YEAR 2005: BLUDGEONING ANGEL DOKURO-CHAN

Where possible I generally try to list a femme formidable's first appearance in any medium before moving on to secondary appearances.  However, the subject I've chosen for 2005 first appeared in a Japanese "light novel," which to my knowledge has not been translated and probably won't be in the near future.  Since there will be other cases where I'll have no knowledge of the first medium-- as with video games-- this will be one place where I feel justified in leapfrogging over the original media-appearance, and going to the only version currently available: an anime adaptation.

While typing nationalities is generally a no-no, I don't think it unfair to state that certain nationalities excel in particular departments.  For whatever reason, Japanese popular entertainers of the 20th and 21st centuries excel at creating scenarios of extreme sadism, sometimes for the purpose of slapstick comedy.  BLUDGEONING ANGEL DOKURO-CHAN is one example of this trend.

The basic plot is simple albeit thoroughly bizarre. Male high school student Sakura Kusakabe finds himself forced to live with an "angel" named Dokuro Mitsukai.  She tells him that in the future he's destined to invent a serum that will retard aging in females, so that the feminine gender will become dominated by "Lolitas."  Dokuro is initially sent to kill Sakura, but she decides simply to live with and monitor him instead.  However, she frequently teases him sexually, and then punishes him for his reactions by clubbing him into bloody rags with her magical spiked bat "Excalibolg."  Following each execution, she brings him back to life none the worse for wear, though Sakura apparently retains his memories of every destructive experience.

There's absolutely no depth to all of this psycho-slapstick, in contrast to some of the more psychologically insightful moments of URUSEI YATSURA or the more recent LOVE HINA.  Its main virtue lies in the artists' ability to come up with new scenarios of absurd torture, so it may prove rather repetitive even for lovers of this sort of weirdness.

YEAR 2004: CATWOMAN

I probably wouldn't do a post on the 2004 CATWOMAN film if 2004 hadn't been such a dub year for femmes formidables-- especially since I haven't yet found time to do a post on the first live-action film Catwoman.  But it's at least of minor significance that this was the first cinematic work to feature Catwoman as the main character.

I chose the above photo of Halle Berry's Catwoman in her "proto-cat" costume because it would have improved the film by 20-30% had the filmmakers gone with these not-very-catlike outfit, rather than the raging horror they did use.  I'm sure any and all readers are sick of seeing it, but just with a view toward equal time, here it is again:

The film's many defects have been rehearsed so often that I hardly need add to the chorus, though I was particularly averse to the idiocy of having Sharon Stone play a villain who was semi-invulnerable but couldn't fight her way out of a catbox.  There was one half-decent scene in which the Catwoman in her proto-outfit beats some thugs with caporeira moves, but at one point the maleness of the stunt double is evident, so that rather spoiled the effect.

The only other thing I can semi-praise is that the basic idea of a line of Catwomen passed down from the cult of Bast or whatever-it-was was a clever way to get around the fact that this and any future Catwoman scripts couldn't count on bringing back either actress Michelle Pfeiffer or the character she played in BATMAN RETURNS.  I still wouldn't mind seeing the basic idea used for another Catwoman film, as long as absolutely no one else associated with the film came on board again.

YEAR 2003: BEATRIX KIDDO

Without a doubt Beatrix Kiddo, central character of KILL BILL Parts 1 and 2, was the most notable femme formidable to debut in 2003.

In large part the character derives from the cinematic version of the manga character Lady Snowblood, discussed in this post.  In contrast to the manga series, which emphasizes Snowblood's career as a professional assassin prior to setting her on the road to revenge, KILL BILL barely touches on Beatrice's assassin-career.  Like the 1973 film the narrative action concentrates entirely on the revenge theme. 

There are still significant differences, however.  The Snowblood character becomes an assassin because of her parents' ill-use by exploitive criminals, individuals who care nothing about her or her family.  We don't know how Beatrix becomes an assassin, though there's a minor suggestion that she may have been brought into the trade because of her romance with Bill, master of a gang of mostly female assassins.  One scene from KILL BILL PT 2 shows Bill and Beatrix comporting themselves as lovers just before Beatrix seeks training from Bill's old kung-fu mentor Pai Mei.  However, when she becomes pregnant with Bill's child, Beatrix decides that she wants out of the assassination game, and fakes her death to escape Bill's influence.  But he tracks her down, and after letting his other female assassins beat the crap out of Beatrix, Bill attempts to blow her brains out.  She survives to pursue revenge-trail on the persons who had been nearest and dearest to her (with the likely exception of Elle Driver, a female assassin who clearly envied Beatrix's relationship with Bill).

