GeneChing
09-16-2013, 09:47 AM
Not quite a martial arts flick exactly....well, maybe...I dunno. One of us should see this and find out if there's martial arts in it.
HK: Forbidden Super Hero ＨＫ 変態仮面 (http://www.filmbiz.asia/reviews/hk-forbidden-super-hero)
Japan
Contemporary fantasy action comedy
2013, colour, 16:9, 105 mins
Directed by Fukuda Yuichi (福田雄一)
By Derek Elley
Wed, 11 September 2013, 16:35 PM (HKT)
http://www.filmbiz.asia/media/BAhbB1sHOgZmSSI4MjAxMy8wOS8xMC8yMy8zMS8xNC80OTgvaG tfZm9yYmlkZGVuX3N1cGVyX2hlcm8uanBnBjoGRVRbCDoGcDoK dGh1bWJJIg01MDB4MTAwMAY7BlQ?suffix=.jpg&sha=887c6e53
Panty-masked super-hero spoof is good clean fun but could have been wilder. Asian and genre events.
Story
Tokyo, the present day. Shikijo Kyosuke (Suzuki Ryohei), a student at Koyu High School, is the son of a professional dominatrix, Maki (Katase Nana), and the late Hario (Ikeda Narushi), a senior detective with the Metropolitan Police Department's Criminal Investigation Department who was once one of her clients at the Sin Club. Bullied at home by his mother, but with a strong sense of justice inherited from his father, Kyosuke has joined the school's martial arts club to increase his self-confidence. He immediately falls for the cute Himeno Aiko (Shimizu Fumika), a transfer student from Kobe, who is made manager of the club. Later that day, he finds Aiko is among those being held hostage at a loan company by a group of young robbers, and sneaks into the building to secretly rescue her. The only disguise he can find in the company's locker room is women's underwear; as a mask, he uses a pair of panties which, as soon as he puts them on, awakens his mother's DNA in him and transforms him into an "ecstatic" super-hero known as Hentai Kamen (変態仮面, "Pervert Mask"). He rescues the hostages and Aiko, though conflicted by the fact that he's a pervert, falls for the super-hero, not realising he's actually Kyosuke. Hentai Kamen becomes a popular hero, though he soon discovers the transformation only works with used, not new, panties. Meanwhile, the next-door karate club, led by Ogane Tamao (Muro Tsuyoshi), tries to take over the school to get some money that is said to be buried underneath it. Defeated by Hentai Kamen, they send in other masked heroes, including Very Serious Mask (Sato Jiro), Cool Guy Mask (Daito Shunsuke) and Skinny Macho Mask (Omizu Yosuke), all defeated by Hentai Kamen. Suspecting that Hentai Kamen's powers may be linked to Aiko's crush on him, Tamao recruits a true pervert, Towatari (Yasuda Ken), to join the school as a replacement maths teacher, seduce Aiko, and ruin Hentai Kamen's reputation by dressing up as him and running around flipping girls' skirts up.
Review
Gleefully spoofing the whole super-hero genre (especially Spider-Man), as well as extreme cinema in general and the Japanese obsession with young women's panties in particular, HK: Forbidden Super Hero ＨＫ 変態仮面 is by turns amusing, out-there and just plain silly. Based on the six-volume manga Ultimate!! Pervert Mask (究極！！ 変態仮面, 1992-93) by ANDO Keishu あんど慶周, the loony central idea is that a shy high-schooler, the offspring of a masochistic cop and professional dominatrix, finds he's transformed into an "ecstatic" super-hero ("Pervert Man") when masking up with female knickers that awaken his mother's naughty DNA.
Around this single idea, writer-director FUKUDA Yuichi 福田雄一 — with credited script help from actor OGURI Shun 小栗旬, Crows: Episode 0 クローズ ＺＥＲＯ (2007), Peak: The Rescuers 岳 (2010), and director of likeable youth drama Surely Someday シュアリー・サムデイ (2010) — spends less time on plot and more on internal conflict, with the hero anguishing in monologues over whether he's a pervert or not and the pretty classmate wondering whether she's a pervert for falling for a buff, half-naked super-hero in stockings and panty-mask. Despite a very funny opening which promises lashings of crazed, extreme cinema, the movie, despite copious close-ups of our hero's Golden Power Bomb codpiece, is visually as clean as a whistle — and even comically cute in a uniquely Japanese way — despite whole scenes that delve into the effect of wearing said underwear in various ways and various states of newness.
Though the film could have done with considerably more plot and some sharper dialogue (lines like "In the 21st century, perversion is justice" are thin on the ground), it's never boring, keeps moving and, apart from a very silly section in which the hero battles other equally weird types, stays a notch or two above kids' fare. An experienced director could have made much more of the material, and probed its darker side to more comic effect; as it is, film/TV's Fukuda, who's had two other movies released so far this year (the wacky Kids Police コドモ警視 and manga-derived comedy I'll Give It My All... Tomorrow 俺はまだ本気出してないだけ, both also produced by L'espace Vision), delivers a solid, conservatively directed package, with budget visual effects and so-so action.
The performances are the film's main motor. As the teenage super-hero with a mixed-up line in masculine and feminine sides, SUZUKI Ryohei 鈴木亮平 (the drummer in Surely Someday) is believable despite being twice his character's age, while SHIMIZU Fumika 清水富美加, 20, from the Kamen Rider 仮面ライダ movie series, plays the high-school cutie with an impressively straight face. But it's 31-year-old actress-singer KATASE Nana 片瀬那奈 (The Serialist 二流小説家 シリアリスト), in a brief but wild performance as the boy's dominatrix mum, who provides a tantalising glimpse of how bat-**** crazy HK really could have been.
