When caught between taking pro wrestling too seriously and looking at it like cosplay martial arts, I lean towards the latter precisely because of cultures like this. This documentary gets in the weeds of starry-eyed trainee aspirations, as well as the physical and psychological disfigurement of those dreams that come one dropkick to the face at a time. Saika Takeuchi getting to debut doesn’t even feel like a victory at all. I wonder how much of this only happened to the extent that it did because there were cameras present; then again, I try not to think about this documentary too much.
Genre: Documentary
Actor: Chigusa Nagayo, Hisako Sasaki, Kaoru Maeda, Meiko Satomura, Saika Takeuchi, Yuka Sugiyama
Director: Jano Williams, Kim Longinotto