Kamikaze Girls

Kamikaze Girls centres on Momoko, a solitary teenager in a rural Japanese town who dresses in elaborate Rococo-style doll clothes and embroiders rather than mix with the people around her. Her routine is disrupted by Ichigo, a tough, loud biker girl whose tastes run to punk and American style, and who leads a scooter gang of her own. The two become unlikely friends over one summer, each pulling the other into her world, and that friendship draws them into conflict with Ichigo's former companions.

The film is a comedy directed by Tetsuya Nakashima, who also wrote the screenplay, and it was his first feature in the chronological list of his work, followed by Memories of Matsuko, Confessions, The World of Kanako and The Brightest Sun. Kyoko Fukada plays Momoko and Anna Tsuchiya plays Ichigo; Hiroyuki Miyasako, Ryoko Shinohara, Sadao Abe and Yoshinori Okada appear in supporting roles. It was produced by Satoru Ogura, Takashi Hirano and Yûji Ishida, and is based on a novel by Novala Takemoto.

Released in 2004, the film took about five million dollars worldwide, a modest figure that suggests a primarily domestic audience. On IMDb it holds a 7.2 rating from around nine thousand votes, slightly above its 7.1 on TMDB from a far smaller sample. A critics' rating of 6.3 from twenty-nine reviews sits below both audience scores, indicating that viewers have been warmer towards the film than reviewers were.