Review for Tokyo Tribe

Introduction

Talk about preconceptions! When I first heard of Tokyo Tribe, took a look at the blurb, learning that it was the world’s first “battle-rap musical”, set in an alternate Tokyo ruled by gangs, torn by gang violence, that it was a lurid Technicolor world replete with all the exploitation and action that you’d expect from a Japanese feature based on a manga (Tokyo Tribe2 by Santa Inoue), I was fully expecting the words directed by Takashi Miike to be prominent in the advertising. That turned out to not be the case. In fact rather surprisingly, Tokyo Tribe is directed by Sion Sono, who I’ve come to associate with more sober affairs like Himizu, Cold Fish, and Land of Hope. Then again he first came to my attention with the spectacular Love Exposure. Suddenly I really want to watch Sion Sono’s world first battle-rap musical.


This Tokyo is a no-go area for the police, divided down gang lines, with supremacy determined by hip-hop skills and violent confrontation. Ruling the roost is the Yakuza, Buppa, his depraved family, and his right-hand man Mera. The rest of the gangs in Tokyo are separated by geographical boundaries, Shinjuku, Nerima, Ikebukuro, Shibuya and so on, and straying into the wrong part of town is a bad idea. The odd ones out are the Musashino gang, who proclaim a philosophy of love and peace, and having a good time. That’s the kind of philosophy that gets on Buppa’s bad side, and for him it’s the right time to wipe out all of the gangs and take Tokyo for himself. Then a girl called Soonmi winds up in Buppa’s brothel, only she’s not who she seems to be. She’s being used as bait to draw one of Musashino’s top guys onto Buppa’s turf, but when in the resulting mayhem, one of Tokyo’s heroes is slain, that’s the trigger for all hell to break loose.

Picture

Tokyo Tribe gets a 2.40:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. It’s a clear and sharp transfer, bringing across this lurid neon vision of an alternate hip-hop Tokyo to vivid life. Detail levels are good, skin tones come across well, and the only real nits to pick would be the cheap and cheerful CGI, especially applied to blood spatter, and some rather weak black levels, with shadows tending more toward grey, and contrast a little lacking.

The images in this review are supplied by the distributor, and aren’t representative of the final retail release.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround and PCM 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with optional English subtitles, although you can only chop and change via the pop-up menu. There’s no access to the audio options from the main menu screen. I went with the surround track and was very happy with the immersive experience. As you would expect from a battle-rap musical, the volume levels are impressively high, giving full value to the beats and hip-hop, the action comes across well with sufficient surround impact, and there’s no issue with distortion or glitches. The subtitles are thoughtfully translated, reflecting the hip-hop rhymes and cadences in English, while remaining easy to read, and flowing naturally. That does mean that occasionally I got the feeling that the translation might have been a little loose, but the intent of the dialogue and lyrics was always clear. The subtitles are timed accurately and are free of typographical error.

Extras

This Blu-ray disc loads straight to a static and silent main menu screen with four options including Play. As mentioned, you can only access the audio options from the pop-up menu during playback.

From the main menu, you can access the film’s trailer (1:44), and 4 deleted scenes running to 3:27. These are in 1080p HD.


You can also find the film’s making of featurette here, running to 64:29 in 1080i HD 60Hz. It’s a candid camera affair, following the cast and crew over the 20 day shooting schedule, grabbing the odd sound-bite from actor or director, but generally just watching the filming as it unfolds. It’s pretty much normal for a making of featurette for a Japanese film, but it’s very interesting to watch.

Tokyo Tribe also gets a Limited Edition booklet to accompany the film, with writing on the film by critic Aaron Hillis, but I didn’t get to see this to comment.

Conclusion

What did I just watch!? A battle-rap musical is so far outside my range of experience that I have no idea whether I actually enjoyed this or not, although I’m leaning towards the former given the lasting impression that the film has had on me. One thing is for certain though; for two hours I was glued to the screen, mesmerised by a Technicolor fantasy explosion. What is for certain is that this is no gimmick. Tokyo Tribe is a full on musical, with most of it performed in rap verse, and with Sion Sono casting a mixture of professional actors and some of Japan’s hottest hip-hop talent in the main roles, eliciting credible acting performances from the rappers, and credible hip-hop performances from the actors.


Delinquents and gangs are hardly new territory for Japanese cinema, but Tokyo Tribe takes this genre to the limit, with the gangs supplanting the natural order of things in this alternate Tokyo, ruling their territories like little fiefdoms. In that respect the film is a bit of a cross between West Side Story and Gangs of New York. But then when you’re introduced to the Yakuza Buppa and his desire to rule Tokyo himself, you can throw Dune into the mix as well. Buppa and his family are none other than the Yakuza equivalent of the Harkonnens, depraved and decadent. When it comes to young girls, Buppa usually decides whether to have sex with them or eat them (not a euphemism), his son Nkoi keeps his room furnished with naked slaves, and Meru’s second introduction in the film has him revealed like Feyd Rautha, Sting in a metal codpiece.


Tokyo Tribe goes the exploitation route, revelling in the depravity of Buppa and his cohorts, offering plenty of sex, violence and swears, but it’s funny as well, playing most scenes for laughs, pushing the violence to cartoonish extremes, and offering plenty of winks to the audience as well. Where else could break-dancing be a means of picking locks, and there is the obligatory Game of Death reference as well. The biggest punch-line turns out to be the reason behind the gang war itself.


Tokyo Tribe is one of those films that you simply have to watch, just to scratch it off the bucket list. You’re not going to find too many other battle-rap musicals out there, and the sheer lavish extravagance, the over the top exploitation, the absolute sense of fun that the actors obviously have performing the film, and the filmmakers had making it, seeps through every pore of the movie. You’ll want to watch Tokyo Tribe just to be able to say that you’ve watched it. And then, like me, you’ll probably scratch your heads afterwards trying to figure out if you enjoyed it.