A young woman sets off to travel the universe and discovers that a lot of it’s full of inappropriate men, which is why is her father thoughtfully gave her a chastity bracelet that can detect “evil intent” and allow her to transform into the superhero Star Virgin to protect her virginity. We first see her do this in a weird reptile planet where, for some reason she’s being crucified as a giant Jabba the Hut-like frog extends his gruesome tongue towards her.
Produced with the involvement of props team Ogawa Modelling who wad worked on Bye-Bye Jupiter, director Ichiro Omomo intended Star Virgin (スターヴァージン) to be a tokusatsu take on the Supergirl movie from 1984. A pilot version made in 1986 was apparently more serious in tone, though the completed film released two years later is deliberately silly and includes a series of references to contemporary Hollywood cinema such as Eiko and her Earth friend Ko running away from a ball of dung spun by a giant dung beetle like in Indiana Jones, while the robots have a heads up interface that’s clearly inspired by The Terminator, and the inside of the villain’s lair resembles the inside of the ships in Star Wars.
But while Eiko seems to be an intergalactic princess, she only speaks Japanese and the design of her fish-like spacecraft, which doesn’t look that big but has room for a giant bubble bath, is inspired more by Japanese sci-fi manga. She’s apparently come to Earth after the bad experience on the reptile planet because she thought there was a chance of it becoming civilised in the future, but is immediately drawn into a bizarre conspiracy run by a man who’s been perfecting various gadgets for the last 84 years in order to reverse Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. Eiko’s new bug-obsessive friend Ko (Fujio Takumi) annoys him by first guessing the First World War and then suggesting perhaps his siphoning off of the imperial navy’s resources is one reason they lost.
Nevertheless, Ko’s indifference lays bare a generational divide in which wartime defeat has become a kind of joke and something that only old people go on about rather than a serious wound on the national psyche. Colonel Arashiyama (Isao Sasaki), however, is intent on turning the cold war hot so Russia will nuke America, while Japan will be safe because of the protective barrier he’s placed around it. He’s also enabled his secret island to float in the sky for protection and has kidnapped Ko because he thinks he’s stolen a precious gem that stems back to the gods of Japan’s creation myth which he needs to win the war as if he’s essentially weaponising Japaneseness. Predictably, he wants Eiko to be his new princess and dresses her in white gown while taking some kind of elixir to make himself young and virile. Of course, she only needs to string him along until he finally goes too far and activates the chastity belt.
Not being able to activate it at will seems like a serious design fault, while it’s not altogether clear if it would still activate if Eiko herself were to pursue a romance. Not that that’s all that likely given the frankly inappropriate treatment she receives from men other than Ko. In fact, she’s a bit confused why he doesn’t try anything, but it’s mainly because he’s too busy thinking about bugs. In any case, they have to team up together to escape Colonel Arashiyama’s lair and stop all of his dastardly plans. Though it was clearly made on a shoestring, the special effects and production design are incredibly impressive and have a real sense of charm and invention. Never taking itself too seriously, the film nevertheless completely commits itself to its bizarre world of alien princesses and conspiracy, before finally returning to what it presented itself as in the beginning, a teenage girl’s travel diary. Even the evil robot’s programming is broken as he’s taken in by some local children and becomes their friend, just as Eiko and Ko enjoy a fun time at beach in a classic idol movie-style ending.
Windows on Worlds 