Be a Man! Samurai School

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Audience Member Being deliberately bad for comedic effect works a lot in the film but there are many fails. I attribute a lot of the missed laughs to it being about the construction of Japanese masculinity, not knowing enough about that societies quirks, many of the shots are just awkward. Too long, the chanting shaved head is incredibly annoying and should have been cut. Good directing for the most part, poorly scored. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member Be A Man! Samurai School (or Sakigake!! Otokojuku as I'll call it) is a film that's high on entertainment, but low on brain power. Based on a Japanese manga of similar name, Sakigake!! Otokojuku follows four students as they enroll into Otokojuku, a school that's apparently thousands of years old and teaches boys how to be men through unorthodox methods. While I say that it focuses on four students, it really follows two of them. The first is Hidemaro Gokukouji, the heir to an infamous Yakuza clan who's extremely bratty and cowardly. And the other is Momotaro Tsurugi, a talented sword fighter who becomes a close friend of Hidemaro's. The plot mainly consists of a scrapbook of the four friends and their adventures at Otokojuku, which at times are life threatening. Finally, the story changes at an hour in introducing Omito Date, a former student of Otokojuku who is expelled for killing an instructor. He's back and wants to take over Otokojuku. I'm going to look at this movie as two things: a film and an experience. As a film, Sakigake!! Otokojuku fails at what a film needs. The plot is basically non-existent until the last half an hour and even that is rather empty. The four boys the film supposedly focuses on are given little to no character or backstory so it's hard to actually cheer or empathize with them. Ryuuji Toramaru and Momotaro Tsurugi (despite Momotaro being a main character) are give no backstory and the film makes the terrible assumption that you've read the manga and know everything there is to these characters, even though those in the United States have never seen the original manga. Genji Togashi is sort of given backstory and is a likeable character, but it's the bare mininum and while I liked the character I didn't get to know him. Hidemaro received the most backstory, yet he did little to nothing in the film other than lift a flag pole (granted the flag pole would've probably required twenty men to barely lift it and he lifted it all by himself). The effects are Spy Kids 3-D level of effects and I was almost never convinced some of the events were happening. Even the fighting isn't very good, being too over-the-top and it felt like I was watching someone play "Street Fighter" more than anything (on a side note, I could see Genji and Momotaro in Street Fighter. In fact there is a fighter game with all of the characters, save for Hidemaro.) The film is billed as a comedy but it doesn't work at that either, some of the "comedic" scenes being painful to watch. However, as an experience the film is stupid fun. It would be a great film if you feel like just mindless fun...except there's no translations other than subtitles available. So you kind of have to be paying attention. So it's sort of a pay attention but don't really care about the glaring issues. If you're fine reading subtitles and are able to take some of the stupidity, you may want to check this out. Everyone else, you'll probably want to look elsewhere. One thing I like about this film though is the ending music. If you check anything about this movie, look up "The Back Horn - Yaiba" which is the ending theme of the movie. It really makes the silliness feel epic and the epic feel more epic. (Real rating: 59%) Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Audience Member A fantastic directorial debut by Tak Sakaguchi. While it's not nearly as action-packed as Versus or as smoothly choreographed as Death Trance, Samurai School is organic and endearing storytelling, with lovable characters, plenty of laughs, and the typically Japanese inspirational themes. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member 日本人にしか分からない男くさい映画！面白い！むさい！ Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Audience Member A fantastic directorial debut by Tak Sakaguchi. While it's not nearly as action-packed as Versus or as smoothly choreographed as Death Trance, Samurai School is organic and endearing storytelling, with lovable characters, plenty of laughs, and the typically Japanese inspirational themes. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Audience Member Ask me to pick the top 5 most ridiculous films ever made, and this would surely be on that list. This is one of those movies that is 2 hours of pure Japanese Mayhem (don't forget dear reader, more than often mayhem and humor are interchangeable in the odd world of Japanese cinema). The script is full of randomness: A freshman who plays his guitar to express his homosexual love for a boy who lives in a peach, a principal who insists on having his head waxed every day by his underlings, and torture sequences that are actually humorous. If you are some straight and narrow person, aka, a humorless nincompoop, this movie isn't for you. But if you can enjoy light hearted cinema that doesn't bring anything to the table other than the "Oh those Japanese are silly with their films" reaction, then you'll enjoy this treat. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Be a Man! Samurai School

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