Mamoru Oshii has reached that point in his career where it feels like he's finally run out of things to say with his films, and has therefore resorted to making sci-fi nature specials. Avalon 2, AKA Assault Girls is the latest in his series. The game.. err movie addresses the short comings of the original, which leads to all new problems. Where Avalon took place mostly in the real world, with only a handful of scenes inside the game, Assault Girls takes place entirely on the Desert 22 level of the underground 'Avalon' virtual reality game, that the people of Oshii's future world use to escape their mundane daily lives. The game is very similar in structure to a real world MMO, where powerful monsters roam the land, and players use their earned points from killing them to purchase and upgrade their gear to defeat more powerful foes, all to earn more points and gain access to new areas. At the time the concept may have been innovative, but today it's just Monster Hunter* The Movie. That's about as interesting as it sounds, which is probably why the entire thing only runs for a little over one hour. Featuring a smattering of dialog, a handful of special effect scenes, and mainly composed of long still shots of an eerie landscape, the movie is essentially a National Geographic special on an alien world.
Assault Girls does look quite fantastic. The landscape is beautiful yet quite alien to behold. Made up of the black sand and ash remnants of past volcanic activity, its layout and geographical location, in the almost-tropical south of Japan, of the site lend themselves to impressive vistas of windswept, black hills of rock and sand, under a sky that can turn from blue to as gray as the ground during the course of the day, all of which Ohii and his crew capture masterfully. In a post-300 world, it's impressive to see that the alien world on film is actually part of ours, and not a green-screened sound stage. When I mentioned that Oshii is now making nature specials, I wasn't complaining at all, he's quite skilled at it. To counter balance this seemingly lifeless world, Oshii usually likes to include little touches of wildlife to the visual story. Whether it be flocks of birds, livestock or insects. The image animal for Assault Girls is a snail. It actually plays a more central role than most previous animal characters from past Oshii works. Found on a rock after a battle, it is moved to safety by one of the characters where it is killed by another for a bit of comic relief. The characters themselves are very interesting visually. Three of the four human characters are women, which always helps keep a guy's interest, especially when they're young, attractive, dolled up in leather and carry big guns. They all give off a very Samus Aran of Metroid fame, vibe, or Kelly from GunValkyrie if you need a more obscure reference. Two share this design, while the third is more mystical and ethereal in her presence, sporting a derby hat, a black leather and lace get up and having the ability to grow black wings and fully transform into a raven. To establish her aloofness, she first appears dancing upon her arrival in the stage in a scene that is meticulously captured by Oshii's lens. They're all essentially super model super heroines, like most player avatars found in video games. There's a dude in there as well, and he's essentially a bum, wearing rags and a dirty baseball cap, for a bit of contrast. The character designs may be pretty clichéd from a game point of view, but seeing them on a movie screen instead of a game screen provides just enough wow factor to make them interesting. Additionally, the enemies are giant sand worms that live under the surface of Desert 22. Nothing we haven't seen before in Final Fantasy/Panzer Dragoon/Lost Planet 2.* The landscape may be real, but Japan hasn't bred actual giant sand worms yet, so those guys need to be CG. Since the only point of interaction they and the characters have is the exchange of gunfire, it works pretty well, and all the CG special effects look quite convincing. A far cry from the sepia toned game world scenes from Avalon. The game must have received a pretty big patch in the nine years since.
