Kekkô Kamen: Mangurifon no gyakushû

Kekko Back In Action With Mask, Red Cape, & Rabbit Ears First sequel (of three) to the live-action KEKKO KAMEN story about the naked superheroinne who rescues the abused students at an exclusive Japanese celebrity college. The film seems to ignore the fact that it's the second in a series, and has the characters all starting out new as if the events from KEKKO 1 never occurred. Extremely silly, abounding with overacting, the film loses much of the novelty of the first live-action version (the series is based on a manga from prolific writer Go Nagai which was also made into an animated series in the 1990s), although it's a little tighter in terms of production quality. It has a charm of its own despite its over-the-top campiness. Approaching these films with anything less than a healthy suspension of disbelief and tolerance for obnoxious absurdity is a prerequistite; there's plenty of eye candy to make up for the film's lack of sophistication. The actress who portrays Kekko in action (Shino Saitô) gets a better opportunity to have a real role in the story (as a government agent posing as a teacher to get the goods on the corrupt and perverted school staff), and she does quite well; Jyuri Inahara is OK but tends to become overly cute as Kekko's main rescuee; the rest of the cast is acceptable but way over the top – as they clearly needed to be. Consider it a Saturday NIGHT LIVE skit – with a tastefully naked heroine. At best the film is pure fluff (or, to quote the film itself, pure "muff")...