Sakamoto Koichi Movies (Was: No Super Hero Time November 5th)

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ViRGE
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Sakamoto Koichi Movies (Was: No Super Hero Time November 5th)

Post by ViRGE »

Back when Girls In Trouble was released, I noticed that a few of the actresses had previously worked with Koichi Sakaomoto on something called Girl's Blood (Aka x Pink), which is a Sakamoto film I had never heard of before. So for the off week, I tracked down a copy of that.
Girl's Blood (赤×ピンク Aka x Pinku) is a 2014 Japanese erotic action film directed by Koichi Sakamoto and written by Takehiko Minato, based on the novel Aka × Pink by Kazuki Sakuraba and distributed by Kadokawa
The Wikipedia description is about as apt as you'll get in one sentence. It's basically a martial arts film with pure Sakamoto-style stunt fights, interspersed with dialog scenes and some softcore erotica. Think Creed meets Koichi Sakamoto meets Skinemax.

Fittingly, an apt comparison is probably Girls in Trouble. You have the same kind of all-female core cast doing lots of fighting, except without the toku and with more violence and lewdness (and legs; this is Sakamoto, after all!). It scratches the same general itch, nostalgia aside.

The movie also includes a number of toku actresses and actors in major and minor roles, including Yuria Haga (Kiva's second fangire queen) as the lead, Escape and Cmdr. Kuroki from Go-Busters, Gremlin from Wizard, Shishii from Girls in Trouble, and a few stunt actresses such as Sanae Hitomi.

Anyhow, it's not bad? I've never seen a non-toku Sakamoto production, so I don't have much of a frame of reference. The fights were fantastic, the pacing is reasonable, and the plot is thin but passable. Also, having never seen Kuroki's actor doing a less composed role, he's surprisingly frightening. And there's Escape mud wrestling, if that's your thing.:o
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Re: No Super Hero Time November 5th

Post by takenoko »

I thought about picking up Aka x Pink at some point. Was it released in English in Europe? I'm wondering where the title Girl's Blood comes from.

I'm surprised the movie was decent. 009-1: The end of the beginning, is another Sakamoto movie that looks similar to Aka x Pink. It was on Netflix, but I never watched it because it had the lowest amount of stars that I had ever seen (back when Netflix was still using that metric).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3008816/

Edit: I checked the Japanese wiki and don't see any mention of Girl's Blood, and none of the English sites mention an English release. Mysterious?

Anyway, I noticed that on the Japanese site, the normal movie is R15. But there's a director's cut that's R18. I wonder which version you watched? Regular is 118 minutes, director's is 127 minutes.
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Re: No Super Hero Time November 5th

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takenoko wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 12:55 pm I thought about picking up Aka x Pink at some point. Was it released in English in Europe? I'm wondering where the title Girl's Blood comes from.

I'm surprised the movie was decent. 009-1: The end of the beginning, is another Sakamoto movie that looks similar to Aka x Pink. It was on Netflix, but I never watched it because it had the lowest amount of stars that I had ever seen (back when Netflix was still using that metric).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3008816/

Edit: I checked the Japanese wiki and don't see any mention of Girl's Blood, and none of the English sites mention an English release. Mysterious?

Anyway, I noticed that on the Japanese site, the normal movie is R15. But there's a director's cut that's R18. I wonder which version you watched? Regular is 118 minutes, director's is 127 minutes.
The version I saw was the director's cut. I actually didn't know there were two versions, but I'd estimate there's about 9 minutes of lewdness and realistic violence, so I can see how they can quickly cut that out to end up with something that passes for R15.

And no, at least as far as I know the movie was never released in Europe. The Wiki release group has 1080p and 720p encodes out there, and there are end-user created not-entirely-terrible English subs on subscene. Though I don't know where Wiki sourced the video from; probably somewhere in southeast Asia?

As for the title "Girl's Blood", that's the name of the fighting group in the movie. It's said a lot, so while it's completely different than the Japanese title, you can see how they came about picking it for an international release.

Anyhow, like I said, it's not a bad movie. I've never seen 009-1, but I've seen Travelers, which as we all know is quite terrible quite often. This actually has production values, acting, and no bad CGI; so I can safely say it isn't anywhere near Travelers' level bad. On the flip side, I will freely admit that I'm probably easily amused.:P
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Re: No Super Hero Time November 5th

Post by takenoko »

I can't let go of the name though. I know there's like a Chinese bootleg that's called Girl's Blood on the Amazon page, but the cover is just the original Japanese. It's just funny to see how this alternate name appeared to spring out of nowhere.

Hmmm. Oh interesting, looking at the IMDB, it lists it as Girl's Blood Director's Cut version, but if you look at the box:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00J88WJUY/

It's just Aka x Pink Director's Cut. However, if you look at the box, it has the Girl's Blood logo on it. I dunno, I see it showed at two film festivals internationally (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3456784/rel ... dt_dt#akas) but I'm inclined to think that people just saw an English title and called it that because people tend to be dumb?

Also bootlegs:
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Pink-Japanes ... 00XWJH5TK/

Edit:
As long as we're going down this line of movies, there's also Shiro Majo Gakuen or Innocent Lilies
http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Shiro_Majo_Gakuen
At least the English title for this was on the box cover this time
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Re: No Super Hero Time November 5th

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takenoko wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 4:37 pm I can't let go of the name though. I know there's like a Chinese bootleg that's called Girl's Blood on the Amazon page, but the cover is just the original Japanese. It's just funny to see how this alternate name appeared to spring out of nowhere.

Hmmm. Oh interesting, looking at the IMDB, it lists it as Girl's Blood Director's Cut version, but if you look at the box:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00J88WJUY/

It's just Aka x Pink Director's Cut. However, if you look at the box, it has the Girl's Blood logo on it. I dunno, I see it showed at two film festivals internationally (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3456784/rel ... dt_dt#akas) but I'm inclined to think that people just saw an English title and called it that because people tend to be dumb?

Also bootlegs:
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Pink-Japanes ... 00XWJH5TK/
I have to assume they thought Girl's Blood would play out better as the title for the international release. Beyond that, I've got no real idea. I don't recall there being a title card in the movie itself, so it has little bearing beyond the box.

And yeah, I'm not surprised there are bootlegs. Especially since it hasn't been released in the West, meaning no one is enforcing the copyright.
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Re: No Super Hero Time November 5th

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takenoko wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 4:37 pm Edit:
As long as we're going down this line of movies, there's also Shiro Majo Gakuen or Innocent Lilies
http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Shiro_Majo_Gakuen
At least the English title for this was on the box cover this time
Hmm, a Toei movie too. I had thought I had seen all of Sakamoto's Toei films outside of Kiri: Shokugyo Koroshiya.

I don't recognize the actors, but it may be worth looking into for the next hiatus.
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Re: No Super Hero Time November 5th

Post by takenoko »

Well it does have Momoninger and Yellow Buster.

Sequel's got even more actors: http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Shiro_Majo ... o_Hajimari
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