Movie Review: Tokyo Tribe

PLOT SUMMARY: "Five years after the Shibuya riots, the Tribes of Tokyo have been enjoying a period of relative peace, until Kim and two other members of the Musashino Saru intrude on the territory of the Wu-Ronz in Bukuro. Mera, the leader of Wu-Ronz kills the three Saru, under the assumption that they were members of the Shibuya Saru. Two days later, after searching for who killed his friends, Musashino Saru member Kai runs into Mera. Old friends in their high school days, the two get into a confrontation that ends up leaving Tera, the leader of Musashino Saru, dead and setting the stage for violence between the Tribes." (Justin Billington for IMDb)

I am unfamiliar with the manga (1997-2005), and had only binge-watch the animation series in the last couple of years. The "closest" connection with Santa Inoue's "Tokyo Tribe 2", are the urban vinyls from Michael Lau.

So when I found out a live action feature of the property was to be made, I was pretty intrigued, having been bolstered with the fighting fascination with the CROWS series, ad seeing the TT-anime, I was looking forward to some "gansta-sheeet" hahahaha


But what greeted me after watching the first 10-minutes was "#watching #TokyoTribe = J-Hip-Hop-Pop Gangsta #Glee", and truthful, I stayed till the end of the 116-minutes film for (1) seeing more bare boobs, and (2) intrigued by how this would all good down. Well, I'm okay by the titillate, and stand by my earlier summation. Hey, I used to LOVE "Glee"! Well, at the very least the first one and a half seasons, than hated the rest of the seasons/series … my feeling for Tokyo Tribe movie fall into the later.


Mayhap it's all lost in translation. Perhaps I am not "cool" enough to get it. Or this could well be the exact representation of what Santa had in mind when he created Tokyo Tribe in the first place … Be that as it may, I would have been better off not watching this travesty of an adaptation (as authenticated as it is visually to the characters from the manga, Mera's head-of-blonde-hair notwithstanding) and am thankful I watched this online instead of in a darkened cinema.

Totally ill beats though! LOL


I am of half-a-mind about the production design and art direction tho - on one hand applaud the team for creating the set out of what-seemed-to-be-no-budget, and on the other, appalled that they attempted this film with what-seemed-to-be-no-budget for the Art Department.


One "fun" aspect about the film, was the "homages" to classic cult faves (I truly would like to think they were "homages" tho…), especially the Chandeliers flanking the pimped-out van ala John Carpenter's "Escape From New York", and Stanley Kubrick's "Milk Bar" in "A Clockwork Orange". And that's about it from me.

**Packs of Popcorn Rating: Half a bag of flaccid popped kernels, turned non-flaccid beck there were bare boobies.

Screengrabs via instagram @toysrevil
Additional stills via TOKYOTRIBE.movie Facebook and tokyotribe-movie.com

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