Punks, in their various post-Elvis incarnations, have been a feature of Japanese society — and films — for almost half a century. More recent, though, is the vogue for what might be called punks-brawl-for-fun films, which celebrate the joy and glory of smashing heads together with your four or 40 best pals.
One progenitor was “Be Bop High School,” a long-running manga by Kazuhiro Kiuchi that focused on punks at a bottom-of-the-barrel private high school and their cool, if comic, dustups. The manga spawned everything from feature films to pachinko games.
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