Sukeban Deka the Movie 2: Counter-Attack of the Kazama Sisters (1988)

Starring: Asaka Yui, Onishi Yuka, Nakamura Yuma, Kyomoto Masaki, Fujishiro Minako, Nagato Hiroyuki and Toyohara Kosuke. Director: Tanaka Hideo. Writer: Hashimoto Izo. Manga Series: Wada Shinji.

Left to Right: Yuka, Yui, and Yuma

The kooky yet unsuspectingly politically savvy Sukeban Deka live-action series sadly concludes too early with Counter-Attack of the Kazama Sisters. Unlike the previous entry, we don't get a squad of Yo-Yo cops but instead the trio of presumably orphaned Kazama sisters. Each has their own special weapon but it's primarily focused on Yui. She has the Yo-Yo, so you know she's boss. The film largely follows the same patterns as the first even down to fighting a Fascist sect within the government with steel Yo-Yos and a man dies with secret data that sparks the plot and the male lead filling in the traditional uneasy female lead role. Calling this a sequel is not necessarily accurate. It's not quite Yojimbo/Sanjuro territory but it's not conventional either. None of the central characters from the first return except Yui and Director Kuriyama.

Since the events of taking down Hell Castle, Kazama Yui had been moved to the Juvenile Student Police (JSP). She's still a Sukeban Deka but now she's enforcing the law with other teen cops. Everyone else carries a Yo-Yo with blades attached. They're clad in black fully covered school uniforms with red armbands. It doesn't look suspicious or evocative of Nazi Germany at all, nope, not at all. Regardless, they bust up a rock concert that Ned Flanders would feel very comfortable attending. Some very small time dealers from the Outcast League (it's exactly what you think it is) get caught. The JSP burst in. Yui stops her squad from purging the dealers. They are children. She leaves the JSP.

Her old boss Kuriyama, the current dark Director, knows something is up. He sends Agent Yoda to steal data from the JSP but is caught. Luckily, he survives long enough to give the bright blue floppy to Yuka and Yuma. They need help. They need Yui, who returns to Tokyo but things are not what they seem. Juvenile Student Police's director, college undergrad Sekine, wants his unit to crack down with absolute force and spread fear. He's merely a tool for the nation's Attorney General, whose plan is to commit terrorist attacks, use a scapegoat, and...takeover the government? Maybe? JSP's Tohka (and Yui's opposite and rival) is set up to replace Sekine. Kuriyama and Yuma get caught by the JSP. Yui gains the trust of the Outcast League and fight back. They win. Also Yui takes down a plane with a Yo-Yo.

So it's nearly the same plot in broad strokes minus a few major differences. The key one is the scope. In the first, there is never a clear sense of how far reaching the events affect society. It's completely focused on getting the gang back together for one last job as opposed to displaying the world around the characters. The JSP goes around rounding up and purging delinquent youth. This forces the surviving youth to revolt and form the Outcast League. They need to sell drugs and commit crime to survive everyday. The message and historical references are clear. It's not as subtle or clever as the first.

 
Counter-Attack is on the surface about family. The Kazama sisters only each other and no one else. Yui wasn't just fighting fascist factions for the safety of fellow students but because Yuma was held hostage. There's a valid attempt to create a sense of familiarity between the Kazama sisters but it doesn't work. Yui and Tohka are the only characters that seem like real characters. There was an attempt at a love interest but that also didn't work. In general, it's just shallow. Asaka Yui (Yui) and Fujishiro Minako (Tohka) bulked up a bit after carrying this film on their own. Even Sekine was lackluster, his only defining feature is the amount of makeup he wears. It's Peter (Funeral Parade of Roses, if you haven't seen it, correct that) lite makeup but still very noticeable.

Again, the violence against children is distressing. Seeing a teen get shot up from a helicopter is one thing, seeing a riot truck run over several children takes it to a new level of uncomfortable and Tohka get blinded by firecrackers to the eyes, are a lot to handle. For me, this is a mixed bag. I like the level of inappropriate violence but if the characters weren't children, it'd be easier to shallow (I know that's a weird dichotomy to have). All this uncomfortable violence then gets juxtaposed against anime antics like a steel Yo-Yo destroying a Fucking Airplane in a single hit (then crashing a little too close to Yui or her super-jumping out of water onto a boat or the Kazama sisters getting hooks thrown around their necks without drawing blood and then getting pulled out of the 4th or 5th story of a building into a harbor. Tanaka is not great with mixing tones and wants it both ways, which comes off as awkward but oddly charming. There is a real sense of danger but that's erased by sudden insanity and then switches back to dire dread.

Tohka riding atop the riot vehicle.

This like other Sukeban/Girl Boss films are inspired by the student protests in the 1960s (and going back further the 1930s - which inspired the Kurosawa film, No Regrets For Our Youth). That can feel vaguely tacked in lesser series and scripts, here things are different. The "troubled" youth unite against a tyrannical government and win. In a sense, you could call this propaganda for the opposition parties against the Liberal Democratic Party (the Japanese equivalent to the Republican in the USA). Using fire with fire isn't a new tactic. Naturally, militarizing students to enforce bullshit fascist laws against other students would be the easiest way to quell the rebelling youth. Since still, Japan was largely a conservative country for several decades. Using the scapegoat as the source of social change and power turns what could have been a by-the-numbers sequel into expanding the political angle of the first while at the same time repeating the general beats as before.

Sekine crashes his escape plane after a gnarly Yo-Yo attack destroys the engine.

 Sukeban Deka the Movie 2: Counter-Attack of the Kazama Sisters carries on everything that makes that made the original film so good but not quite to the same level.