Story

The world’s first “pink musical” – a combination of musical and pinku eiga (Pink films, a low-budget softcore porn genre of Japanese cinema).Bored thirtysomething Asuka (Sawa Masaki) works in a factory in a rural town and is engaged to her cloying boss, Taki. Her life takes a turn for the dramatic when she runs into a kappa, a mythical green Japanese creature with a horned beak, tortoise shell back, and bald pate. She discovers that the kappa is a reincarnated Aoki (Yoshiro Umezawa), her high-school classmate who drowned when he was 17 and who has continued to harbor a crush for Asuka beyond death and rebirth. Aoki’s sudden intrusion forces Asuka to make a decision about what she wants from her life.

Overview

Director Shinji Imaoka (one of the “Seven Lucky Gods” of pink films) alternates erotically-charged sex scenes and kinky comedy with wild, poppy musical numbers featuring songs by Germany’s Stereo Total. Frequent Wong-Kar Wai collaborator and world-renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle was in charge of the film’s photography, shaping both the film’s manic musical numbers and also its touching, ethereal romance between the lady and the kappa.