HK: Forbidden Super Hero ＨＫ 変態仮面 (http://www.filmbiz.asia/reviews/hk-forbidden-super-hero)
Japan
Contemporary fantasy action comedy
2013, colour, 16:9, 105 mins
Directed by Fukuda Yuichi (福田雄一)
By Derek Elley
Wed, 11 September 2013, 16:35 PM (HKT)
http://www.filmbiz.asia/media/BAhbB1sHOgZmSSI4MjAxMy8wOS8xMC8yMy8zMS8xNC80OTgvaG tfZm9yYmlkZGVuX3N1cGVyX2hlcm8uanBnBjoGRVRbCDoGcDoK dGh1bWJJIg01MDB4MTAwMAY7BlQ?suffix=.jpg&sha=887c6e53
Panty-masked super-hero spoof is good clean fun but could have been wilder. Asian and genre events.
Story
Tokyo, the present day. Shikijo Kyosuke (Suzuki Ryohei), a student at Koyu High School, is the son of a professional dominatrix, Maki (Katase Nana), and the late Hario (Ikeda Narushi), a senior detective with the Metropolitan Police Department's Criminal Investigation Department who was once one of her clients at the Sin Club. Bullied at home by his mother, but with a strong sense of justice inherited from his father, Kyosuke has joined the school's martial arts club to increase his self-confidence. He immediately falls for the cute Himeno Aiko (Shimizu Fumika), a transfer student from Kobe, who is made manager of the club. Later that day, he finds Aiko is among those being held hostage at a loan company by a group of young robbers, and sneaks into the building to secretly rescue her. The only disguise he can find in the company's locker room is women's underwear; as a mask, he uses a pair of panties which, as soon as he puts them on, awakens his mother's DNA in him and transforms him into an "ecstatic" super-hero known as Hentai Kamen (変態仮面, "Pervert Mask"). He rescues the hostages and Aiko, though conflicted by the fact that he's a pervert, falls for the super-hero, not realising he's actually Kyosuke. Hentai Kamen becomes a popular hero, though he soon discovers the transformation only works with used, not new, panties. Meanwhile, the next-door karate club, led by Ogane Tamao (Muro Tsuyoshi), tries to take over the school to get some money that is said to be buried underneath it. Defeated by Hentai Kamen, they send in other masked heroes, including Very Serious Mask (Sato Jiro), Cool Guy Mask (Daito Shunsuke) and Skinny Macho Mask (Omizu Yosuke), all defeated by Hentai Kamen. Suspecting that Hentai Kamen's powers may be linked to Aiko's crush on him, Tamao recruits a true pervert, Towatari (Yasuda Ken), to join the school as a replacement maths teacher, seduce Aiko, and ruin Hentai Kamen's reputation by dressing up as him and running around flipping girls' skirts up.
Review
Gleefully spoofing the whole super-hero genre (especially Spider-Man), as well as extreme cinema in general and the Japanese obsession with young women's panties in particular, HK: Forbidden Super Hero ＨＫ 変態仮面 is by turns amusing, out-there and just plain silly. Based on the six-volume manga Ultimate!! Pervert Mask (究極！！ 変態仮面, 1992-93) by ANDO Keishu あんど慶周, the loony central idea is that a shy high-schooler, the offspring of a masochistic cop and professional dominatrix, finds he's transformed into an "ecstatic" super-hero ("Pervert Man") when masking up with female knickers that awaken his mother's naughty DNA.
Around this single idea, writer-director FUKUDA Yuichi 福田雄一 — with credited script help from actor OGURI Shun 小栗旬, Crows: Episode 0 クローズ ＺＥＲＯ (2007), Peak: The Rescuers 岳 (2010), and director of likeable youth drama Surely Someday シュアリー・サムデイ (2010) — spends less time on plot and more on internal conflict, with the hero anguishing in monologues over whether he's a pervert or not and the pretty classmate wondering whether she's a pervert for falling for a buff, half-naked super-hero in stockings and panty-mask. Despite a very funny opening which promises lashings of crazed, extreme cinema, the movie, despite copious close-ups of our hero's Golden Power Bomb codpiece, is visually as clean as a whistle — and even comically cute in a uniquely Japanese way — despite whole scenes that delve into the effect of wearing said underwear in various ways and various states of newness.
Though the film could have done with considerably more plot and some sharper dialogue (lines like "In the 21st century, perversion is justice" are thin on the ground), it's never boring, keeps moving and, apart from a very silly section in which the hero battles other equally weird types, stays a notch or two above kids' fare. An experienced director could have made much more of the material, and probed its darker side to more comic effect; as it is, film/TV's Fukuda, who's had two other movies released so far this year (the wacky Kids Police コドモ警視 and manga-derived comedy I'll Give It My All... Tomorrow 俺はまだ本気出してないだけ, both also produced by L'espace Vision), delivers a solid, conservatively directed package, with budget visual effects and so-so action.
The performances are the film's main motor. As the teenage super-hero with a mixed-up line in masculine and feminine sides, SUZUKI Ryohei 鈴木亮平 (the drummer in Surely Someday) is believable despite being twice his character's age, while SHIMIZU Fumika 清水富美加, 20, from the Kamen Rider 仮面ライダ movie series, plays the high-school cutie with an impressively straight face. But it's 31-year-old actress-singer KATASE Nana 片瀬那奈 (The Serialist 二流小説家 シリアリスト), in a brief but wild performance as the boy's dominatrix mum, who provides a tantalising glimpse of how bat-**** crazy HK really could have been.