QUICKLY, HAROLD, SHE HAS BICEPS! CATCH HER IN THE ACT OR SHE’LL NEVER LEARN!

Opposite the JB Hi-Fi in Bourke Street, there’s a DVD place called, according to the sign outside, “WE HAVE JAPan”. According to the receipts it’s called “Sunstar International”, but the “WE HAVE JAPan” sign, scrawled with faded red marker on an office supply whiteboard, dominates the facade. Dominates it for me, anyway, because it’s the only sign written in English, and I’m assuming it’s just there to snare any passing Japanophiles who avoid all-purpose Asian DVD places for fear of mistakenly buying something Korean. I, naturally, take the opposite approach: I like the fact I’ve never heard of 99% of what they have in stock, can’t read the blurbs and must make decisions based solely on how cool the cover looks. This method actually has a decent hit-rate; it’s gotten me a show about a funeral home janitor who travels back in time to stop her clients dying (Mop Girl); a woman who dresses as a ghost with a melted face to overcome her self-esteem issues while fighting crime (Gurren Onna); what appears to be the Japanese equivalent of an Epic Movie-style parody (Everyone Except Japan Sinks); a romanatic comedy where the cast change in and out of fat suits throughout the plot (Love on a Diet); and the complete 63 hour TV adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms which, thanks to the machine-translated subtitles, gives one character the unintentionally wonderful name “Empress Grandma”. On the negative side of things, pick your most reviled Anime trope and use your imagination. Or not (NB. I should point out that although this makes me sound like an impulse-buyer with more disposable income than I reasonably need, the stock in question is – and I have to be careful about my choice of words here – oddly inexpensive).

On the basis of Twins Mission’s cover, it’s a generic martial arts action-adventure with an unknown Sammo Hung Quotient. This iss, as far as I’m concerned, a decent enough reason to drop $3 – or 1/5 the price of seeingYear One, to put that in perspective – on a subtitle-free copy that will only work in the player at my parents’ house. Further research, however, reveals that there’s ever so slightly more to it, in that the “Twins” in question are a prefab girl band who, according to Wikipedia, are popular in both Hong Kong and China.

Despite (apparently) playing themselves in the movie, at no point do they sing. They do, however, beat up a bunch of other twins in order to save a dying child. This twins-vs-twins setup is supposedly the movie’s big gimmick, except that as the capital-T-Twins aren’t actually twins it just ends up looking like a scrolling beat ‘em up where the heroes fight copies of the same enemy over and over. And then, this happens:

She’s got about two minutes of screen time in which she shows up at random and fights the designated male lead while her evil colleagues subdue Sammo Hung with a piece of windowpane. I have no idea what the character’s name is, but Google informs me that she’s played by a Chinese bodybuilder called Liang Yue Yun. The fight’s not handled any differently to the other fights in the movie, with both combatants beating on each other until Yue Yun collapses, and her appearance isn’t followed by a comedy “surprise” reaction shot. Unforgivably, though, she never fights Sammo Hung.

If $3 proves too much, the entire thing is on YouTube. However, the site’s denizens, given their past form, are naturally upset about Yue Yun’s appearance. In both senses of the word.

Now, this comment might seem like an inane “hay guys wtf” brainfart at first glance, but notice that it has three thumbs up. Three dudes have, therefore, seen this comment and thought “Hoo boy, he’s got her number, alright” and made sure the world knows. The movie didn’t play it for laughs, so now it falls to us, the common man, to make her mockery our responsibility.

The next comment’s actually counterpointed, which is nice.

I do like the first poster’s attempt to disguise his revoltion as him just happening to pick out a logical flaw. Sure, the movie opens with a bunch of ninjas using a magical statue to make a train explode and ends with giant DNA helixes materialising out of thin air but let’s not be pedantic.  =P lol

I have, naturally, saved the crowning moment of shittiness for last:

Yes, how dare this woman look different to the way I want her to! It’s as if she’s an autonomous being or some shit. And, in case the fact has somehow slipped your mind during this scene of two people punching each other, this is a movie largely about people punching each other, so it’s actually more logical for the empunchening women to look like this than, say, look like members of a pop duo. Did Sammo Hung not teach you that action movie stars come in all shapes and sizes?

If it’s any consolation, she’s probably not interested in you, either.

Actual fake muscles, incidentally, look like this: