Onechanbara, a movie adaptation of the popular Japanese game published by D3. This is a pretty short movie running approximately 80 minutes. The plot is simple, it's about a girl, in a bikini, with a cowboy hat, killing zombies with a katana as she is looking to for revenge against her sister Saki. And right there, the plot already differs from the actual game. I'll have to admit, I have not played any of the Onechanbara games yet, but I do want to and plan to when it arrives in the US. But I have tried to keep up with the series as much as I could. And Saki in the movie, is the antagonist instead of being by Aya's side, kicking zombie asses with Aya. With the movie being so short, plot development goes by quick. They'll show short flashblacks that will give you the gist of everything right there. Not that there is much plot to develop, it does a decent job at it. But it does jump into the action pretty fast, which is great because this movie's plot isn't exactly its strongest point.
The action scenes were choreographed very well, especially for a low budget movie. And when I think of low budget video game movies, I think of Uwe Boll and his atrocious movie called BloodRayne. The action scenes in Onechanbara far surpass the lackluster fighting in BloodRayne, where everyone looked like they were just winging their moves as they go along. Eri Otoguro (Aya), looked like she knew exactly what she was doing in those action scenes. The CGI in the film were well done on a low budget. They also did a great job in having many of Aya's signature moves in the movie, including my personal favorite where she charges up and does a powerful spinning slash.
The casting for the movie was done pretty well, Eri Otoguro, who plays Aya, looks similar to her video game counter part. Very similar if you think about all the other video game movies that were made and how well their actors looked like the actual characters. The two girls who played Reiko (Manami Hashimoto) and Saki (Chise Nakamura, she's not under-aged, phew), although did not look similar to their video game counter parts, at least looked hot. The bikini that Aya wears, looks just like the video game version, which is great. However, I was disappointed that she mainly wore a poncho throughout the movie, covering up her goodies. Her tattoo looked like it was a rub on, which kind of annoyed me a bit while watching the movie. But anyways, Saki's school girl outfit and Reiko's tight leather biker gear looked great and was pretty similar to their video game counter parts.
Overall, it's a mildly enjoyable movie and I can guarantee you won't feel like you wasted your time as if you were watching a Uwe Boll movie. On one last note, this movie proves that any movie that deals with powering up energy, should be made in Japan onry prz, I'M LOOKING AT YOU DRAGONBALL Z LIVE ACTION MOVIE.
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