Honeko Akabane's Bodyguards

It’s tough being a high school kid in a Japanese film. Work is intense. Romance is easy to find, but with heartbreak usually just around the corner. And then there’s the extreme violence.

Barely a minute goes by in this one before the message flashes out across myriad phones: ‘Kill Akabane Honeko and get $100,000,000.’ There is no time to wonder what this is about or who is behind it before an opportunistic assasin moves in on the titular schoolgirl, who is just walking along a path with her friend. Events then proceed very quickly as a passer-by leaps to her defence, and although the resulting fight is spectacular, another key tenet of the film is swiftly set in place: Honeko, easily distracted, has no idea that any of this is going on.

The strongest bit of casting in the whole film is Deguchi Natsuku as the unwitting target. There’s a natural sweetness about her and a childlike effervescence that keeps Honeko from seeming too staid when she occasionally lectures people on the importance of abiding by the law. The freshness of Deguchi’s performance makes the notion of her ignorance believable, at least for a time, and keeps the first half of the film from getting irritating despite the rather clumsy comedy plotline.

Honeko, as we soon learn, is the daughter of the country’s security minister, a fact of which she is blissfully unaware. He has kept it secret in order to protect her. Wanting her to enjoy a normal life rather than having to be locked away in a secure compound, he has hired the aforementioned passer-by, Ibuki (Raul Murakami) to be her bodyguard – though as the lad is a foot taller than anyone else in the film, with a shock of bleached hair and cheekbones that ought to have ‘danger: sharp objects’ signs attached, this is hardly the most discreet choice. One has to wonder if he’s playing games, especially as he fails to give Ibuki one salient piece of information: that everybody else in Honeko’s class at Sosoji High School is a professional bodyguard too.

Each possessed of a specialist skill like hacker, animal handler or – yes – torturer, these intensively trained teenagers are led by Somejima Sumihiko (Daiken Okudaira), a kid whom Ibuki initially mistakes for a bullying victim. Naturally, the two don’t get along, with the blonde emerging as one of those rule-breaking mavericks that Hollywood is so fond of. Seemingly as much to keep him out of trouble as anything else, Sumihiko assigns Ibuki to flirting with Honeko and becoming her boyfriend. A genuine romance soon develops between the two, but not without complications, as one of the people targeting the girl decides that she wants Ibuki for herself.

There’s a sub-plot in the second half which sees Ibuki trying to track down a double agent, and the final act centres on a dance performance in a parody of more traditional high school films. There’s a fair bit of broad comedy, at which Murakami is not particularly adept, and most of the rest is fighting, at which, thankfully, he is.

Ishikawa Jun’ichi is not the most adept of action directors and, with 40 people to keep track of at once in some scenes, has set himself a difficult task, but he does recognise the stand-out ability of some of his stars, and makes sure that they get their chance to shine. Height is often a disadvantage in martial arts work, especially in small spaces, but Murakami works around this well. Takahashi Hikaru , who plays Honeko’s best friend, Nei, is particularly impressive and worth watching. We don’t get to see them fight each other, but with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of bad guy minions to work through, everybody gets to do their thing.

Overplaying its hand at times and occasionally dragging in the dramatic scenes, Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards is not everything that fans might have hoped for. The acting is mostly pretty one-dimensional so we don’t have much reason to invest in the outcome, though there’s a touching scene near the end when the heroine and her father briefly interact. That said, if you’re just looking for a lot of fighting and you don’t care how silly it gets – a pretty good formula for some fans at Fantasia, where it made its international début – then it could well suffice.

Reviewed on: 26 Jul 2025