While visually the movie is a spectacle, the story telling side falls quite flat, unfortunately. Discounting the one character who is totally mute (the Raven-girl, Lucifer, played by Rinko Kikuchi), and the Game Master AI which isn't there to forward the story, Assault Girls only has three characters with dialog. Maybe it's for the better, since the language the writer decided to use was English, despite the cast being entirely Japanese actors. Similarly, Avalon also utilized a foreign language, Polish, but it also used native Polish actors, this being the critical difference. The state of English proficiency in Japan is pretty sad, despite years of schooling, and a plethora of secondary language schools and proficiency tests, and this movie demonstrates those shortcomings painfully clearly. This Japanese release features Japanese subtitles for the English dialog, but I wish it had an English track as well, since it's impossible to understand what the actors are trying to say during some scenes where fast delivery or high tone is needed, such as shouting commands on a battlefield. The radio static effect on the voice doesn't help any. The limited edition I picked up includes the script as one of the extras, which is a big help. I encourage reading along with the action. I'm very curious what the Western versions will opt for, subtitles or a complete overdub? It could be very easy, since the characters are wearing masks half the time, so the audience can't see their mouth movements to begin with. In a bit of a cop out, for the one critical scene where lines needed to be delivered dramatically, and with feeling, the cast switched to Japanese, against the wishes of the Game Master AI, citing a prohibition on "local language." Needless to say, he conceded to the request, just this once, for the sanity of the cast, crew, and the audience. This part does not feature subtitles, making this movie 80% English audio on the technical details checklist. The scene in question was actually the only real story point, making it the conflict, climax, and resolution in one shot. In the meta story of the world where 'Avalon' exists, the game is seen as a detriment to society and has been outlawed. The only way to play is by visiting illegal, underground locales. This makes group play dangerous, as the party makes for a larger target than the individual, and in fact the outlawed game access locales are called "parties." The characters find themselves in an area of the game that is extremely difficult to complete solo, and are actually encouraged to form a party to defeat the boss. I'm not much of a MMORPG player, so maybe this doesn't strike me as high drama. I wonder if Oshii was making a statement about the psyche of gamers, or if this was just an excuse for dressing up girls in leather and filming them shooting guns in a desert. Once a director gets to a certain age, it becomes necessary to examine his decisions within such a context, sadly. And Oshii is not a young guy anymore.
At the end of the day, the movie is all style and very little substance, as per cliché. The landscape shots, the montages, the music, and visual presentation are all beautiful, but there is only the thinnest of plots underneath all that. I find myself wondering if this was a shortcoming of the creators, or was the message so lofty that it sailed over my head? Was I supposed to draw my own meaning from the sunsets and closeups of the characters starring off into the endless desert while wind tossed their hair and clothes? Were they actually searching for a meaning to their empty lives they left behind and came to 'Avalon' to escape instead of giant sand worms? Or maybe I was supposed to simply apply whatever meaning I wanted to the scenes? No point other than what I wanted it to be? To make up my own damn mind? Was Assault Girls an interactive exercise, where the viewer/player actually made the story himself, instead of being spoon fed what the writer wanted him to feel? Was this a heady form of the art of story telling, or was it not art at all? Perhaps I should ask the advice of an expert.
OK, time for a technical review. What you see in the picture is the Collector's Edition Blu-ray package. The movie is also available on DVD, but I'll be damned if I buy a DVD ever again. Being the latest high tech, it commands a premium price, even on top of the limited edition price gouging. As I mentioned before, the movie itself is quite short, making the dollar-per-minute ratio pretty imbalanced. After the credits rolled, I actually started to feel a little ripped off. All totalled, including the trailers and features on the main disc, the running time was under 1 hour, 30 minutes. I decided to pop the second disc in, to at least watch the making-of documentary. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, the making-of feature (which comes on a DVD, grrr) is longer than the main feature. It is very comprehensive, covering everything from pre-production planning, to location shooting, to special effect shots and audio post production. Curiously it was shot very similarly to the main feature, which makes me think that whoever was handling the camera had learned from the master well. I first learned of this movie from the Assault Girl 2 short included on the Kill omnibus collection. After a bit of research (but after making my initial post) I learned that there was in fact an Assault Girl 1, and it was sadly available on another compilation, which I had no interest in buying. Something to do with the stories of women. Booo~ring. I was extremely happy to find out that both, Assault Girl 1 + 2 shorts are included on the second disc of the Collector's Edition. Assault Girl 1 was actually almost a direct prequel to the main Assault Girls feature, and it looked like it showed the arrival of The Colonel (Hinako Saeki), one of the principal characters from the main story, in the world of Desert 22. Sort of important, I would think. It was disappointing to find out, however, that all the special effects for the mecha, Temjin, and space ship were created for this short, and then reused wholesale in the main movie. It did also have something that was completely omitted, which I'm quite thankful for. That sort of irony I don't need in my sci-fi, thank you. After the let down of the main movie, I feel that the whole package is definitely worth it thanks to the inclusion of the two shorts, making the Collectors Edition an Assault Girl box set.
*Lost Planet 2 would in fact be a more appropriate thematic reference instead of Monster Hunter, but Monster Hunter is more technically similar. Think "Monster Hunter with guns."
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