Vital Stats
Title: Battle League Horumo
Directed by: Katsuhide Motoki
Distributed by: Viz Pictures
Starring:
Chiaki Kuriyama
Takayuki Yamada
Gaku Hamada
Sei Ashina
The Review
Battle League Horumo is a fantasy comedy about a group of college freshman who are caught in the strange world of oni spirits. Akira Abe fights youthful depression as many college students do, falling in love. This leads him to the Azure Dragons club, advertised as being a perfectly normal club, hosting functions that any ordinary club does. Of course, the catch is that the club is really about training people to speak "oni language" and teaching them to command oni legions.
With cute writing and fun characters, I found myself enjoying the movie quite a bit. In fact, some might recognize Chiaki Kuriyuma (Fumi Kusunoki) as Kill Bill's Gogo Yubari. Also, Yakayuki Yamada (Abe) has been a few manga related movies such as M.W. and Crows Zero. The only real problem I had with the movie was its pacing. While my knowledge of Japanese Horror is much better than Comedy films, it felt like the movie just sauntered at its own pace, waiting a good thirty minutes or so before even really expousing a meater plot.
Also, butt faced oni spirts are adorable. I want one.
Unfortunately, I can't find any information about a DVD release schedule, but we'll pass it along to you as soon as we hear.
I enjoyed the film way more than I was expecting from the almost-nothing I knew about it. A lot of fun-- wish we had a tentative release date for the DVD, because I'd love to share this one ^_^
I'm not too surprised by the mention of a "sauntering" pace, even though 113 minutes (under 2 hours) seems to be an average length for such a movie that has some action mixed in with comedy. I was already sort of interested in the film after seeing a manga adaptation of the source book some months ago in an issue of Shonen Ace so I'll keep my eyes out for it on DVD.