The Queen of Villains - The Struggle to the Top
I’ve been a fan of wrestling since late 2003, when Smackdown was airing on free tv in Italy and I was immediately captivated by characters like Eddie Guerrero. I’ve become a big fan and while I’m not always following full time I always try to keep track of what's happening and learn about the history of Wrestling.
I’ve only just recently trying to educate myself to the world of Japanese Wrestling so when I learned about Netflix doing a biopic on Dump Matsumoto, one of the biggest heels in the world of Women Pro Wrestling, I was immediately hyped, especially since it was a Japanese production and wanted to see how they would treat the subject when compared to western biopics like The Iron Claw. The result has been really damn fun.
The Queen of Villains
About the Plot
The story opens in 1974 Japan, where a little Kaoru Matsumoto and her little sister are collecting empty glass bottles from the neighborhood to get some money. Kaoru’s family has always been poor and just able to get by, her father is not helping matters, spending all their money on alcohol and being a very violent and absentee parent.
It’s after one of those fights between her mother and father that she runs away from home and finds herself into a gym where the women of the AJW (All Japan Women Pro Wrestling), were training and she’s immediately star struck by a rookie Jackie Sato.
Since that day Kaoru dreams of becoming a Pro Wrestler, and in 1979 she finally takes the courage to participate in a try out and she gets chosen, her road for becoming a pro wrestler immediately starts and the training is grueling: the demand from the company is extremely high but there’s also issues with bullying in particular from the veterans of the federation who’re not too keen about them potentially being replaced by some rookies.
What makes for a great motivator to keep going down this road is her blooming friendship with fellow rookie Chigusa Nagayo. The girls have a lot in common: they come from a difficult family situation, they have little money and they’re betting everything on their dream of becoming a new star just like her idol Jackie. That friendship slowly becomes a rivalry when Chigusa manages to impose herself creating a tag team with another rookie Lioness Asuka together becoming the biggest act in the company and new heroines from all the girls in Japan, The Crush Gals.
But every hero also needs a good villain and it’s at that point that all all the anger and frustration for Kaoru finally explodes, her rivalry with Chiugsa now devolved into pure hatred for each other as Kaoru shreds off herself off her cute good girl persona, and becomes Dump Matsumoto: a bloodthirsty, violent, angry woman with only one goal, destroy Chigusa and become the most hated woman in Japan.
This story has a really great pace and flows well, it never feels like you’re watching a wikipedia page recap of some key events in a person’s life. There’s a lot of drama and all the characters and situations feel very believable, it’s not just focused solely on Kaoru but also on Chigusa, Asuka and their own personal struggles.
The wrestling itself on the show was also really enjoyable and well shot, making for a really fun watch. There’s also a bit of ambiguity on whether the fight is real or following a script, which I think helps non-wrestling fans get more into the drama of the fight itself. There’s also a lot of attention to detail in the costume design trying to be as accurate as possible to the original costumes of those particular matches and the results are absolutely perfect.
If there’s a theme that resonates throughout all of the characters in this story is one of self realization. Wrestling is the way for the characters to realize what they really want for themselves in their life, as well as the dream of following the footsteps of your idol slowly comes into terms with the crushing reality of what being a star means, and if the stage character is taking over the person in their own life, especially in a business that at its core was incredibly toxic and almost downright exploitative.
About the Characters
Being the main character Kaoru is the one with the most focused development and story. She’s a very sweet and shy girl to the point of feeling almost subservient to please everyone around her and slave to her insecurities. No one at the company is giving her any credit or time of the day, whether it’s for her chubby physique or the fact that she fights like she’s too scared of hurting people.
Most of the time she’s relegated to work as a promoter rather than actually wrestle and she’s straight up ignored by the veterans, probably expecting her to give up at some point.
But there are glimpses of a ticking time bomb waiting to explode: all the frustration accumulated by everyone not believing in her, or feeling discharged by her loved ones and the eternal hatred for her deadbeat father eventually leads to her taking the charge, and becoming the most hated woman in all of wrestling, along what that entails for the person in the role, because it’s not limited to just being booed on stage. All of this is represented perfectly thanks especially to the actress in the role.
Yuriyan Retriever gave an incredible performance, she had a vast emotional range and she dominated the screen. Her ability to just shift from adorable cute little puppy Kaoru, to angry sadistic Dump on the drop of a hat, was fantastic. I hope to see more of her in the future because she was really the standout actress in this series.
