Japan!

It is a fact that is known by anyone who knows Japan that there is no country that is weirder than Japan! To discuss and rate just how a given country is, you have to bring up Japan as the top standard! I have seen so many weird things from Japan that it boggles my mind how at the same time it is so reserved.

Be it pron, movies, anime, drama and even in real life, there is crazy stuff in every medium! But the craziest will always be in movies! This has been going on for a long time. You only have to look at those older anime (Fist of the North Star, Akira, and Mega Police in anime, the Tomie series in movies, etc). Japan has been releasing crazy stuff for ages.

And this applies to yuri too. There are old movies that have yuri and though not the main points, they still happened and they were real yuri scenes. I might blog about two examples sometime. Remember the short drama I blogged about a while ago that aired in 1992? Have we seen a drama since then that is bold enough to tackle yuri like that? Nope!

And this is the issue – Instead of getting less tight about things, Japan is instead getting tighter! The anime these days is all for primary schoolers. Yuri movies and shows are so scarce and even when we get one, it is always so tamed. It’s like the directors seems afraid to take the story where it should go! We always get half-assed jobs these days! It’s frankly, maddening!

It’s as if Japan is taking the opposite direction compared to the rest of the world when it comes to moral issues! I wouldn’t be surprised if they are heading in the 20^th Century Boys future!

But!

That being said, there always comes a Director or a project that reminds you of that spirit of Japan that got you into the culture in the first place! This mini-series titled ‘Real Onigokko Rising’ – a three episode cinematic series is such project!

‘Real Onigokko’ is a very famous series in Japan. It is kind of like the baby sister to ‘Battle Royale’ but instead of kids killing each other, they are instead killed by someone, usually some government people. ‘Real Onigokko’ usually takes place in a school where a class, or a certain blood type, or some crazy way the government comes up with to reduce population, are decimated, in the most horrific way!

There are five movies that I know of. I have watched four of those and I only kept one of them, the fourth one! Why? Well, not only does it have lovely Miki Honoka in it but she is a major character who actually survives! Best of all, the other survivor is a girl a year ahead of her and the two have these cutes moments through out the movie that just screamed for me to ship them!

This time, this next project in the franchise (Rising) takes a bit of diversion from the usual formula. I have only gotten a chance to watch the first two episodes (of three in total) and both of them have been very different from the Onigokko I know.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that there is a new Real Onigokko movie coming out and it is kind of relevant actually. First of all it has Mariko-sama in it and not only her but Mano Erina as well. There is another girl to close off the tri-leads but most of you don’t know her, yet! This movie is the usual Onigokko from the trailer I have seen.

These three episodes, that might actually be movies, short ones like Yuko’s ‘Teke Teke’, thought even shorter at around the 40min runtime on average, are very different from the Real Onigokko we all know. As I have said – I have watched the first two episodes so why am I skipping the first one seeing as this is about episode 2? Well, that is because the first one is irrelevant. There is no yuri and interestingly, it is the one closest to the Real Onigokko.

It is close but not the same. The main change being that the students were elementary this time around. Actually the second episode also had elementary cast. Anyway the first episode did a reversal in that instead of the kids being hunted, this time they did the hunting game! There was a murderer on the loose that killed one of their classmates and three boys once ran into him while they were playing in school during none-school day!

They twisted the story around and given the cast, it was of course pretty safe! Sure when you think of it deeply, the thought of those young children beating the crap out of the man with all kinds of weapons is really terrifying! But the episode did not give us any gory details. All of that was between the lines and thus only the already broken people would see the seeds planted within.

The first episode was also the shortest, pulling in at around the half an hour mark.

Interestingly, the second episode, my favorite out of the three, and the one that brought back the crazy I have been missing was also the longest out of the three! It was about 50mins long! Almost made it into movie time territory and the crazy thing is that the whole movie happened in a secluded location with only two characters for the most part (three at max). These characters were not even junior high students yet!!!

I have seen a ton of crazy stuff before from Japan but I found myself shocked once again with this second episode of Real Onigokko Rising! Looking at the cast I never had any thought that the story would progress as it did! I promise you now that if you have a sicker mind than mine (which I doubt because I am very proud of this sicko brain of mine!) you will find this story that much more disturbing! I wonder if I can speak real thoughts about this experience. Oh well, jump right ahead and let’s find out…

But before that, I wish to thank another great Reader pho for the shout out about this series. I would so have not seen it if you did not mention it to me. I no longer am able to use AsiaTorrents and we all know what happened to D-Addicts tracker. Basically I can no longer get to Asian Drama series as easily as I used to. So, thank you very much for this pho!

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