Director- Sato Hisayasu.This is the sixth film I have seen of his.I decided to watch this after being underwhelmed by Sato's film, Splatter Naked Blood, a remake of this work.I enjoyed this work a lot more as it lacks the psychedelic imagery and instead focuses more on the pinku aspect of it.It offers quite an intriguing situation, through the pain and arousal being intertwined and how one can succumb to self-indulgence under the feelings of estrogen.The way the runtime is utilised in this work is much superior due to the film pushing us through the inciting incident a lot quicker. Hence, it achieved better results even with a runtime of nineteen minutes shorter. This works better in this film, from what message I derived from it.The choices of the three girls offer variety, while a commonality exists within the trio. This makes room for theorising what separated the female lead from the other two. Her nature of refraining from expressing herself to anyone allows her to be unbridled with the burden of excess.In the character of the foodie girl, one can observe that the sin of gluttony is indeed running rampant, which was figuratively eating her from the inside, but the experiment led her to resort to eating herself in the process. I enjoyed this all the more as I was in search of such a film, having been disappointed by The Grand Buffet 1973 by Marco Ferreri, where the people didn't eat themselves to death but ate till they died.This reminded me of an Indian film called Aamis 2019 by Bhaskar Harazika as well. Though the film features this act in a different theme, which resembles Together 2025 by Michael Shanks, more than Pleasure Kill.The characterisation of the female lead doesn't have a cactus this time around. Instead, she has a video game, which symbolises her willingness to ditch her world for one within a game. She believes that the world inside is a much better one.What I couldn't understand in both works is whether the killing of the rest of the characters was done by the female lead or not. While in Splatter Naked Blood, I believe that it was a simulation, I am inclined to believe that it isn't the case in this film.Her killing the rest of the characters except the protagonist shows her mercy for them, as they were unable to control themselves, falling deeper into destructive behaviour driven by estrogen-induced depravity. They were unable to satiate their ever-growing hunger, leading to a slow death, and the protagonist kindly helped to quicken the process.The ending with the Female Lead killing the protagonist for me symbolises her seeking revenge against him for subjecting her and her friends to such a cruel fate. She stole his opportunity to view what output his experiment would bring later on, which was the best revenge against such a person.The protagonist is shown to have an Oedipal complex, which might be a driving force for his pursuit of knowledge, with him trying to be as good a scientist as his father was. This explains why he, too, was infatuated with pushing the extreme boundaries of science, as his father once was.The ending being on the open-ended side is fitting and was the right choice, as it leaves the viewer wanting more, as well as allowing us to wonder about the adventures she had later on.Overall, this is a film I will highly recommend people to check out if they have in him to be able to stomach such themes. This is also a much better work compared to Splatter Naked Blood and is more so a work of Sato than of someone else, such as Obayashi. I will try to watch Kagemusha next as a palette cleanser of sorts and also because I wish to view a Naakdai Tatsuya film next.
Director- Sato Hisayasu.This is the sixth film I have seen of his.I decided to watch this after being underwhelmed by Sato's film, Splatter Naked Blood, a remake of this work.I enjoyed this work a lot more as it lacks the psychedelic imagery and instead focuses more on the pinku aspect of it.It offers quite an intriguing situation, through the pain and arousal being intertwined and how one can succumb to self-indulgence under the feelings of estrogen.The way the runtime is utilised in this work is much superior due to the film pushing us through the inciting incident a lot quicker. Hence, it achieved better results even with a runtime of nineteen minutes shorter. This works better in this film, from what message I derived from it.The choices of the three girls offer variety, while a commonality exists within the trio. This makes room for theorising what separated the female lead from the other two. Her nature of refraining from expressing herself to anyone allows her to be unbridled with the burden of excess.In the character of the foodie girl, one can observe that the sin of gluttony is indeed running rampant, which was figuratively eating her from the inside, but the experiment led her to resort to eating herself in the process. I enjoyed this all the more as I was in search of such a film, having been disappointed by The Grand Buffet 1973 by Marco Ferreri, where the people didn't eat themselves to death but ate till they died.This reminded me of an Indian film called Aamis 2019 by Bhaskar Harazika as well. Though the film features this act in a different theme, which resembles Together 2025 by Michael Shanks, more than Pleasure Kill.The characterisation of the female lead doesn't have a cactus this time around. Instead, she has a video game, which symbolises her willingness to ditch her world for one within a game. She believes that the world inside is a much better one.What I couldn't understand in both works is whether the killing of the rest of the characters was done by the female lead or not. While in Splatter Naked Blood, I believe that it was a simulation, I am inclined to believe that it isn't the case in this film.Her killing the rest of the characters except the protagonist shows her mercy for them, as they were unable to control themselves, falling deeper into destructive behaviour driven by estrogen-induced depravity. They were unable to satiate their ever-growing hunger, leading to a slow death, and the protagonist kindly helped to quicken the process.The ending with the Female Lead killing the protagonist for me symbolises her seeking revenge against him for subjecting her and her friends to such a cruel fate. She stole his opportunity to view what output his experiment would bring later on, which was the best revenge against such a person.The protagonist is shown to have an Oedipal complex, which might be a driving force for his pursuit of knowledge, with him trying to be as good a scientist as his father was. This explains why he, too, was infatuated with pushing the extreme boundaries of science, as his father once was.The ending being on the open-ended side is fitting and was the right choice, as it leaves the viewer wanting more, as well as allowing us to wonder about the adventures she had later on.Overall, this is a film I will highly recommend people to check out if they have in him to be able to stomach such themes. This is also a much better work compared to Splatter Naked Blood and is more so a work of Sato than of someone else, such as Obayashi. I will try to watch Kagemusha next as a palette cleanser of sorts and also because I wish to view a Naakdai Tatsuya film next.