Since the spectacular martial-arts scenes of the first film have been lauded by thousands before me, I won't bother repeating that mantra.  The second film places less emphasis on action, devoting more time to a character study of the dysfunctional relationship of Bill and Beatrix, not to mention incorporating writer-director Quentin Tarantino's meditations on the nature of heroism.

YEAR 2002: ALICE (RESIDENT EVIL)

Lara Croft remains the best known action-heroine created for an American videogame.  However, the zombie-killing game RESIDENT EVIL has one superior distinction: that it spawned the most financially successful film-series to come out of a game-franchise.  Five Resident Evil films have come out as of this date, and all have starred the heroine created for the first film, the zombie-fighter Alice, consistently played by Milla Jovovich.

Following BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER it became more common for monster-fighters to be more than a little monstrous themselves.  Alice begins her heroine-career as an employee of the Umbrella Corporation, an institution responsible for unleashing a plague of zombies upon the world.  Alice turns against the Corporation and attempts to help ordinary people menaced by the subhuman creatures.  She's originally just a highly skilled mortal but exposure to the zombie-virus enhances her strength and skills to phenomenal levels, at least in some of the movies.

Most of the other characters, whether continuing presences or one-shot types, are largely forgettable, so Alice would seem to be the character responsible for selling the film-series to its fans.

YEAR 2001: PRINCESS YUKI

THE PRINCESS BLADE was a one-shot take on the 1970s manga-series LADY SNOWBLOOD, albeit transplanted to a vague post-apocalyptic environment.

Princess Yuki is the number-one swordswoman of a clan of assassins that serves an oppressive future government.  In contrast to SNOWBLOOD she isn't initially motivated to avenge her mother's mother, but takes arms against the tyrants belatedly after she learns that they were responsible for said murder.

In contrast to SNOWBLOOD the movie doesn't attempt to evoke the poetic contrasts of the cold-hearted but warm-bodied assassin.  But the swordplay choreography by Donnie Yen is better than average.

YEAR 2000: MAX GUEVARA

DARK ANGEL, a two-season wonder produced by James Cameron, took place in a slightly dystopic future not very different from the present.  Main character Max Guevara (Jessica Alba) was a genetically engineered super-soldier who escaped government confinement and attempted to blend with regular humanity, taking the job of a bicycle messenger.  But not only does she have to dodge agency hunters, she gets embroiled in freedom-fighting by her mentor/lover, a cyber-journalist named Logan.  To further complicate things, other super-soldiers, as well as beast-human hybrids called transgenics, manage to congregate in the same city where Max hangs her hat.

Cameron's future-world shows little original thought, but the fight-scenes are pretty kickass, frequently showing lean but super-strong Jessica Alba slamming around men twice her size.

As a side-note, I have to say that Alba is one of the few actresses who got worse the more experience she got, as witness her work in MACHETE next to this series.

YEAR 1999: BATGIRL

Though the Barbara Gordon Batgirl remains the best known to the general public, Cassandra Cain is on the whole a more original transformation of the "female Batman assistant" concept.

In keeping with the darker spirit of comic books in the 1990s-- as well as her surname, modeled on that of the first person (according to the Bible) who committed a murder-- Cassandra begins with a stain on her soul, in contrast to the many simon-pure heroes of the Golden and Silver Ages. Long before becoming Batgirl, young Cassandra-- the child of assassins Lady Shiva and David Cain-- is trained to become an assassin herself.  Not knowing any better, she does kill a victim, only to have such a negative reaction as to flee the influence of her father.  She later finds sanctuary and re-training with the Batman Family, and adopts the name "Batgirl" with the blessing of Barbara Gordon.  She later lost the title to another claimant, and then to a renascent Gordon-Batgirl.

The scripts, initially by Kelly Puckett, were fairly complex but I personally did not take to the manga-influenced art of co-creator Damion Scott.