Yatterman

Bonzai Media Corp

Eastern Eye / Madman

R4

Yatterman is an eccentric fantasy film from Japanese film legend Takashi Miike, it is based on the Anime series from Tatsuo Yoshida but is presented as a live action rather than Anime film. It is a truly bizarre experience which crosses all sorts of genre boundaries. The question which came to mind as I watched it was what sort of audience is this aimed at ? On one level it is a kid’s film, but much like The Great Yokai War by Miike, he has placed enough adult elements to make it a great watch for adults as well. Doronjo, the evil femme fatale looks like a bondage queen, her offsider Boyacky dreams of having all the schoolgirls in Japan piled into one mountain and one of their “Mecha” weapons is a gigantic robotic woman who shoots war heads out of her breasts while screaming “I’m coming” and is only destroying when Mecha ants bite her nipples off; not the sort of thing you would see in more staid Australian or United States children’s films.

The original anime series Yatterman ran from 1977 to 1979. The series had some one hundred eight episodes and was one of Japan’s most popular series. In 2008, thirty years after the original, the series was revived and in 2009 Takashi Miike made this feature to celebrate the film. Miike, however, is known for his dark, if not perverse, sense of humour and hence Miike takes the Yatterman series and subverts it including all sorts of strange subplots, adult imagery and a truly wicked sense of humour.

It is quite a visually overpowering film with astounding special effects, a superfast paced storyline and very quirky and unusual cinematography. There are factoids explaining various scenes in the films, giant robots (Mechas), an Indiana Jones like story, superheroes and lots of lots of strangeness.

Gan, the son of the owner of Takada Toy Shop, and his girlfriend, Ai are inseparable and form the nexus of the Yatterman superhero team. Together they have created a huge Mecha, Yatterwoof, a dog-shaped robot and a range of smaller robots with which they battle evil. Their adversary is Doronjo, the leatherclad femme fatale who leads the Doronbow gang with robot maker Boyacky and henchman Tonzra.

The gangs are brought together in conflict when Skullobey tricks the Doronjo team into searching for the four pieces of the Skull Stone, which when combined become a mystic device to control time. Yatterman are joined by the daughter of an archaeologist who has been seeking to protect the stone pieces.

As battle mounts against battle, the Mechas get bigger, the stakes get larger and the total insanity of the Yatterman film becomes a truly unique cinematic experience.

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