Keita Matsuda channels Volckman and Rodriguez for "Electronic Girl"

by Chris MaGee

A lot of people like to point out how Hollywood films have borrowed liberally from Asian films, be it Graham Yost's lifting the plot of Junya Sato's 1975 action movie "The Bullet Train" for his script for 1994's "Speed" to Quentin Tarantino paying "homage" to Hiroyuki Nakano and old Meiko Kaji films in "Kill Bill". The cross-pollination, let's call it, goes both ways though and I haven't seen a better example of this in a while as Keita Matsuda's upcoming film "Electronic Girl".

"Electronic Girl" is set in 2055 in a world divided into the haves, who live in a domed enclosure, and the have nots, who live in that same dystopian cityscape that everyone in the future has lived in since Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner". In this two-tier society human-like androids do the heavy lifting, but things go terribly wrong when one android, a beautiful one named Nana (Maya Koizumi) begins to evolve at a staggering rate and the authorities must hunt her down before she destroys the social order.

Just watching the trailer below you can tell that Matsuda has lifted the visual style of both Christian Volckman’s sci-fi noir "Renaissance" and Robert Rodriguez's comic adaptation "Sin City", films that were so singular in their approach that to copy their look can only be a mistake. Do we really need another watered down sci-fi film? When you figure that this comes from the same production house that gave us "Geisha vs. Ninja" and "Samurai Princess" then I guess you have you answer.

If you're not picky about people lifting back and forth from better films then you might like what you see from "Electronic Girl" below. The film is due to his Japanese theatres on September 12th. Thanks to 24 Frames per Second for the heads up on this.