Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #148: RoboGeisha (2009).

Yoshie Kosuga (Aya Kiguchi) is the younger sister and servant of geisha-in-training Kikuyakku (Hitomi Hasabe). The girls were orphaned as children, and despite once being close they are now bitter enemies. The clumsy Yoshie ruins Kikuyakku's performance for local steel magnate Hikaru Kageno (Takumi Saito), but after demonstrating her surprising physical strength during an altercation with Kikuyakku, Kageno, already taken with Yoshie's beauty, is greatly impressed and invites them over to his house. There, after a group of goblin women capture them and their sisterly competitiveness increases further, they both agree to partake in an experiment of Kageno's: to become assassins. But not exactly the regular kind, because Kageno's methods incorporate robotics. Now, they're set to become cyborgs in his army of geishas! The army is tasked with overthrowing the corrupt Japanese government, but once Yoshie discovers their true mission she objects to that and must stake her own path of crime-fighting: as RoboGeisha!

Obviously this slice of Japanese cinematic action is not one of prestige like Kurosawa's works, but in no way is it meant to be. Writer-director Noboru Iguchi (Dead Sushi) clearly loves intentionally ridiculous, far-fetched and anachronistic narratives and here, he couldn't possibly have planted his tongue so firmly in one cheek but its shamelessness is just glorious. With ninja girls squirting acid from their breasts, the good old frying-prawn-in-the-eye trick, a geisha robot morphing into a half-human, half-tank and a walking robot Mount Fuji among other things, Iguchi consciously crams it to the gills with hilarious and deliberate nonsense. But underneath all that, he also offers a very sympathetic and metaphorical rendering of the tradition of a geisha and what she represented: despite their physical beauty and wealth they were essentially prostitutes, condemned to a life of passive servitude and eternal politeness.

But ultimately, Iguchi's first priority is to deliver a rollicking, raunchy fusion of martial arts, relentless violence and science fiction, and he absolutely succeeds. I should like to close by saying RoboGeisha will always remind me of one of my fondest shopping memories ever: when I bought it in 2014, aged 25, I was asked (in light of its R18+ rating) if I was over 18, something which hadn't happened for about 5 years. It made me feel young again.