undead brainspasm: More on Oshii's Assault Girls

Mamoru Oshii is a legendary Japanese director, whose best-known work is the groundbreaking anime movie (and subsequent franchise) Ghost in the Shell and the excellent live-action sci-fi film Avalon. For some time we've been reporting on his follow-up to the latter, Assault Girls [aka Asaruto gâruzu], which was released in Japan at the end of last year.

The story is a re-visiting of Oshii's central concept of a virtual reality game as utilised in Avalon.

The characters are players of a revolutionary game, Avalon, in which players dive into a virtual world in artificial bodies modeled after their own. The goal is to advance to higher levels by destroying gigantic snake monsters. Players of this game include Colonel and Lucifer, as well as new acquaintances Gray (Meisa Kuroki) and Jäger (Yoshikatsu Fujiki). (Source)

See this previous Undead Backbrain article for more details.

The following extract from an article on the Miccokoivisto blog gives a good outline of the film's background:

The history of Assault Girls can be traced back to 2006, when Oshii directed a film called The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters. This animation feature was considered too obscure for wider international distribution. In Japan, however, it spun a 25 minute live action spin off The Women of Fast Food (2006), which was followed by feature length sequel Shin onna tachiguishi retsuden (2007). It was in this episode film that Assault Girl made her debut. The sci-fi story followed a female warrior, Colonel (Hinako Saeki), fighting gigantic snake creatures on a deserted planet. Assault Girl 2 was released next year as a part of the episode film Kill. Unrelated to the original and leaning more towards art house than action, Assault Girl 2 depicted the symbolic fight between the archangels Michael (Yoko Fujita) Lucifer (Rinko Kikuchi). A feature length extension of the concept, Assault Girls is a combination of its predecessors, as well as Oshii’s 2001 movie Avalon.