Kekkô Kamen (2004)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Takafumi Nagamine

Writers:

Gô Nagai (manga)
Yûki Okano (screenplay)

Plot:

A school that teaches young boys and girls how to become famous anchorpeople in the media. But there is something strange going in this school...

Plot Keywords:

School | Laxative | Based On Comic | Crush | Woman With Gun

Cast

Moa Arimoto
Nao Eguchi
Juri Inahara	...	Mayumi Takahashi
Kenjiro Ishimaru		(as Kenjirô Ishimaru)
Keiko Kubo
Gô Nagai		(as Gô Nagai)
Hiromi Nagayama
Shino Saitô	...	Keiko Natsuwata and Kekkô Kamen
Hideo Sako
Fang Suzuki		(as Suzuki Fangu)
Hiromitsu Suzuki
Ren Suzuki
Satoshi Wada
Nao Yuasa

Runtime:

Japan:70 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

Japan

Company:

Art Port

Movie Connections:

Followed by Kekkô Kamen: Surprise (2004)

Campy fun - naked heroine - could you ask for more?

I'll admit I picked this one up as a guilty pleasure – it's dumb and campy and cheap and every 13-year-old's wet dream but it's still a fair amount of fun. Kekko Kamen is a female super-heroine who rescues the abused girls of a draconian news announcer's finishing school. Thing is: she is completely naked except for a bright red, floppy-eared hood she covers her head with – which has a long cape-like sash that also tends to obligatorily obscure her region-of-hidden-delights. It's a comic book comedy for nerds (it is based on Japanese manga) whose heroine's attire may be the film's primary attraction – but even in its intentional inanity (at one point, a character convinces another to do something because "it is the right thing to do, and because it advances the plot…"), the story remains a lot of fun – like an old fashioned Republic serial, with Asians, and a cool pop theme song, and in color, and with no clothes. The film's low budget is also very noticeable, but the film's charming innocence (even in the fashion of a mostly naked protagonist) works in spite of that.