Sex Friend - Hatsujo (セックス・フレンド ～発情～) (Japan, 1999) [TV] – 2.5/5
Rei Sakamoto was awarded as best new pink director of the year for this breezy and relatively light-on-sex road movie scripted by Shinji Imaoka and Takahisa Zeze. A young couple is visited by an old friend who then prompts them to come to visit him in the countryside... in what must be the only pink script ever written that climaxes with a long baseball match between friends. There's a rather nice 90s indie drama touch to the film, as well as a bit of Nobuhiko Obayashi thrown in, but the film ultimately fails to be much more than that. It’s is more than most pink films have to offer, however. Reviewed here is the R-15 version Sex friend: Hatsujo, which doesn’t seem to have an English title and which may, but is unlikely to, differ substantially from the original theatrical R-18 version Sex Friend Nurezakari. There is one scene with mosaic but no noticeable cuts.
Women’s Police: Swirling Butterflies (女の警察 乱れ蝶) (Japan, 1970) [TV] – 3/5
Gangster film veteran Keiichi Ozawa takes over directorial duties in the 4th and best film in the series. The premise is largely the same as before, with lone wolf Akira Kobayashi both a hostess / night life operator and a sort of guardian angel for the women, but with more emphasis on yakuza and other shady figures leaving dead women floating in the port waters. Kobayashi once again has to catch guilty party. Kobayashi's performance here is his best in the series, aided by solid direction and a decent scrip script, finally radiating those "lone wolf in the night" vibes that didn't come through so well in the previous films. He's a man who fights gangsters and looks after hostesses without taking advantage of them, a superior man operating above basic sexual desires despite being a questionable figure of the night himself. Perhaps that's what audiences resonated enough with to come see these films one after another, even though they are almost void of sex, nudity and action (*). Here in addition we also get Ozawa's noirish direction paired with absolutely breathtaking production design, which certainly makes for an easy viewing. This was the last film in the series consisting of four movies, unless one counts Market of Women (1969), which is sometimes considered to be part of the series.
* This series was of course far from being the only one of its kind. There were so many similar films, not only by Nikkatsu but also Toei who did the Song of the Night series for example, that they could be considered a genre of their own. They were typically set in night life / fuzoku districts full of bars, hostess clubs and shady figures, telling bittersweet tales of young adults longing for a better future, and characterized by neon-lit visuals and pop ballads that often inspired the storylines.
) what could have been a straight worthy drama movie about a dysfuctional, broken family is given a wacky entertaining sci-fi twist. I enjoyed it 
I watched the comparison feature on the 88 Films BD and it would be interesting to see that version in full 
