Baby Assassins 2 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Baby Assassins 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 29, 2024

Not to claim any outright abilities in prophesying, but close to two years ago in my Baby Assassins Blu-ray review I overtly mentioned that I wouldn't be surprised to see Baby Assassins 2 (or as I hopefully joked, Baby Assassins 200, for that matter) relatively soon. And here we are, though this home media release has kind of weirdly shorn the title of this sequel of a probably needless Babies after Baby Assassins 2, for whatever that's worth. A rose and/or baby assassin by any other name would still smell as sweet and/or be as gonzo, as the saying goes, and this follow up offers not just original pair Mahiro (Saori Izawa) and Chisato (Akari Takaishi), but an equally dunderheaded duo in the form(s) of Makoto (Tatsuomi Hamada) and Yuri (Joey Iwanaga), young would be "professional assassins" who are tasked with offing Mahiro and Chisato in order to move up the veritable corporate ladder.

The completely chaotic ambience of much of Baby Assassins 2 is probably well demonstrated right from the get go with an opening vignette introducing Makoto and Yuri, who engage in this film's version of Pulp Fiction's "hitman banter", to the point that one almost expects them to start riffing on the blandishments of various burgers. The story quickly then moves on to a spectacularly messy killing spree which is both extremely violent and rather darkly humorous, two elements that continue to suffuse this sophomore effort. In the meantime, when things finally segue to Mahiro and Chisato, it turns out that their "maturation" to young women has meant they've moved into a different subset of their organization's assassins, and also means that due to their inattentiveness they owe years of back payments for things like insurance. That gets them to a bank where they need to make a payment before 3 p.m., which is of course expectedly interrupted by a robbery, leading to yet more mayhem.

The upshot is that Mahiro and Chisato find themselves "suspended" from "official" assassinations, while Makoto and Yuri are on the hunt to kill the young women. It's all unabashedly silly, but Baby Assassins 2 offers the same bizarre combo platter of goofy humor and (at times literally) off the wall action elements. Things are of course set up in a calamitous finale to have what I suspect will be a quartet of killers for the seemingly inevitable Baby Assassins 3.

Baby Assassins 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Baby Assassins 2 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. I didn't spot any camera logos in the closing credits roll and as of the writing of this review the IMDb has virtually no information on the shoot, but this is a competent digital capture that can actually look rather nicely detailed for what, considering its Hi-Yah! status, was probably meant mostly for a streaming audience. The palette is bright and candy colored a lot of the time, though there is a rather peculiar and to my eyes unnatural skewing at times toward yellows (see screenshot 6 in particular, though a couple of other screenshots also exhibit this anomaly). Otherwise, though, there's a robust rendering of hues, and detail levels are similarly well presented, including some kind of graphic injuries once the mayhem really starts to let loose. There are some supposed Zoom-like interchanges where video quality has obviously been tweaked (see screenshot 5 for one example).

Baby Assassins 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with its progenitor, Baby Assassins 2 offers a bombastic DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in the original Japanese. Several absolutely gonzo action sequences allow for well positioned effects, and in certain chaotic situations, as in the knock down, drag out and pistol shot fueled fight that Makoto and Yuri engage in as the film gets underway offer both enveloping overall immersive effects with some clear discrete placement of things like the crunch of fist meeting bone or in fact some of those aforementioned gunshots. This is another somewhat noisy track much like the first film which kind of ping pongs between almost overwhelming activity and then interstitial moments of at least relative calmness. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Baby Assassins 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 2:10)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Additionally, packaging features a slipcover.

Baby Assassins 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I was actually kind of pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the off kilter Baby Assassins, and if there is admittedly maybe the slightest whiff of that oft quoted sophomore slump with this effort, it's actually an unexpectedly minor downturn. The comedic "stylings" of Saori Izawa and Akari Takaishi are well matched by the similarly goofy antics of Tatsuomi Hamada and Joey Iwanaga, and if there's an undeniably cartoonish bent to many of the proceedings, that's actually one of this nascent series' most enjoyable aspects. Vis a vis "prophetic" abilities, kind of hilariously in my review of the first film I mentioned its "slacker" sensibilities, and that very term shows up in a pull quote included in the trailer for this film, so, if not a prophet per se, maybe I can at least stake claim to being an influencer. Baby Assassins is often grimly violent, and just as often completely off the wall in its buffoonish characterizations. Technical merits are generally solid, and with some passing caveats noted, Baby Assassins 2 comes Recommended.