Yo-Yo Girl Cop (2006)

After 15 years, manga author Shinji Wada’s teenage detective Saki Asamiya is back on the screen with her schoolgirl uniform and skull-cracking yo-yo skills.

Coming out of relative obscurity is YO-YO GIRL COP, Toei’s 2006 big screen update to a 40-year-old Japanese franchise that began with the publication of Wada’s original 1976 manga Sukeban Deka. The comic concerned a delinquent schoolgirl recruited by the government to investigate and uncover criminal activity in high schools. Codenamed “Saki Asamiya,” her sole weapon was a metal yo-yo that doubled as a police badge.

Following several republications of the manga, Sukeban Deka was turned into a hit TV series in 1985. In years following, several OVAs (direct-to-video anime) and feature films were released until the franchise was shelved in 1991.

U.S. residents have had little exposure to Sukeban Deka apart from the anime versions released on VHS. In 2006, Tokyo Shock released onto DVD two previous feature films, SUKEBAN DEKA – THE MOVIE (1987) and SUKEBAN DEKA: COUNTER ATTACK FROM THE KAZAMA SISTERS (1988). Both films starred Yui Asaka, the last actress to fill the role until now.

The latest incarnation of Saki Asamiya is J-pop star Aya Matsuura, a petite 19-year-old with little acting or action experience. Regardless, she steps up to the challenge and manages to take ass-kicking Japanese schoolgirl conventions to new levels.

K (Matsuura) is a rebellious teen picked up in New York by Japanese Detective Kazutoshi Kira (Riki Takeuchi) after having been arrested for beating up local police.
Her mother, played by original series star Yuki Saito, is a former Japanese agent who was arrested several months prior and faces charges for assault and immigration violations. K’s only hope of saving her mother from a lengthy prison term is to accept Kira’s offer to work for him back in Japan as a special undercover agent codenamed Saki Asamiya.

Saki’s mission is to investigate an elite private high school with links to a suspected terrorist web site known as “Enola Gay.” For the historically challenged, that name is a reference to the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

A previous undercover agent was killed when she mysteriously entered a public square with a bomb strapped to her body that blew up. Now, the terrorist web site has begun a 48-hour countdown and the police want to know why. Saki begins investigating links to her predecessor’s death that include a pair of oddball chemistry students and a distraught girl named Taie Kono (Yui Okada) who knows more than she lets on.

Standing in Saki’s way is Reika Akiyama (Rika Ishikawa), one of the school’s snobby cool kids and in reality a rogue government agent now working for the Enola Gay leader (Shunsuke Kubozuka). With the fate of misguided students hanging in the balance, these two rivals eventually battle it out in the ultimate yo-yo duel!

The idea of a female high schooler fighting bad guys isn’t exactly unique. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE notably comes to mind. There’s also the concept of a bad girl turned good agent that Luc Besson employed for LA FEMME NIKITA. Wada’s rendition came long before either of those, but more importantly he came up with the unusual gimmick of a yo-yo as weapon.

To my knowledge no other movie has used a yo-yo as a fighting tool. It may seem ludicrous and it is. Yet this is an interesting topic for anyone familiar with esoteric martial arts weapons. The yo-yo in this movie is essentially treated like a blunt rope dart, a “soft” weapon used chiefly for its mid-range capability and easy concealment. It is one of the more difficult weapons to use effectively and that’s where computer effects and a lot of judicious editing come into play.

No training in the weapon’s use is shown in the movie. Since very little time takes place from the point where Saki is picked up and from where her mission begins, she must have miraculously mastered the use of the yo-yo in a matter of hours. Yet it’s no more of a stretch than to believe the slight Aya Matsuura capable of knocking grown men down without the use of leveraging arts like Aikido.

As far as on screen skills go I was more impressed by Matsuura’s co-star and fellow J-popster Rika Ishikawa. She clearly has superior yo-yo handling skills and let’s be honest, that’s far more important for a movie like this than any real-life fighting skills. In fact, the filmmakers had two-time Japanese National Yo-Yo Master Takahiko Hasegawa on call as yo-yo instructor.

The movie steers clear of showing more elaborate yo-yo techniques, to instead let the actresses do most of their own amateur handling. This is a shame. With a little camera and editing magic they could have snuck in expert handling on close-ups and really spiced up the action a lot. Most of the handling is pretty simple, even with digital effects. It just involves having the yo-yo flung at opponents to knock them out. An example of the extent to which the yo-yo choreography extends is when Ishikawa performs a “Sleeper” with a bladed yo-yo hanging precariously over a pinned down Aya Matsuura.

There is a lot of potential here. I’d love to see a continuation of this Sukeban Deka revival or a Hong Kong movie adaptation with more advanced choreography and creative prop use. Director Kenta Fukasaku, along with his AD Makoto Yokoyama, gives us a decent sampling with a little gunplay, wirework and pyrotechnics at the end. It’s just that though, a sampling and nothing more. Not a big surprise here. Kenta has yet to show that he has inherited even a measure of the filmmaking brilliance of his father Kinji Fukasaku. Kenta’s debut, the disappointing BATTLE ROYALE sequel he completed after his father’s death is proof enough of that.

Just as its silly name implies, YO-YO GIRL COP is camp action all the way. Although played seriously, the film has far too many inconceivable elements to be taken as such. Viewers possibly caught up in the vacuous teen drama should be thankfully jerked back to “reality” by the time Aya Matsuura struts on screen in her form-fitting battle suit and Rika Ishikawa arrives in her post-punk leather garb with platform boots.