Hot-shot reporter Nami (Eri Kanuma) employs some underhand tactics in order to get her scoop, which just so happens to be on rape and its consequences. Cold and ruthless, Nami will stop at nothing to badger her damaged victims into confessing all the gory details of their assaults so that she may turn them into exploitative media fodder and maintain her status as top office reporting lady. That is until the tables turn in quite spectacularly horrific style ...

Nami, the third edition to the Angel Guts box set, continues the exploration of rape and its personal, social and cultural implications this time through the film's namesake, Nami. This plucky young journalist has no qualms whatsoever about physically tackling her victims, literally wrestling their sad stories from them. This, of course, provides a wealth of engineered situations in which to depict the act of rape and director Noboro Tanaka certainly doesn't miss any opportunity to make this a most bizarre addition to the shocking series.

Though unconnected to the former Angel Guts entry, Red Classroom, but for the common theme of rape that links them all, Nami is, like its predecessor, hot-footing it down the media avenue. Whereas the former made a more subtle comment on the media's perpetration of ideas of sexualised women, the latter clearly sees the media as a predatory force in its own right. There are, however, still very fluid ideas about the media's role and certainly some interesting questions thrown up here, all of which you my like to ask yourselves if it weren't for the bizarre, convoluted and slightly comedic fashion in which they were petitioned which, it must be said, is quite distracting.

Nami is the first of the series to take the female as protagonist, which makes it all the more hard to stomach her merciless approach to her work. However, Nami gets a super-sized helping of just desserts when the film takes a decidedly horror-based turn with a fantastically nasty section which has a feel part Gothic and part Italian horror. From this point forwards the film starts to make less and less sense, feeling a little like it lost its way. It isn’t all bad, however, as it gives Tanaka a chance to turn his hand to further varied styles, and all to great effect. Nami's situation becomes more nightmarish as her comeuppance brings some great scenes of office surrealism, tinged ever so slightly with humour, or maybe that's just uncomfortable disbelief. Amongst this weird and wonderful final third, however, is a deadly serious montage of discarded rape victims which is certainly thought-provoking to say the least. It puts back into context the harsh reality of rape minus the fictional fluff and stylised direction.

Though interesting to watch from a directorial point of view, Nami isn't without genuinely horrific rape scenes. Though Muraki (Takeo Chii), Nami's partner in crime and almost-love interest throws up some pretty dubious and dangerous ideas about rape, Tanaka tips the balance with some difficult scenes of sexual violence. Nami's most hounded subject in particular, following a very violent rape, is left tied and bloodied amongst a grim horizon of rubbish on a disused wasteland howling like her very soul is bleeding. And so it is that the complexity of ideas surrounding rape come back to us, the viewer, as we have been as intrusive and probing as Nami’s lens, haven't we? Unless, of course, Tanaka's weird and wonderful style has convinced us we were only there for artistic merit.

Strange and horrific in its delivery but complex and manifold in its content, Nami is as questionable as it is questioning. A surprisingly testing film, Nami is probably the most stylistically and moralistically challenging of the series 8/10

Buy it: amazon.com | amazon.com (Box Set)