Iron Virgin Jun

Original Title: 鉄の処女 JUN (アイアンバージン)
Romanized: Tetsu no Shojo Jun (Aian Baajin)
Literal: Iron Virgin Jun

Plot Synopsis

Jun Asakura is the daughter of one of the most powerful families in Japan. A family known for the strength--both physical and mental--of its women. When Jun's mom plans a "bride auction" for her 18th birthday, she flees the party before she gets married off to some random creepy rich kid. But even though Jun is no ordinary girl, she's going to have a heck of a time escaping the veritable army her mom has out to haul her back and make a woman out of her.

Quick Review

Rating: 1 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-10-24

You have to admire Go Nagai's ability to come up with absolutely insane ideas, write stories around them with something resembling a straight face, and not only get them published, but animated as well. Sometimes the result is a sort of tasteless mad genius. Other times... well, it's just sorta crazy. Iron Virgin Jun is one of those other times. As usual, Nagai manages to supply the collection of characters with a likability and something resembling believable personalities, and Jun is practically worth the price of admission: She may wear a frilly pink dress and spends most of the flick fleeing raving maniacs, but she's no damsel in distress--she's got a meaty physique that would impress characters from Fist of the North Star, Hoganesque wrestling moves on tap, and the only fight she loses is one against three helicopters full of snipers. That's the good. The bad is that the whole thing is savagely tasteless, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, seems to be missing any backstory, and the end is conclusive yet oddly melancholy. At least there's a lot of half-decent action--fisticuffs galore, a car chase in a pink microvan, and a massive, brutal, pro-wrestling-style brawl between Jun and her towering beast of a mother at the climax.

Iron Virgin Jun may well have some guilty appeal to folks who dig Nagai's quality limbo, but for me at least it seemed to bend so far backward it hit the ground. If you're going to watch it, definitely don't do it alone--it practically demands to be heckled with friends, and make sure they're friends with really bad taste.

US DVD Review

Anime Works' DVD is basic but gets the job done. The video is reasonably good looking (or at least as good-looking as the garish original material allows), and it has stereo audio in Japanese and English plus soft subtitles (which aren't terribly accurate, unfortunately). Oddly the credits (which have a bit of story to go with them) are left completely in Japanese, followed by the English credits with no soundtrack at all. There are no special features at all.

Content Guide

Anime Works puts 13-up on the box, which would be fine--it's shockingly modest--except for the entire concept (rapists for hire?) and one short scene with the Cherry Boys doing bad things to the household staff just for show. That easily bumps it up to 16-up.

Violence: 2 - A lot of wrestling-style brawls, but it's not terribly graphic.

Nudity: 1 - Shockingly, absolutely no exposed flesh, although those phallic codpieces should count for something.

Sex/Mature Themes: 3 - The entire concept is tasteless, and there's a brief, undetailed scene with the baddies ravishing the maids--whether it's consensual or not isn't clear.

Language: 1 - Again, shockingly clean, at least in the subtitles.

Notes and Trivia

Based on a short comic series of the same name by Go Nagai. As usual, it's not available in English. The original comic version ran during 1983 in the monthly "Big Comic Sprits," and was published as a single-volume compilation in 1984. It was reprinted in 1992, and again in 2000.

The Japanese characters used in the title literally translate as Iron Virgin. It's a play on words, since that is how "iron maiden" (the torture device) is written in Japanese. However, to make the difference clear, the title of this OAV (and the comic version) is captioned with phonetic characters for the English "Iron Virgin" instead of "Iron Maiden," implying that it's intended to be read that way and that the meaning is a bit different. It may well also be intended as a play on the name of the heavy metal band (which is written phonetically as Iron Maiden in Japanese, not using the literal characters); they were relatively popular at the time the comic was originally written.

Three random cultural side notes: The rewards for Jun on the TV screen are mistranslated; the reward for information is listed as 10,000,000 yen (roughly US$100,000) and the reward for her capture is 100,000,000 yen (roughly US$1,000,000). For some reason Anime Works' subtitles say 1 million yen and 10 million yen respectively, which isn't correct either literally or as a rough translation to US dollars.

It's noted that although his name is actually Kurata (a real Japanese family name), Jun nicknames her servant Kratta (or, more accurately, Kuratta, though it sounds more like the former). I'm not positive about this, but I'd guess this is because "kuratta" can mean roughly "ate it" (as in "took a punch" or "wiped out") so it might be a joke on his rather scrawny physique and tendency to get knocked unconscious every time he tries to help in a fight.

Finally, the pink microbus that they commandeer and spend half the show tooling around in is actually a real type of vehicle in Japan; called a "K" wagon, they're a cheap alternative to a minivan or full-sized car. They're not built very solidly and have a very small engine, but make for decent, inexpensive transportation in Japan's cramped city streets. They're not, however, often seen in bright pink--usually white.

Availability

Available in the US from Anime Works on bilingual DVD. Was previously available on subtitled or dubbed VHS. (RightStuf has the DVD on clearance for $6 while supplies last.)

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