After a second watch I can totally see how she feels isolated in that environment and how being the absolute top star is a necessity for her, she wants to prove herself and there are times that she feels like everything is crumbling under her feet. It’s very ironic for her being the one that most of all wants to prove that she can do anything alone ending up in a situation where her success is entirely dependent not only on her rival, but also her partner.
Lioness Asuka is unfortunately the third wheel in this whole situation, she’s solely responsible for Chiugsa reaching the success she has and she’s the only one that constantly believed in her and defended her against the veterans in the locker room, their friendship feels genuine and not born of necessity, but after a while Chigusa’s presence become unbearable for her. She’s constantly eclipsed by her, adopting her moveset, following her ideas, being stuck in a personal rivalry that revolves around her, while nobody else seems to care about the possibility of her becoming the new World Champion of the whole company.
In Conclusion
Overall the only issue I have little issues with how the characters were handled, but I feel having one extra episode could’ve helped to flash out both Chigusa and Asuka just as well as Kaoru, at the end of the day I feel like this is just as much the story of the Villain as well as the one of the Heroines.
Personally I think this show was absolutely incredible, if you’re a fan of wrestling you absolutely need to watch it’s an incredible window in time into what is known as the greatest boom period in Japanese Women’s Wrestling and is especially interesting to see when compared to what was happening in the West were it will take until 2016 for women’s wrestling to finally get the respect it deserves on a big stage. If you’re curious to know more about the history of these characters I recommend you to watch KimJustice’s documentary on Youtube, they’ve been my main source of info for Japanese Wrestling history for a while, so give them a watch: you won't regret it.
But what if you’re not into wrestling? Well, do you think the story about a group of women desperately rising to the occasion to affirm themselves on their strength alone and achieve the life that they want is something you might be interested in? Because that’s what the story is about at the end of the day, wrestling is just the means for them to achieve that end.
So hop on Netflix, give it a watch and let me know what you thought about it. It’s only 5 episodes for one hour each so it just breezes by, and also has a definitive ending, so don’t need to worry about cliffhangers. For those of you who already did watch this show, follow me into the…
SPOILER SECTION - Proceed at your own risk
I wanna briefly touch on a few key scenes that I actually really liked and maybe some that could’ve been a bit better.
We talked about how family issues was an important aspect in Kaoru and Chigusa bonding, and while I think that Kaoru’s relationship with her mother and sister was really well done, I think that they could’ve done something more with Chigusa, she was abandoned by her parents at a very young age and thus went from foster care to foster care.
Shortly after her debut on the ring she meets with her parents again who apologize for everything, but she rejects her apologies and for the entirety of the series they keep watching over her desperate to patch things up. It eventually happens, after a brutal match against Dump that she was supposed to win instead. She walked out of the arena a bloody mess, her head shaved feeling like she had been replaced and she fell into her mother's arms in tears, finally accepting her parents for the first time in years of silence.
I don’t think it’s unrealistic for her to still hold a grudge to their parents but I think it would’ve been interesting to see them working their way to Chigusa finally accepting their support, it’s one of those aspects where I think another episode could’ve helped.
I can say the same thing about the time actually spent with Dump Matsumoto, only 2 out of 5 episodes are spent with the most violent version of Kaoru which would’ve been fine enough except for one key aspect of everything, her backstage life.
In the 80s everyone was pretty much convinced that everything happening on the ring was completely real and nothing staged, so when the entirety of Japan watches their heroine getting bloodied on stage they respond in kind with all sorts of death threats, most of them even directed to her family directly, making life difficult for everyone. I really wanted to see more of how she would react to the immense mental pressure of having to constantly deal with so much hate every second of her life.
We see most of her reactions in character and while it’s clear that by the end of everything she’s tired of this life and really needs a break, I really think that could’ve been shown in a much more raw and visceral way.
I also have to give a particular praise for the ending match of this series, the retirement match of Dump Matsumoto in her final match against the Crush Gals turned into a in impromptu tag team between her and Chigusa, together as friends after a very long time, first time fighting together in the ring, and Kaoru finally showing that despite all the weapons and cheating she was still a damn good wrestler at core.
It was an incredible match and a perfect book end for the series since it showed us how far those rookies have gone in those 10 years, from little girls with a dream to the main event of their own company, carving their names in the history of wrestling forever.
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