Girl’s Blood

Girl’s Blood is about women who put on mediocre costumes and beat each other up for men’s entertainment. It’s not like I expected this movie to be an intelligent exploration of feminist themes. But wow! This movie was dumb!

The four leads in Girl’s Blood are Satsuki, Miko, Chinatsu and Mayu. When the film begins, Satsuki and Miko already work at Girl’s Blood. Girl’s Blood is an underground fighting club. But the fighting is about as real as a WWE wrestling match. Satsuski and Miko are joined on the roster by cutsey Mayu and mysterious Chinatsu. Miko immediately feels protective fondness for Mayu. So, the two become close. Chinatsu pursues Satsuki which makes her uncomfortable, despite her own desire for Chinatsu. What bonds the four women is the reappearance of Chinatsu’s husband. A martial arts master himself, he is an abusive piece of shit who wants total control of Chinatsu. The girls defeat him once, and Chinatsu and Satsuki begin a relationship. But Chinatsu’s husband returns, this time gunning for not just Chinatsu, but for the destruction of Girl’s Blood.

The climax to Girl’s Blood is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve seen in a WLW movie. Satsuki and the remaining members of Girl’s Blood challenge Chinatsu’s husband to a public match. If Satsuki wins, the husband leaves them alone. Chinatsu, visibly abused and assaulted by her husband is now so broken that she fights for his team. The match itself comes down to the last round. It’s Satsuki versus Chinatsu. Satsuki wants desperately to free Chinatsu from being beaten by her husband. So she does this… By beating her up. There isn’t even a moment where Satsuki says I can’t hurt you like this. She and Chinatsu fight brutally, Satuski slightly more so and therefor she wins. Obviously there’s contextual differences. But it’s still a baffling choice to have someone save their lover from abuse by beating the shit out of them.

Telling a good story isn’t Girl’s Blood’s first priority. Girl’s Blood is here to be sexy. Anything else is just a bonus. Even the fight scenes are just a vehicle for sexy shots. Slow-mo shots of women’s bodies make up a lot of the film’s two hour runtime. For people not attracted to women, Girl’s Blood has less than nothing for them. This is a movie that will stop the plot dead in order to get a slow motion shot of some tits. As I always think when I see a film with such overt sexualization, why are you trying so hard? These are beautiful actresses and you are pointing a camera at them! You don’t need to try so damn hard to make your audience notice them. I promise, they still look pretty even if they’re having character developing dialogue instead of spraying each other with water and giggling.

So, Satsuki is apparently trans. But the depiction is so poor I’m still not entirely certain which direction Satsuki is trans in. I’m pretty sure Satsuki is transmasc as she always wears a binder. Satsuki and Chinatsu and later, Miko talk about her being a man. But in classic show but not tell, nothing about Satsuki’s character shows this. Nothing about how this character acts depicts masculinity or someone trying to perform masculinity. Even in her personal fantasies, Satuski doesn’t look or perform a masculine role. This movie really hinges Satsuki’s entire identity on wearing a binder. As a cis person, I’m not an expert. But I’m pretty sure being trans masc involves more than wearing a binder and having non-specific trauma. Satsuki’s “male gender” doesn’t read like her being trans. It feels more like an attempt to make all the lesbianism between her and Chinatsu somehow less gay.

Girl’s Blood can’t tell a good trans story because it’s a sexist and reductive depiction of women. That means its depiction of gender overall is reductive. In their day-to-day, Satsuki comparatively dresses down. She wears natural makeup and dresses in women’s cargo pants instead of a skirt. She also has some character depth. The presentation of this character as someone who is more than just a sexy costume might indeed equal a trans masc identity for the creators of this film. But existing as someone who doesn’t reduce women to costumes or trans men to people who wear binders, this doesn’t fly. I’ve seen a few films (Summer Lover, Girlfriend) that were so bad at writing a lesbian that they accidentally a trans man. Girl’s Blood is here to provide balance with the opposite: a film so bad at portraying a trans man they accidentally a lesbian.

I can’t pretend like I wasn’t occasionally entertained by Girl’s Blood. But that doesn’t mean the film is good. It just means is that I enjoy martial arts and being a fucking lesbian. This is a dumb movie whose priority is to be fetish fuel. There are some positives to it. For one, it’s less obnoxious to than Bitch Slap, which is the most similar WLW movie I’ve seen. But that’s an incredibly low bar. I like both relationship dynamics and the broad strokes of each character. But finding these positives involves digging through a pretty thick overlaying layer of panty shots. Girl’s Blood is a movie that really enjoys looking at women. But it has very little understanding of the fact that women are complex people. Plus, the fight scenes aren’t even that good.

Overall rating: 3.1/10

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