In 2008, Yoshihiro Nishimura, fast making a name for himself amidst those the likes of Noboru Iguchi, Shinya Tsukamoto, Takashi Miike and Yudai Yamaguchi (and like them, probably more so abroad in the West than in Japan itself), decided to break ahead from being a mere artist of gore effects and take the reins of a film all of his own.
Tokyo Gore Police (東京残酷警察 Tōkyō Zankoku Keisatsu) was the result.
It is 20 Minutes into the Future. Tokyo has became a cyberpunk dystopia with a privatized police force, where blades for cutting one's wrists are advertised on television and civilians can partake in the execution of prisoners via remote control from their homes. Going around murdering prostitutes is a mad scientist called "Key Man", who has created a race of mutants called "Engineers" whose injuries immediately transform into bio-mechanical weapons. By resurrecting those he murders as Engineers, Key Man is amassing himself a small army. The police officers are finding themselves hard pressed to deal with Key Man and his mutants.
One such police officer is Dark Action Girl Ruka, whose habits regarding her wrists would put Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way to shame. Ruka has been such a soul since her father was assassinated on the day the police were privatized many years ago. She now seeks to find her father's killer so that she might avenge him.
What ensues is almost two hours-worth of decapitation, dismemberment, disembowelment, katana, chainsaw duels, penises that double as guns, vagina monsters that eat people, breasts that squirt acid and people propelling themselves into the air with spouts of blood among other things... Let us just say that the word "Gore" isn't in the title for the hell of it.
Tokyo Trope Police:
- Arch-Enemy: Ruka has the Chief of Police, who killed her father to privatize the police force.
- Assassins Are Always Betrayed: The Key Man's father was paid to assassinate Ruka's father (who opposed police privatization), and is then executed by the Chief as soon as the deed is done.
- Asshole Victim: Is murdering someone on live TV messed up? Definitely. But considering the guy was a Serial Killer that targeted Kindergarteners, no one will miss him.
- Audible Sharpness: Whenever Ruka unsheaths her katana.
- B-Movie: Violence galore, over-the-top blood and weaponry, campiness, and social commentary. Yep, just your regular B-flick.
- Big Bad: Key Man is the creator of the race of mutants he calls Engineers, and cause chaos in Tokyo with them, but it was actually the unnamed Chief of Police who is responsible for the Key Man going insane when he had his father assassinated so he could privatize the police department.
- Black Comedy: This is a Yoshihiro Nishimura movie after all, which also shares his love of death and extreme violence being played for laughs.
- Bloody Hilarious: To the point where it could be called Bloody Hilarious: The Movie
- Body Horror: Like you wouldn't believe!
- The Cameo:
- Ju-on/The Grudge director Takashi Shimizu continues his trend of showing up in Yoshihiro Nishimura films as a Chinese stereotype played for laughs.
- The first engineer we see in the movie is Versus's Tak Sakaguchi.
- Chainsaw Good: A chainsaw duel is always fine. But how about when a movie opens with one?
- The Chikan: Ruka encounters one in the subway. He may find himself having to use a hands-off approach to his perversion soon.
- Crapsack World: A world where a corrupt police task force are privatized, and where Engineers can easily turn others into mutant creatures by chopping off whatever body part they can find is not a world to live in. The whole situation is made more surreal by how damn perky the media seems to be about everything.
- Dark Action Girl: Ruka is most definitely this.
- Dirty Cop: The Chief of Police.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The Key Man looks like he should be the Big Bad, as the one responsible for the Engineers, but he's killed about an hour and 20 minutes in, after revealing that the Chief of Police is the true threat.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: They are on Tokyo, there's a busload of gore and people working on law enforcement.
- Exploitation Film: Just look at the film's trope page description about it.
- Foreign Queasine: In the subway scene, an extra is seen eating live bugs.
- Gag Penis: One police officer is turned into an Engineer after having his penis bitten off. Guess which part of his body becomes a rather huge "weapon".
- Gorn: Well duh!
- Grievous Bottley Harm: One police officer gets repeatedly stabbed in the face with a broken bottle, which then falls off from the bottle's bottom after the deed is done.
- Hate Sink: The unnamed chief of police is the true antagonist of the film. In order to privatize the Tokyo police department, he has an esteemed officer assassinated, killing the hitman when he's done. This ends up causing the assassin's son to become a Mad Scientist called the Key Man and create a horde of rampaging mutants known as Engineers to terrorize the city. The chief orders his police, including his deceased rival's daughter Ruka, to kill any Engineers they find, despite many of them not working for the Key Man. When one of his officers is infected, the chief has the rest start massacring anybody who could possibly be an Engineer, sexually abusing a woman he keeps as a pet all the while. Ruka arrives to stop the carnage and avenge her father, so the chief proves his hypocrisy by injecting himself with the Engineer serum to fight her. A Dirty Cop to the extreme, the Chief of Police proved to be far worse than Key Man.
- High-Pressure Blood: It makes Kill Bill look like an amateur.
- Job Title
- Kick the Dog: The Chief of Police keeping a limbless woman as a Sex Slave.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: The Engineers. They can regenerate injuries as weapons, so long as the key shaped tumor remains intact. Such weapons include a biological chainsaw, breasts that shoot acid, a crocodile-like maw for a hand, a shotgun penis, and eyes that act as scopes.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Er... kind of. There's a fake-looking severed penis, a blood-squirting stump, and shortly after, a shotgun dong.
- No Name Given: The Chief of Police has no name, just his position title. Same goes for Key Man and his father.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Honestly, just how much blood do these people have? Outstanding example: one man gets his legs cut off and blood sprays out. He then injects some stimulants, and the blood starts spraying out with such force that he can fly around the room.
- Police Brutality: The entire last third is comprised of violent policemen brutally murdering the entire city as part of a crackdown on possible Engineers.
- Rocket Jump: Ruka's introductory battle.
- Sadist: The Chief of Police assassinated his predecessor so he could privatize the police force, has a Sex Slave with no arms or legs, and decides to send his men on a complete massacre when he's exposed.
- Seppuku: One of the fake commercials in the film discourages this, in a strong bit of irony considering everything else in the movie.
- Shout-Out: The final showdown bears more than a passing resemblance to the final battle between Amuro and Char in Mobile Suit Gundam. "The legs are just for decoration", indeed...
- The police chief is a huge guy in Kabuto-like armour who has a human being with their limbs cut off to make them walk like a dog as a pet, which he also uses as a sex slave, exactly like Slum King from Violence Jack.
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Spiritual Successor: To The Machine Girl and Meatball Machine. - Vagina Dentata: More like Vagina Crocodilia.
- You Killed My Father: The Chief of Police not only forced Key Man's father to kill Ruka's, but he himself also kills Key Man's dad immediately after the hit. So technically, he killed two fathers.
- Your Head A-Splode: The film opens with Ruka reminiscing about her father, who is shown smiling to the audience until his head suddenly explodes.
