The lone wolf is Kazeo Kaburagi (Masahiro Higashide), a tall, rangy third-year transfer student, who quickly establishes himself as a fearless fighter, though he is uninterested in the power struggles swirling around him.īut this wolf can’t remain in his lair forever and it soon becomes obvious that Kaburagi and Kagami are heading for a showdown. Golden-haired first-year student, Ryohei Kagami (Taichi Saotome) - with a gang boss dad, quick fists and bad attitude - is also a contender. Now that Suzuran’s previous primus inter pares, Genji Takiya (Shun Oguri) and Tamao Serizawa (Takayuki Yamada), have graduated, the top positions are open.Ĭompeting for them are the glowering Toru Gora (Yuya Yagira), the best fighter in the school, and the spiky-haired Tetsuji Takagi (Kenzo), ranked number two. The story begins one month after the action of “Crows Zero II” ends. At the same time, the flamboyant artiness of Toyoda’s recent work, including the 2012 misfire “I’m Flash!,” has been replaced by grayer shades and grittier imagery. This will come as no surprise to fans of “Blue Spring” and other Toyoda films, with their real-world authenticity beneath the surreal stylistics.
In contrast to Miike, who highlighted the absurdity of his characters’ macho posturing, Toyoda takes the manga-esque material relatively seriously and films the principals’ emotional eruptions relatively realistically. And once again the story revolves around the eternal battle to be Numero Uno, be it in the school, the neighborhood or the known punk world. Once again the setting is the all-boys Suzuran High, where the “Crows” - the self-chosen moniker for the student body - hang out and plot the destruction of their rivals. “Crows Explode” has much in common with the two previous films. Five years on comes the third installment in the series, “Crows Explode,” with a nearly entirely different cast and a new director, Toshiaki Toyoda, whose 2001 “Aoi Haru (Blue Spring)” helped birth the current spate of what might be called “school of punk” films.
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