Tokyo Tribe

Sion Sono’s adapting Tokyo Tribe2, a manga that ran for nine years in street-culture magazine Boon before it folded in 2008. The plot: a bomb in Shibuya, gangs carving up the city, Wu-RONZ working through the opposition, Kai Deguchi stuck between his captain’s pacifism and the mounting body count.

Sono made Suicide Club and Love Exposure. He’s the kind of director who follows an idea past taste, past sense. The Tokyo Tribe trailer shows him doing the same thing here—neon, camp, obvious pleasure in treating the premise as material to play with rather than a text to honor. He doesn’t care about being faithful.

Which might be the only reason to watch it. A straightforward gang-war film would be forgettable. Sono soaking everything in trash and excess might find something real in the premise. Or it might just be noise.

Rather watch him fail at something weird than win at something safe.