250th Review: Hell’s Garden: Office Royale (2021)

Hell’s Garden: Office Royale; or, The Art of Delinquent War
     Your problem is you don't know what you are missing. Dignity. Your fighting lacks elegance. That's not office lady fighting. It is just street fighting.
After catching a break from experiencing “high culture”, I decided to start off the year 2022 with something a bit more mainstream and light-hearted. Following an MDL recommendation, I gave a chance to Kazuaki Seki’s Hell’s Garden: Office Royale. Super colourful poster and actress Mei Nagano were enough to get me hooked.

Release Info

Directed by: Kazuaki Seki Starring: Mei Nagano, Alice Hirose, Nanao, Rina Kawaei, Miyuki Oshima

Language: Japanese Original Title: 地獄の花園 Runtime: 102 min

Synopsis
Naoko Tanaka (Mei Nagano) is a 26-year-old office lady. She tries to perform her tasks as diligently as possible, but little do outsiders of the corporate world know that within big companies there is always a power struggle between factions of office ladies. Similarly to yakuza gangs, they challenge each other and fight for dominance. These battles are put to an end with the arrival of a new OL executive, Ran Hojo (Alice Hirose). The new leader unites rival cliques and even befriends Naoko. All of a sudden, Naoko gets kidnapped by office ladies from another company. Ran rushes to rescue her friend, but she is no match to the opponents. It turns out that Naoko is not as innocent as she looks. To protect Ran, she stands up against power-hungry OLs…

The Way of the Office Lady
I have to say that Hell’s Garden: Office Royale is simple, ridiculous fun all the way through. Because of its witty puns and outrageous battle scenes, I thought the film is based on a particular manga/anime material, but it is actually a love letter to the delinquent heroine genre, which gave us, for instance, Hana no Asuka Gumi.

Think of this film as a mix between Shomuni drama, Tekken game, and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. It’s all about wild extravaganza revolving around the “what-if” scenario of office ladies being skilled warriors.

Some viewers remark that the film is a parody of the original Battle Royale (2000), but I believe this is not the case. One could think such kind of material could easily be turned into an exploitation flick filled with NSFW jokes, but director Kazuaki Seki and screenwriter Bakarhythm approach the issues of rivalry and workplace abuse with utmost gentleness and innocent humour. To me, the movie feels like a pastiche of Enter the Dragon (1973) with regard to the fact that, in both pictures, the main protagonist has to face a series of formidable foes in order to get to the final boss, who is the most powerful one.

As for the performances, well, I tried the film for Mai Nagano, but I stayed for Alice Hirose. The two are just amazing together. I really enjoyed the sweet “friendship” scenes between them as well as the fight sequences. In addition, make sure to be prepared for surprised cameos from veteran actors and actresses, such as Kenichi Endo, Masanobu Katsumura, and Shigeru Muroi. I failed to recognise some of them under tons of make-up!

Recommendations
If you are looking for something to improve your mood, then Hell’s Garden: Office Royale is a very good choice. The movie is funny, yet by no means vulgar. It certainly deserves a sequel or a movie similar in style focusing on some other profession, such as taxi driving or airline services. Please make it happen FujiTV!

Overall score: 9/10

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