Tokyo Tribe

Japan­ese direc­tor Sion Sono is a major fig­ure among fan­boys and girls of hyper­bol­ic, half-a-world-away pop, under­ground fetish­es, and cult gen­res, with a fil­mog­ra­phy already encom­pass­ing teenage sui­cide cults, killer hair exten­sions, up-skirt pho­tog­ra­phy, Catholic guilt, and pet-shop ser­i­al killers. Tokyo Tribe, his biggest domes­tic hit to date, is a musi­cal adap­ta­tion of a man­ga by artist and street-wear entre­pre­neur Inoue San­ta, in which rap­ping gangs fight a turf war over the course of a sin­gle night. With its gonzo mar­tial artistry, hip-hop per­for­mance, hyper-stylised cin­e­matog­ra­phy and pro­duc­tion design, and brazen­ly dumb throw­away gags, the film is often almost as fun as it sounds.

Right from the elab­o­rate con­tin­u­ous crane shot that opens the film, Sion fills his mobile widescreen frame to its edges with graf­fi­ti, neon and bois­ter­ous extras in flat-brimmed ball caps, illu­mi­nat­ed by fire­works and search­lights; through­out, a granny in sun­glass­es spins on her turnta­bles, and an emcee cho­rus raps about life in the big bad city, and the things you’re about to see. Sion is inven­tive about his expo­si­tion, and emphat­ic about his niche: when a rook­ie cop in high heels con­fronts a thug, he rips her shirt open and, in extreme close-up, uses the tip of his knife to out­line the geog­ra­phy of Tokyo, from bel­ly but­ton to breasts.

Each urban dis­trict he traces has its own crew, with their own fash­ion sense and taste in sam­ples (one sounds very faint­ly like Dad­dy Yankee’s ​‘Gasoli­na’). In their intro­duc­to­ry raps, in alleys or strip clubs, the gangs stride towards the cam­era or sway in a semi­cir­cle – the cin­e­mat­ic aes­thet­ic apes rap videos from the era before rap videos had the means to ape cinema.

The set­up is very like The War­riors, espe­cial­ly once the nicest gang, led by J‑rapper Young Daïs, is set up by a rival and must fight its way back home. Pulling the strings is Big Bup­pa (Riki Takeuchi), a Fat Elvis savour­ing a cig­ar box of sev­ered fin­gers and mas­tur­bat­ing furi­ous­ly on a black dil­do, whose psy­cho son holds court in a Clock­work Orange den with liv­ing fur­ni­ture in white body paint. Also on hand is bleached-blond Mera (Suzu­ki Ryôhei), fetch­ing in g‑string and samu­rai swords, and mys­te­ri­ous Sun­mi (Nano Seino), whose every fly­ing kick reveals a glimpse of white panties.

When Tokyo Tribe spills over from its back­street alter­nate-uni­verse into the real world, it does so with the dis­junc­tive force of a tank – like, lit­er­al­ly, a tank rolls onto a Toyko plaza, scat­ter­ing crowds. It’s a nice joke about the Sonosphere’s her­met­ic hyper­re­al­i­ty, where­in the bass and ver­si­fied boast­ing only cuts out for break­dance fight­ing, CGI gore, cre­ative noo­dle shop or night­club ass-kick­ing, par­o­dies of wux­ia wire­work, and self-aware one-lin­ers about Kill Bill and Game of Death.

Because Tokyo Tribe is already every­thing else, it is even­tu­al­ly, as well, a sen­ti­men­tal film about broth­er­hood, the cli­mac­tic rum­ble outro’ed by an anthem to dead homies, aspir­ing to the grav­i­tas of 2Pac’s ​‘Life Goes On’. At one point dur­ing the gang war, a char­ac­ter cries out, ​“It’s the size of a man’s heart that makes him great” – that is, not the size of his penis.