Meatball Machine is a 2005 Japanese action Sci-Fi Horror action splatter film.
Yoji and Sachiko are coworkers and lovebirds. Their romance is going well, until she's attacked by a creature. These monsters, called NecroBorgs, implant themselves on people as tumor-like growths, eventually taking over their bodies completely and turning them into monstrosities that exist solely to fight and kill each other. Sachiko is turned, so Yoji, having been infected by a different NecroBorg undertakes an effort to rescue his lady love.
A sequel, Meatball Machine Kodoku, was released in 2017.
This film contains examples of:
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Both movies
- Blood Knight: A NecroBorg's entire existence is based around assimilating a host that will assist it better in fighting, killing and eating other NecroBorgs.
- Crapsack World: Tokyo in both movies is portrayed as the worst place to live.
- The first film has Tokyo act as an industrial hellhole full of perverts. There's also a race of monstrous parasites that attack random people and trap them in an And I Must Scream situation as Living Weapons in their tournament of death, with the only respite being their own destruction in the battle.
- The second film takes this up to eleven. Everyone's either a Jerkass, a pervert, or an idiot, and poverty runs rampant. There's also scam artist priests and strippers, and a corrupt police force. And this is all before the NecroBorgs invade.
- Downer Ending:
- Yoji is forced to kill both Sachiko and himself to prevent the NecroBorgs from controlling their bodies. This doesn't work, as the aliens who created the monsters resurrect them both as test models for their new line of weapons, called "Meatball Machines." It's also revealed that all the chaos is nothing but a game to the aliens.
- Kodoku ends with Tokyo's inhabitants getting slaughtered by the NecroBorgs to be used as a drinking substance.
- Gorn: It's not a J-sploitation movie series without a heaping helping of over-the-top violence and gore.
The first movie
- Abusive Parents: Sachiko's father sexually abused her and severely scarred her chest, back and legs so nobody else would want her. She was eventually forced to cripple him with an iron bar to stop the abuse.
- And I Must Scream: The host of a NecroBorg is treated as an automaton, unable to properly react but feeling all the pain the creature feels in fights.
- The Assimilator: The main antagonists of the film are monsters who attach themselves to human bodies to create mutant monsters with much more useful abilities than their squishy true forms.
- Attempted Rape: Yoji and Sachiko first meet properly when he saves her from his boss's attempt to force himself on her.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: The unnamed duo of aliens that created the NecroBorgs.
- Creepy Crossdresser: Yoji is groped nonconsensual by one in a porno theatre, who kicks his ass when he tries to walk away from the situation.
- Enemy Within: Despite saving himself from total infection, Yoji still has to contend with the will of his NecroBorg trying to assert itself.
- Villain Opening Scene: A NecroBorg attacking an old guy trying to kill himself.
Kodoku
- Asshole Victim: Jiro, Kaoru's little brother, is just a jerk through and through. After Yuji is beaten and kicked to the curb by the strippers, he comes up and kicks him just because he's somewhat involved with his sister. He then accuses Yuji of being a killer so he'll be chased by police and beaten up, and gloats about it to the hapless couple who thought he was being attacked by Yuji. Once the NecroBorgs attack Kaoru's apartment, he's swiftly eviscerated after mouthing off to the attacker.
- Badass Normal: The Police Militia, a small group of martial artists who fancy themselves vigilantes. When the NecroBorgs attack, they waste no time in hunting as many as they can, managing to hold their own quite well.
- Black Comedy: Everywhere! Almost all the deaths and unfortunate events happening to everyone is played for laughs.
- Denser and Wackier: This movie is more over-the-top and goofier than its predecessor, thanks to being directed and written by Yoshihiro Nishimura.
- Groin Attack: One poor dude gets his penis sliced off by the NecroBorgs' dome sliding over Tokyo.
- Improbable Weapon User: In addition to assimilating body parts as extra limbs and weapons, NecroBorgs can make a weapon based on something they're obsessed with. A stripper with Big-Breast Pride gets large boobs that shoot bloody milk and can be switched to machine gun nipples, the Loan Shark's muscle who keeps cutting her hair gets a giant pair of scissors, etc.
- Little People Are Surreal: At one point Yuji is brought to a Cabaret club, and sees a bizarre song and dance number by a dwarf dressed like an angel.
- Shout-Out: The first act mirrors that of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru.
- One of the Militiamen looks an awful lot like Jackie Chan, and also fights like him in many of his movies, from using bar stools as his weapons, to taking a swig from a liquor bottle and going full Drunken Master
