operation to overthrow the corrupt Japanese government by agreeing to mechanise parts of themselves and become cyborgs in his geisha army: the Tengun army. For a while Yoshie excels in assassinating corrupt leaders but then she discovers Hikaru and his army are actually a group of mass murderers with aims to take over the world. Armed with the mechanic body that Hikaru gave her, Yoshie now turns back on her creator and fights to take down the entire Tengun army and becomes… Robogeisha. 

It might not be arguable or fair to pick up on this, but it definitely influenced my outlook on the movie. The hilarity of Robogeisha I think really comes in the form of the subtitles. The script is translated into English as best it can be for English-speaking audiences and the simplicity and lack of inflection just make the film all the more bizarre. Aside from trying to keep up with the subtitles (Japanese is a very fast and hard language to follow), you’re simultaneously trying to fit the puzzle together as to which word goes where when the characters are speaking and it makes the movie really funny because the script that doesn’t seem to match action. It’s like when you reach out to touch something that looks hard and then discover that it’s made of jelly or something soft. That surprise of the senses is what makes this movie so strange and strangely enjoyable: there are all these dramatic-looking scenes but then the translated script is so simple and obvious that it doesn’t hold any of the drama the action suggests. 

Onto the more impressive features now. The action and fight sequences are pretty cool: serious and masterful with the added element of strangeness in terms of breast machine guns, armpit knives, and samurai swords that protrude from the girls’ arses, not to mention breast milk that burns peoples’ faces off. Many of the bouts of strangeness are within the realms of the erotic fantasy, it’s like a fanfiction made real playing to a niche audience’s strange and dark little wants. 

Starring Aya Kiguchi, Hitomi Hasebe, Takumi Saito, Taro Shigaki, Etsuko Ikuta, Asami Kumakiri, Shoko Nakahara, Asami, Kai Izumi, Suzuki Matsuo, and Naoto Takenaka, Robogeisha is a strange movie really only for those who are inclined. Filled with action, skimpy outfits, robots, and drama, there’s not much more to say really… it’s weird!