I am in no way exaggerating that I had other plans for this week’s look at the weird and violent and weirdly violent things that surround the hard side of idol, and then I got this tweet and thought “Stop everything.” I didn’t take the whole two hours to stop to make this post, and I’ll admit that the oddly porny music playing while the two guys were fighting and one had a baseball bat, that was kind of a weird thing to skip ahead to at one point, but … look, are you interested yet, or not?
Here’s the pitch: At a few different moments, I’ve thought about posting something about Rev. from DVL (for instance, their most recent single), but they’ve never quite crossed the right threshold for me as a group. However, their center, Hashimoto Kanna, being an idol, is also an actor, and this starring spot of hers is called Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: Graduation.
Now are you interested?
Tell me that the first 60 seconds aren’t already the highlight of your day.
This will give me something to watch at lunch. Haven’t seen the movie yet, but I enjoyed the prequel series : http://mydramalist.com/953-the-yakuza-girl
And, if you want to go old school, the original was released in 1981: http://mydramalist.com/15011-sailor-suit-and-machine-gun
There are subtitled versions of both a google search away.
I love Kanna. She has the perfect idol look and her acting is pretty good. I remember when they first announced this and the promotional shots were circulating around for it. Really awesome photos of her holding a machine gun standing on top of a building overlooking the city. I think seeing her as a yakuza boss is both awesome and adorable as well as hilarious.
The song remake she did of the title track is also pretty good, though while it has a modern sound and her vocals are nice there’s just no coming close to the flavor of the 1981 original by Hiroko Yakushimaru.
Video of Hiroko Yakushimaru performing the original version song
Holy crap! I just made the connection: she plays Suzuka Hiromi in Amachan : the former idol who Aki befriends and who Aki’s mom… well, no spoilers…
Everyone’s seen Amachan by now, right?
She still appearing in doramas today, and to think she got her start in the original Sailor Suit and Machine Gun. I had no idea.
I haven’t got 2 hours for that (but yeah the first 60 seconds were cool). But here’s my favourite Hashimoto Kanna video.