While I’m not super knowledgeable on the subject, it’s pretty apparent that Sukeban Deka is a massively popular property in Japan. Beginning as a 22 volume Manga, it spawned 3 TV series, 2 anime OVA’s, and 3 motion pictures (the most recent being Kenta Fukasaku’s Yo-Yo Girl Cop). As with any successful media, parodies abound, and Sukeban Deka is no exception. Yo-Yo Sexy Girl Cop is the latest spoof, inspired by the success of the aforementioned Yo-Yo Girl Cop, but the spoofing truly began with Mototsugu Watanabe’s Sexy Battle Girls, which surprisingly enough made it to the big screen before the series first proper motion picture!

Mirai Asamiya has just transferred to an expensive private girls’ school per request of her father. At her previous school, Mirai got into a little trouble when she had an affair with one of her teachers, although not in the usual way a student gets into trouble when having an illicit relationship with a teacher. They indeed had sex, but it didn’t end nicely…Mirai’s vagina has a secret talent called “The Venus Crush” that is quite effective in destroying anything that goes into it. Her father was not pleased that she removed her high-tech chastity belt to have sex, and thus transferred her to the new school.

Her father has an ulterior motive for moving her to the new school though: the headmaster is the reason he’s estranged from her mother, who went off to have an affair with him due to him being larger endowed. All of the martial arts and special ability training he’s put Mirai through while growing up was to use her as his instrument of revenge. Mirai isn’t aware of this initially, and gets into her own troubles at the school when confronted by the school “boss”, Susan Arashiyama. She also uncovers an evil plot where problem students are sold off as sex slaves to high-ranking politicians by the headmaster as a means to run for governor. Once Mirai finds out about what the headmaster did to her father, she makes it her mission to extract sweet revenge for all that have been wronged.

Sexy Battle Girls works best when it focuses on the main plot, which includes a lot of hilarious and amusing moments. Many of the elements on display are completely over-the-top, such as the girls’ weapons of choice, which range from chains, throwing ball-point pens like darts, and a kendama that doubles as an undercover vibrating dildo. There’s also that small matter of Mirai’s ferocious and highly-skilled vagina which, in arguably my favorite scene of the film, can effortlessly cut an apple into perfect quarters. Being a film that I’m sure didn’t have enough money to do so, we don’t ever see exactly what that thing does to an actual man’s junk, but the scene with the apple is more than enough to fill your imagination will all kinds of nasty ideas. I also found it strangely humorous every time the headmaster was in a scene, as he has some sort of fake canary sitting on his shoulder. Not sure if this is a nod to the original series as I haven’t seen it, but the randomness of it made me chuckle.

Unfortunately, as much fun as I had with the film, the abundance of sex scenes took me out of things on a number of occasions. I fully realize this is a Pink film, and it’s to be expected, but I’ve seen many Pink films in my time that don’t go overboard on the sex scenes and integrate them into the story to a better degree. In Sexy Battle Girls, there are seven sex scenes in the course of the 60 minute runtime, and some go on for nearly five minutes. This amounts to a film that is nearly 50/50 when comparing the sex to the story, and I felt the film suffered because of it. The story is so entertaining, that the extended sex scenes tend to break up the furious pace of the film, and during the longer portions of sex, I found myself losing interest (although the ridiculous-looking fake boner used in a couple of them is quite comical). Luckily when the narrative picks back up, I fell right back into the fun of things, but with a little less sex the film could have been much better overall.

The most impressive aspect of the film isn’t anything you actually see play out on screen; it’s the people involved in the film, both acting-wise and behind the scenes. While I’ve mentioned in previous pieces about directors like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Yojiro Takita emerging from the Pink genre, the list of people that were involved with Sexy Battle Girls is pretty astounding. Yutaka Ikejima, the film’s evil headmaster, found much success in the 90’s starring in both Zeiram films as well as Shusuke Kaneko's killer Gamera trilogy; writer Masumi Hirayanagi wrote Sogo Ishii’s Crazy Thunder Road before and the Street Fighter V anime series after; and quite possibly the most surprising, editor Shoji Sakai just two years earlier edited Hayao Miyazaki’s amazing Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Once again, it’s apparent that working in the Pink genre is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Even with my gripe about the sex portions of the film, Sexy Battle Girls still has enough going for it to make it worth checking out. Even if you’re not familiar with Sukeban Deka (those that are will find it to be a pretty spot-on send-up), the film is funny enough to keep you entertained, and those that dig Pinky Violence films will find a lot to enjoy. And really, what red-blooded male doesn’t enjoy watching cute girls beat each other up with outlandish weapons?

PINK EIGA’s release of Sexy Battle Girls is much the same as their previous releases, in the presentation department. The film is given the letterboxed treatment, preserving the film’s 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Picture quality is on par with their other discs, which is to say it’s not reference material, but it’s far from bad. One point to make note of is that there’s one new piece of composed music for the film’s soundtrack. The original theatrical cut actually used music straight from the Sukeban Deka TV series, copyright be damned! These days, copyright is a much more precious thing, and as such a new piece of music needed to be created for use in the two scenes that used the stolen music. It stands out from the rest of the audio only because it booms through a bit louder than everything else. Otherwise, it fits with the rest of the soundtrack just fine. Subs are once again un-removable, and are free of any noticeable errors.

Extras include the PINK EIGA standard of cast and crew bios, a still gallery, and a ton of trailers for this and other films in their stable. The one unique extra is a trivia section for the film, which is text-based, and includes a ton of good information about the film, including how it came about, its spoof roots, and all of the amazing talent involved with the film. Overall, it’s another quality release from the good folks at PINK EIGA.

Please feel free to discuss "Sexy Battle Girls" here, in our forums!