(Picture is temporary)It’s no secret that most Japanese movie directors get their start by making porn. Most major studios have a softcore porn division where they put all their new talent to get their feet wet. Both actors and directors have gone on to everything ranging from respectability to world renown. The world’s current he-used-to-make-porn-and-now-he’s-legit maverick darling is Takashi Miike. Unless your family name is Kurosawa, no one will give you $500,000 to make that script you’ve been writing for the past 10 years into a picture. Everyone has to start somewhere.
The point I’m making is that Yo-yo Sexy Girl Cop (“Sukepan Deka”) is a better Sukeban Deka movie than the Kenta Fukusaku’s Yo-yo Girl Cop. Shot like a porno, on a porn budget, using porn talent, it tells a more compelling story than the big budget feature it parodies. The title is a play on words that turns the “delinquent girl” (sukeban) into “see-through panties” (sukepan), and was likely conceived to be as juvenile in nature as the pun it’s based off of. Problem was, someone forgot to tell Daigo Udagawa, who took the creative freedom offered by the low expectations of the genre to write complicated characters into candid story that probably hews closer to the original manga than the theatrical fluff which took after the TV series. Whether the players were in on the joke, they managed to convey their parts convincingly, and deserve the some of the credit. Much like Masami Obari’s work with the Angle Blade series, the porn is actually completely unnecessary and the entire project would in fact benefit more from its removal, if only by garnering more respect than “just another one of those pornos.”
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some sort of masterpiece of film making here. I’m simply pointing out the irony of a porn parody turning out to be better written than its source. I haven’t seen that since Lord Of The G-Strings.
