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ZUTABORO

By Hajime HASHIMOTO

TOEI COMPANY, LTD. - as SALES All rights, World

Crime - Completed 2015

Originally from the novel based on a true story and the second film for a sequence of “Waruboro”series. Koichi, who is a high school guy, gets involved in a painful conflict among high school villains, gangs and yakuza. He fights against them together with his bad friends to survive in his town.

- Year of production
- 2015
- Genres
- Crime, Action/Adventure
- Countries
- JAPAN
- Languages
- JAPANESE
- Budget
- 0.3 - 0.6 M$
- Duration
- 110 mn
- Director(s)
- Hajime HASHIMOTO
- Writer(s)
- Gettsu ITAYA
- Cast
- Tasuku NAGASE
- Producer(s)
- Hidetomo SUGAYA (TOEI VIDEO CO, LTD.)
- Synopsis
- Koichi, Yakko, and Charm are prominent members of a juvenile delinquent group in their hometown. They graduate from junior high, and want to continue to throw their weight around in high school, so they join the roughest local bike gang, Tachikawa Hell's Gate.
  
  However, an insanely brutal hazing process for new recruits awaits them. To escape from this daily hell, Koichi becomes friends with Ueki and Oni at high school, and begins to revel in a new life of womanizing and other pleasures. Gradually, he sees less and less of his old buddies.
  
  The gang's hazing inevitably focuses on the tough Yakko, who is tortured to within an inch of his life. This eventually breaks him psychologically, turning him into a recluse.
  
  “I know I'm pathetic, but I'm too scared to do anything.”
  
  Koichi is moved to tears by his close friend's shocking transformation. To take revenge against the Tachikawa Hell's Gate, he makes up his mind to become an underling of his yakuza uncle Takemi.
  
  Now filled with confidence thanks to his new gang affiliation, Koichi meets his other uncle Mitsuru, a yakuza boss.
  
  “It's easy work, am I right?”
  
  He gains firsthand experience of a world without mercy that is dominated by violence, and is horrified by its overwhelming brutality that cannot be subdued by his own mere fists alone...
  
  Even so, he tells his mother Ryoko that he is willing to sacrifice himself because he lacks the power to protect the people he loves, but she is infuriated by his decision. Her strong sense of justice fuels an intense hate of the yakuza. Ryoko's unwillingness to understand Koichi's anguish leads him to turn his back on her, and he even begins to distance himself from his girlfriend Kiyomi, as his despair drives him to abandon those closest to him.
  
  Meanwhile, Ueki is attacked by a group of thugs with a lingering grudge against him, and sustains serious injuries. Oni sees Ueki shed tears of shame and frustration as he lies upon a hospital bed, and heads out to retaliate. However, Koichi is terrified into inaction by the sight of Ueki's total incapacitation, and is incapable of following after Oni. He calls his uncle Mitsuru to plead for his help, but suddenly realizes that he is totally reliant on others to fight his battles.
  
  “It's not about whether you can or can't do something. A man either takes action, or no action at all.”
  
  Koichi accepts the reality of the situation he finds himself in, and vows to stand up to his enemies, not as a member of Hell's Gate or the yakuza, but as a man in his own right. Yakko hears of his close friends' crisis, and joins the fray.
  
  Anger, sorrow, fear, isolation... In order to confront these emotions, and to come to terms with himself, a man named Koichi goes to war!