Taiwan is infatuated with a bevy of “big-breasted bodacious baby-faced babes” (童顏巨乳), so who could resist the chance to review a movie titled Oppai Volleyball, the Chinese title of which translates as “Big-Breasted Volleyball — The Determination to Win of a Hot-Blooded School Team” (巨乳排球:熱血校隊的決勝心願), from the land that inspired otaku mania? Oppai is clearly another Japanese word, like otaku, destined for inclusion in the Taiwanese, or even the English-language, lexicon, its wide-open vowel certain to inspire those who feel the need to express their appreciation of a fine rack.
The fact that Oppai Volleyball
(Oppai Bare) stars swimsuit model Haruka Ayase, who is widely acknowledged to have a fine pair (official bust/waist/hip measurement is 88/62/92, for those who need to know) gives this flick additional credentials. It needs to be stated right at the beginning that for those aiming to get an eyeful, disappointment awaits. As I left the theater, one member of the audience commented to his companion: “We had to sit though all that, and we never even got to see her tits.”
For truth be told, Oppai Volleyball is a rather innocent little piece of cinema, a junior high school version of National Lampoon with an inspirational message at the end.
Ayase is certainly very easy on the eyes, and manages a mix of confusion and determination, as well as wearing, in the opening scene, a short tartan skirt and plaid knee-high socks, which is going to have the otaku crowd positively drooling. That is, of course, the idea.
Ayase plays a teacher, Mikako Terashima, who on arrival at a new school gets given the school’s no-hope boys volleyball club. The five members are really only interested in one thing: fantasizing about oppai. Since these nerds are unlikely to get anywhere with the girls at the school, they resort to various antics to satisfy their curiosity about the female body. To give them some inspiration to become a proper sports team, Terashima agrees to let them check out her mammalian protuberances if they manage to win a game in the interschool competition. Such is the premise of the movie, which then progresses through every cliche of the underdog school movie genre, with the unlikely team members working like maniacs to hone their athletic skills for the ultimate prize: seeing their teacher’s oppai.
The story gets out, Terashima is fired, but the boys manage to make it to the main competition and give every ounce of themselves in a game against insuperable odds.
The potentially serious moral implications of the contract between the teacher and her students is at no point regarded as being of the slightest interest, which is in many ways a blessing, leaving Oppai Volleyball as an innocuous piece of inconsequential fluff with no aspirations to be anything else.
The word oppai occurs more times in the movie than one would have thought possible, and the breast gag is the only joke in the film. Well, perhaps not the only one; the director may be having his own private joke in having Ayase wear more clothes in Oppai Volleyball than she does in any number of her glamour photos.
Late last month Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro told the Philippine Senate that the nation has sufficient funds to evacuate the nearly 170,000 Filipino residents in Taiwan, 84 percent of whom are migrant workers, in the event of war. Agencies have been exploring evacuation scenarios since early this year, she said. She also observed that since the Philippines has only limited ships, the government is consulting security agencies for alternatives. Filipinos are a distant third in overall migrant worker population. Indonesia has over 248,000 workers, followed by roughly 240,000 Vietnamese. It should be noted that there are another 170,000
Enter the Dragon 13 will bring Taiwan’s first taste of Dirty Boxing Sunday at Taipei Gymnasium, one highlight of a mixed-rules card blending new formats with traditional MMA. The undercard starts at 10:30am, with the main card beginning at 4pm. Tickets are NT$1,200. Dirty Boxing is a US-born ruleset popularized by fighters Mike Perry and Jon Jones as an alternative to boxing. The format has gained traction overseas, with its inaugural championship streamed free to millions on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Taiwan’s version allows punches and elbows with clinch striking, but bans kicks, knees and takedowns. The rules are stricter than the
“Far from being a rock or island … it turns out that the best metaphor to describe the human body is ‘sponge.’ We’re permeable,” write Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie in their book Slow Death By Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things. While the permeability of our cells is key to being alive, it also means we absorb more potentially harmful substances than we realize. Studies have found a number of chemical residues in human breast milk, urine and water systems. Many of them are endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the body’s natural hormones. “They can mimic, block
Next week, candidates will officially register to run for chair of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). By the end of Friday, we will know who has registered for the Oct. 18 election. The number of declared candidates has been fluctuating daily. Some candidates registering may be disqualified, so the final list may be in flux for weeks. The list of likely candidates ranges from deep blue to deeper blue to deepest blue, bordering on red (pro-Chinese Communist Party, CCP). Unless current Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) can be convinced to run for re-election, the party looks likely to shift towards more hardline
RSS