Nobara Takemoto who was born and raised in the ground zero of Yakuza kind culture, Kansai. Yet he possessed maiden heart, is an author writs at various shojo related publications as well as the most well known gothloli magazine “Gothic & Lolita Bible”.

His existence is a target for most Lolita girls to be logging for (not as male). This is a movie based on his novel “Shimotuma Monogatari”.("Shimotsuma Story" aka "Kamikaze Girls")

The story is about Yankee girl and Lolita girl in a style of action shojo manga, and this film is pretty amazing entertainment. The director and scrip writer, Tetsuya Nakajima do a fine job to visualize the essence of the novel. His strength is to create the visual of the shojo power in manga-tic movie. Nakajima fall in love to the story and accomplished the script in one month, who has been active at commercial production (known as Sapporo Beer CM that 2 man play table Ping-Pong game in slow motion action / NTT CM features SMAP doing Gachaman), and he extended the speed and thrill of the action to 90 min film without feeling weariness.

What are Yankee and Lolita?

They are the most strange youth culture of the kind in Japan, and each requires the strong self commitment to express one's will to enroll it. It is not only to enjoy the fashion, yet to overcome the pleasure of costume playing to live with the clothes as the part of your own skin.

Yankee is also calls as Bosozoku (bike gang), and girl version is also known as "Lady’s", that became very popular during ‘80s. (Originally came from the ‘50’s American culture merged with track rider-yakuza kind nature). In ‘90s, since American gang style (Hip Hop) was introduced in Japanese youth scene, Yankee becomes the dorkiest thing. However, they have continued to exist around countryside of Japan.

Same as for Lolita, they became noticed from the ‘80s from the boom of a fashion brand PINK HOUSE (Though, PINK HOUSE is a brand creates American country cute style, however the birth of this brand was shocking to many people back then because this clothes requires the change of your life style) that features frilled dreamy dress. Also many underground new wave Japanese band’s fans started to wear Lolita style since then.

As it mentioned for Yankee, due to the hit of the American black taste entertainment in Japan, Yankee and Lolita was considered “out” and invited derisive laughter.

Revenge of the out-siders?
 
This film shows the “close but not same” of Yankee and Lolita like North Pole and South Pole extraordinary and skillfully.

Yankees has unique pride like Yakuza, which are always challenging to translate in English such as “Giri” (debt of gratitude), “Ninjo” (human empathy), and “Jingi” (benevolence and righteousness). Yankees are known as emotional and not good at using brain logically. Ladies act harsh as same as male Yankee, and sometimes by being too momentum, speaks like Edo period Samurai. (Shonen Action)

Lolita finds the pleasure to wear the frilled dress like French doll and always day dreaming about the world of French rococo style. They put the most importance to the sensuousness and the notions of beauty. They are the supremacy of cute-ness and sweetness. (Shojo)

Those typical funny points of Yankee and Lolita are shown in this film. And it shows the encounter of the Yankee and Lolita from the embroidery –the secret commons of both, and invites you to the thrilling fusion of them that is totally unexpectable like a science fiction. (Because it's so rare to see the 2 combinations!)
There are no sane character appears in the story but they are not described as sarcastically in fact, they are all so lovable.

Not only explains the stereotype of people, it shows the reason for the girl way of life.
It is quite interesting that the Lolita girl, Momoko (Momo means peach) is from the annoying place of Kansai where has full of boiling hot human emotion. (Isn't it where the author came from?)
Momoko gains the skill to live her life as relevant and fun as possible by disconnecting her emotion from the environment. Yankee girl, Ichigo (means strawberry) gets her skill to live tough by devoting herself into driving spree to let her frustration (being bullied at school and self hate) pull out.

*******

What happened during ‘90s in Japanese youth scene was the boom of Kogal, and there were many movies and novels based on this phenomena (What the hell is going on with the girls mind!?). The most of them tried to explain the melancholies of the beleaguered old men. Also the most recent anime centering around the boom of Evangelison spoke the excuses of the complicated and twisted depress boy's mind. As a contrast to them, this “Shimotuma Monogatari” has no depressed male appearances and there are just girls who pop up as it stand as fun and strong. This is the masterpiece that has an uplifting feeling of the charm of the girls sweetness and the toughness.

As what the boss of the Japanese V-cinema says, we better watch out that soon girl might take away the Japanese “Otoko Damashi” (the soul of man).

PS: As we enjoyed the ending theme of Kill Bill, I enjoyed the ending theme song of this film. -by Jay Tack  

 
Lolita related links:
Baby:This brand is featured in the movie.
Victorian maiden:Sweet and elegant lolita brand.
Innocent World: Pure girl dresses.
Mary Magdalenell:Dreamy and fantasy dresses.

Yankee related links:
Jingai.com:Yesterday's Once More: A life of Yankee.
Chissou Yankee Damashi:Yankee PC Game. Free download!(main)
Lady's Picture BBS:
Pros Online Shop:Custom made Yankee style uniforms.
Furugi Gakuran Club:Used school uniform.