Truth be told, the world didn’t need a third “Baby Assassins” movie.

All writer-director Yuko Sakamoto did was make a longer, more bloated, more character-cluttered version of the first two films.

And five years have passed. Our Japanese kewpie doll killers should have grown up by now.

Oh. Right. “Gen Z.”

But that’s a running gag of “Baby Assassins 3,” aka “Baby Assassins: Nice Days” as the Japanese saw it.

Our killers, pixie Chisato (Akari Takaishi) and tomboyish Mahiro (Saori Izawa), are still mad about food, are obsessed with new haircuts and utterly distracted by an upcoming 20th birthday. They’d love to get out, belt back their first beers and shout “Kanpai!” like their peers.

“Typical Gen Z,” grumps one new hired-killer (Atsuko Maeda), brought in as part of a “team” and their supervisor on a hit that’s gone haywire. “They just don’t take responsibility.”

Nobody tell cranky Iruka that being “seven years your senior” (in Japanese with English subtitles) makes her Generation Z as well.

Unnecessary movie or not, some of us can’t get enough of the glib gunplay with Glocks, the twee tango of Tech 9s and the cutesy killings by kids with Colts. And petite Takaishi and Izawa handle Kensuke Sonomura’s fight choreography like ballerinas brawling.

The fights are fun, the murders as heartless as ever. It’s enough to make one quake at what might be behind the Japanese version of the “Gen Z Stare.”

Looking for a reason for Japan’s precipitous population plunge? Maybe that’s because contract killers are bouncing from island to island, city to city, killing off their peers and others somebody wants dead.

The most Gen Z thing about them? Chisato and Mahiro don’t even remember the names of the scores their fellow citizens whom they’ve offed.

“Baby Assassins 3” is about what happens when they run up against a “freelance” rival who remembers names, keeps a diary and evaluates his performance as he murders his way towards the “150” mark.

We meet Kaede Fuyumura (Sôsuke Ikematsu) as he knifes and shoots his quarry — and a bystander or two — in a forest. A little boy stumbles into this scene and proffers a towel. Whatever happens, and we assume he left no witnesses, Fuyumura keeps the towel after wiping the blood off his face.

That’s as close as these flippant kill-a-thons get to “remorse” and “consience.”

He’s already in the middle of killing their next assignment, Matsuura, in Miyazaki, which they’ve flown to for a working vacation. In the throw-down that follows, the mark gets away and becomes a credited supporting player (Kaibashira). And the insanely-skilled Kaede has bested the Baby Assassins, at least long enough for him to kill another day.

Can our two firearmed furies get past Kaede and finish their mission before their “Guild” puts out hits on them for letting a “freelancer” steal their job? Will their reluctant “team” Iruka and the hulking strongman Riko (Mondo Atani), who eschews guns, be a help or a bossy hindrance?

A novel touch in this second sequel — Chisato gets her hands on Kaede’s diary and we see flashbacks to his earlier murders as she reads it.

“Aug. 14, my first time killing with a gun. It smelled like fireworks.”

The rest of the movie is just like “Baby Assassins,” only moreso — more brawls, more figures mixed-up in the fights, more characters rendered semi-conscious by a choke-out or head-butt just long enough to keep the fighting mostly one-on-one.

The cleverest addition here might be the idea of a wrestler overcoming gunmen by pummeling, punching and using their bodies as both weapons and bullet-stopping shields.

The blush of youth is harder to come by and the “freshness” of the first film is missed. The physics of the fights remains laughable. The spaces between the brawls, with inane chatter and mango smoothies and others suggesting the homoerotic nature of the “baby” couple — “You complete each other” like the two-ends of a lobster-eating fork-spoon — tend to drag. And the ending is anti-climactic enough to set up an anti-anti-climax.

But it’s never less than watchable, even as our heroines now have to force the high childish voices, even as their days of wearing the school girl uniforms that remain a creepy, world famous Japanese male obsession are over.

Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa,
Sôsuke Ikematsu, Atsuko Maeda, Mondo Atani, Kaibashira, Karuma and
Atom Mizuishi

Credits: Scripted and directed by Yugo Sakamoto. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:52