Sukeban Deka 1 & 2
I - 1987
High school girls wielding deadly yo-yo's!
What more do you need to know. Sukeban Deka was practically a franchise in
Japan from the mid 1970's through the 1980's. First as a manga, then as a
TV series for three years and then two or three or four films (it is confusing).
There was also a rather fun 2006 film titled Yo-Yo girl. The Sukeban Deka
story is about high school girls who work for a government security agency
and are trained and armed with these yo-yos that can be killing machines
or bring down helicopters. In the TV series the Sukeban Deka girl changed
from year to year though there is some continuity and this film was produced
the same year in which the TV series ended.
Yui Asaka who had been in one year of the
TV series plays Saki, a former Sukeban Deka agent who has retired to focus
on studies and teddy bears. She gets entangled in a situation and has to
return to the way of the Yo-Yo to stop a madman from overthrowing the government.
So she gathers a few other retired agents and they invade a fortress with
a plethora of brainwashed killers. Ok - so this is all pretty silly and I
expect the target audience was teenage girls - but it is so unique to Japan
culture that I could not pass it up.
II - 1988
In the second film of this franchise that
includes manga and a TV series, the focus shifts to one of the girls who
helped Saki in the previous film. This is Yui Kazama played by Yui Asaka
who also is in the third film. Like the first this is all rather foolish
fun with girls with yoyos battling one another and tanks and such. Yui has
been assigned to the Juvenile Law Enforcement Division whose task is to bring
down crime by delinquents. The group has a few members of the Sukeban Deka
all deadly with their yoyos. Too deadly as far as Yui is concerned as they
don't hesitate to kill anyone bending the law a bit.
So she hands in her yoyo and heads for
the hills but comes back to settle scores when a friend of hers is killed
by this clearly fascist group. They have plans to take power - all 40 of
them - and it falls to Yui and her yoyo to stop them. Have Yoyo Will Travel.
Though I find these films just goofy fun, they take themselves deadly seriously
with a lot of melodrama thrown in. And a pop song or two of course. And girls
in high school uniforms. And bad guys with evil laughs.
