Of Sand “Whales” and Assault Girls

Think Dune meets Tremors meets any number of Japanese movies featuring combatic female warriors in a futuristic setting!

It has been announced that Mamoru Oshii — most famous for the iconic hi-tech anti-cybernetic-terrorist anime Ghost in the Shell and the live-action VR scifi film Avalon — is writing and directing another live-action feature about a trio of heavily-armed (and armoured) female hunters who have come to a wasteland in their “angelic” mecha-suits to deal with the giant “Suna Kujira” (literally, sand whales) that have left the planet a ruin. They battle the creatures, “including the biggest of them all, the Madara Suna Kujira (spotted sand whale)” (AnimeNewsNetwork).

Titled Assault Girls, the film is based on two shorts that Oshii made for a pair of anthology films, Assault Girl: Kentucky no Hinako (which was part of the 2007 anthology Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden or “Women of Fast Food” and is viewable below — or was until They took it down) and Assault Girl 2 (from Kiru or “Kill” from 2008).

Oshii’s best work has been characterised by intelligent plotting, the complex metaphysical exploration of AI technologies and emotional depth. Whether or not he can bring these qualities to a film abou women battling sand worms, we can only wait and see. Either way, the film is likely to be a visual treat.

Assault Girls is scheduled for release in Japan on 19 December 2009.

• Source: TwitchFilm, AnimeNation via Avery