TURD ALERTS!

Perhaps the most unbearable supernatural doll film I've ever seen is Legend of the Doll (Sei bishojo figure den, 2006).

I suppose it's partly just me, because I am a horror fan, & can enjoy some fairly awful horror films. But this is a romantic comedy fantasy, though to me it's neither romantic nor comedic; it's just dumb.

It's disturbing insofar as it shows incidentally & not at all intentionally the alienation of the modern male from human contact, which makes the notion of a "perfect" sex doll seem the ideal life-partner -- which type of deviance does exist.

But beyond it being as little my-sort-of-film as it could get, it is also the worst amateur videography, ridiculously acted, with unimaginably bad writing. It strives to be nothing but "innocence porn" & anyone whose kink leans that way may get more out of it than I could.

Ryoto (Hideo Tsubota) buys a small doll from an out-of-the-way shop. It comes in pieces so he puts it together, paints its make-up on, & has himself the Japanese equivalent of a Barbie doll.

Unexpectedly the doll grows to human size & becomes a flesh & bone beauty (Noriko Kijima).

Beyond the fantasy of a geek having a slave of great beauty completely devoted to him & never ever going to abandon him for someone actually interesting, there's just nothing here that could be mistaken for sexy. Indeed it seems really to want to be romantic, but never ceases to seem merely stupid. It's barely over an hour in length but was so boring it seemed interminable.



A very similar film expresses parallel fetishistic desire without really being sexy about it. Cat Girl Kiki (Nekimimi shoji Kiki, 2006) is pretty much the same story, only this time the lonely young man (Teruaki Uotani) brings home a stray cat instead of a doll.

The cat turns into a hot babe who wears fluffy kitten-ears in her hair & slowly has to learn to be human.

At her most "mature" Kiki seems about thirteen years old & the performance gave it a creepy paedarastic tone -- a film for guys who not only want a never-talks-back, never-individuates, obedient slave to boink, but an underage one to boot.

These two films together with Pretty Maid Cafe (Koisuri maid cafe, 2006) make up the so-called "Akihabara Trilogy."

This one, however, is not fantasy, beyond the idea of a geek (Takatsuki Jun) getting lucky with a babe (Kotono HigashiI). At least it's with a human female this time, & she does have interests & activities in her life outside the realm of a love-slave.

Not completely acknowledged by the script, the "cafe" appears to be a front for a massage parlor or bordello, catering to deviants who like girls to dress up as maids & act as slaves.

At least this time it's clearly a paying position, whereas the cat-girl & the living doll were fantasies of willing submission to a beloved lord & master.

These films are weird mostly because they are clearly for nerdy lonely deviant young men, but constructed like innocent fantasies for little girls. Or they're aimed at sexually stunted men who never overcame their first childhood sexual experience masturbating on Sanro plush toys of Tuxedo Sam & Hello Kitty or their Pokemons.

Though each film is stand-alone, they have the same tone, & are called the Akihabara Trilogy as reference to a well-known Tokyo shopping district where adolescents & immature adults gather in video arcades, comic book stores, anime video stores, comkputer shops, fetish fashion stores, & shops of softcore "pink" films.

Continue to:
Dolls (1987) & Blood Dolls (1999)

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