“Youth is a once in a lifetime gift. Please make it memorable and meaningful.” Apparently what the students at Suzuran High School find memorable and meaningful is beating each other up. The brilliant and offbeat Takashi Miike brings Hiroshi Takahashi’s “Crows” (a popular adolescent fighting manga) to movie theaters as “Crows Zero,” available on DVD in just 6 days!

Genji is the new kid at school, and the school happens to be the roughest, most violent school in Japan. The teachers live in fear of the students who are all members of various gangs vying for control of everything. In fact, I doubt there are even classes being taught at all, unless these classes have names like “Gangbanging 101″ and P.E. consists of smack downs.

However, Genji is actually the son of a ranking Yakuza, and has a sort-of agreement with his old man. If Genji can unite the school underneath him (which no one has ever been able to do), then he can succeed his father in the Yakuza biz. So Genji sets out to defeat everyone by bestowing favors, or through alliances, intimidation and brute force.

As someone who’s never read the original manga, I have to admit that I had a difficult time trying to follow the story at first. Keeping track of all the school kids and the gangs they belong to can be a bit confusing. Since it’s basically a Battle Royale, all you really need to know is Genji is going after it all, and the current No. 1, Serizawa Tamao (the awesomely nicknamed King of the Hundred Beasts) will try everything to prevent him in succeeding. All others are just bodies in the way. These “samurai delinquents” have their own code of honor–a kind of “broken bushido.” If you are challenged and defeated, then code of honor dictates you fall in line behind the guy who bested you–thereby swelling the ranks of the winning gang. And it all leads up to the final confrontation…and there can be only one.

Cinema has given us prior glimpses of dystopian high school life in “Lean on Me,” “The Principal,” and “The Substitute“… Nothing like this, though. This high school flick is like a cross between “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “The Road Warrior.” The school grounds look almost post-apocalyptic; Suzuran has to be the most graffiti-covered school campus on the planet. The kids are pretty, violent…pretty violent. The student body possess traits of ’50s greasers, ’70s punks and ’90s nihilist grunge…they’re disaffected, disenfranchised and maladjusted.

Miike has crafted a stunner. It’s just beautifully shot and very entertaining to the eye. The fight scenes just might shatter your TV and have such energy it feels as if the cameraman was personally scrapping in each rumble. And the 20-minute final fight…I quote Keanu Reeves when I say: “Whoa.” The poetic camera work, the sense of color, scale and composition…it’s gorgeous to look at. This film was a hit in Japan, and something tells me the theaters were probably packed with high school girls, returning time and time again to ogle the metrosexual machismo of their favorite young stars.

All in all, another winner from Miike. The title “Crows Zero” refers to the film’s prequel status to the manga, indicating there are more “Crows” to come. Actually, I think “Crows Zero II” is nearly finished up. So, I guess I’ll have to sign up for another semester at this rather interesting school. I hope I survive to see graduation.