Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Jmovie review: Oppai Volleyball


Somewhere in Japan during the 70s, Terashima Mikako (Ayase Haruka) starts her job at a new middle school and is immediately assigned to the male volleyball club. Unbeknown to her, the club members are only interested in having fun and dreaming about oppai including thinking about ways to replicate the oppai grabbing sensation. They are so inept that they even got trashed by the girls volleyball team. Mikako faces the arduous task of motivating this group of youngsters.

If I had a teacher like this, my life would have turned out different.

Somehow, Mikako ends up promising the boys that she will show them her oppai if they manage to win a game in the next inter-school volleyball competition which is more than enough motivation for them.Yes, the selling point of Oppai Volleyball is that the underdog protagonists are entering playing to see Ayase Haruka's oppai, which makes me just insanely jealous. I feel like my high school life was incomplete because I never had the fortune of having such a beautiful and dedicated teacher.

Come to think of it, the only shots I've seen of her cleavage are from her gravure days.

The rest of the movie is pretty standard fare. Training montages accompanied by 70s music. Introducing the opponents who of course must wear black to signify that they are the villains who stand between our heroes and their oppai dream. The revelation about Mikako's past and her own personal demons. We've seen it all before, just never with oppai as the main plot.

Ohgo Suzuka has a nice 10 min cameo. Too bad she's in Sakura's alternate costume no.10 for like 5 seconds.

There is also the story of the new member of the team, Jo who happens to be the only one who has experience in the sport but it turns out to be the weakest part of the movie. Its almost like a throwaway plot line that they were forced to add in order to pad it out.


The writer was probably ticking the box of all sports underdog cliches and felt that having a new ace in the team is necessary. Except Jo was never shown to be an ace and the only plot that couldn't have been done without his presence was the train yard fight which is probably the weakest part of the movie.

Things I never achieved in high school.

I find the writing a bit unfocused. Too much of trying to please everyone and thus having a movie that doesn't flow well. However, I still had fun watching Oppai Volleyball. The music was great and its fun to watch a movie about teenagers that doesn't resort to crude homour. The novelty of oppai didn't wear off but if the movie were about something else it would have been pretty boring. If the concept of the movie strikes your fancy, I'd recommend it. Just lower your expectations and you'll have fun.

The 70s are presented as such an innocent time and I find the low level fanservice very fun.

3 comments:

pcurve said...

love the last screencap... composition, color, theme, etc.

This was a cute movie. Thanks for the recommendation Mike.

Akiramike said...

No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.

generic viagra said...

It's a beautiful movie ... the message he gives is very important, the first time I saw impressed me very much because in the end all the girls realize that loves volleyball, well the only thing that remains for me is that... I recommend movie you see it is very good.