As we have mentioned many times before, the main concept of the shonen anime mostly follows the rule of the following image
What would happen, though, if this style was transferred to the corporate world, where female employees are the brawlers, the gang members, and essentially the ultimate fighters of this world? And what if the humor was even more slapstick than in anime, but also meta and self-deprecating? And what if some of the female fighters were actually male crossdressers? Seki Kazuaki and writer Bakarhythm provide the answer in a film that manages to be both “Crows Zero” and white-collar drama at the same time.
“Office Royale” is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
26-year-old Naoko, who also happens to be a hard-core otaku, has just gotten herself a good job in a Tokyo company, and is enjoying the laid-back and friendly atmosphere. However, beneath the seemingly normal setting, a rather intense gang warfare is raging on, with the female workers having set up groups according to their department, and brawling for supremacy. As the story starts, Shuri, one of the leaders of the three major factions, manages to win against her enemies, and to become the company’s top dog. Naoko and her two friends, in the meanwhile, seem to have no clue on what is happening outside their office duties, usually just chatting about TV dramas and diets. This, however, changes, when Ran, a newcomer appears, becoming Naoko’s best friend and also proving the strongest individual, not just in the company, but also the whole area, taking up whole groups of women by herself and destroying them. While Naoko is watching what is going on from the sidelines and commenting on the similarities with manga stories, a new, more powerful company appears, whose top fighters seem to be cross-dressing men, although the script actually does not comment on that. The challenges they pose, force Naoko to reveal her true self, while more powerful enemies keep coming.
Seki Kazuaki has created a narrative that is based on three, equally absurd, hilarious and entertaining elements. The first one is the office lady (OL) gangs, whose members act and are dressed more like yakuza than while collar professionals, despite the fact that a number of them are actually (ex) models. The second is the almost constant action, among office women nonetheless, which follows all the rules of the shonen anime, even including the concept of the best friend who becomes a rival and the training sequence of the once loser. The third is the multileveled sense of humor, which manages to be slapstick, meta, parodying and ironic at the same time, in one of the most intelligent comedies we have seen during the last few years. Particularly the fact that the few men who appear in the film are kind, polite, wimps emerges as an ingeniously mocking element, which seems to go against everything “serious” movies stand for during the latest year.
At the same time, the way the filmmakers make fun of all Japanese genre styles (yakuza, manga/anime adaptations, teenage delinquents etc) results in a style of humor and irony that could be easily described as blasphemous towards the local industry. Lastly, the antithesis between what is happening among the OL gangs and the way Naoko does not seem to either realize or care, also emerges as a rather funny trope, with its repetition actually working quite nicely for the narrative, particularly in the way it is edited into the movie.
The technical aspect complements the aforementioned notions. The hair style, the costumes, the make up all point towards this absurd mix, with the same applying to the polished cinematography, the intense coloring, the set design, as exhibited particularly in the cross-dressers den and the SFX that heighten the manga-like aesthetics of the movie, and in combination with the mostly hard-rock music result in a rather fitting and frequently complementing for the narrative, audiovisual extravaganza.
“Office Royale” is a truly fun movie to watch, particularly for fans of Japanese pop culture who can take a joke on their tastes, while the fact that the filmmakers seem to also mock themselves, apart from everything else, emerges as the movie’s best trait.
