[1996-04-03-GAEA-Square Jungle] Michiko Nagashima vs Chikayo Nagashima

[PeteF3]

Talk about it here.

[PeteF3]

Before we begin, Bomber Hikari reads a statement and then Sonoko Kato is back out, in hysterics, screaming at everyone. Chigusa is out and I think she basically tells her to shut her yap. The more angle-based GAEA is going to be one steep learning curve, I can tell.

 

To the match, and in the early going Kato is out *again*, and she's quickly sent away by both women. She continues to make a nuisance of herself throughout the match. Looking past that, this has a stronger face-heel divide than your average joshi match--Michiko is still a poor woman's Takako Inoue but she shows a little more personality than she did in the 6-woman tag. Chikayo makes for a pretty good spunky babyface with a lot of hit-and-run offense, though this is basically an extended squash with Kato breaking things up. The interference spots reached tedium with me really fast, particularly since every run-in ended with Michiko kicking Kato's ass. This might be something else to have to get used to.

 

GAEA style seems somewhere between JWP and AJW--they cut an AJW-like pace but the moves are a lot more basic. It is refreshing to see TV-style joshi, with the ladies going for 10-15 minutes instead of epics (acknowledging the inherent selection bias in a project like the Yearbook, which is going to naturally focus on the big matches).