Slash And Burn

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Riki Takeuchi is now RIKI, complete with jumpsuit and decotruck. We've heard him sing before, but never like this:

And here he is shamelessly plugging this new record, "Kurenai no backfire," on Japanese TV:

Found on Patrick Macias' site.

Viz Theater Update

I've been pretty excited about the Japanese movie theater and J-pop center Viz is building in San Francisco's Japan Town, and have covered it in the past.

Last I heard from the company's site, the theater and center were slated to open in winter 2008. Now the site is saying 2009.

I was staying in San Francisco's Japan Town recently and had the opportunity to snap the picture that accompanies this post. Yes, it's a big hole in the ground, but that's something compared to what this space has been for seemingly ever: the old Hokubei Mainichi Shinbun building.

When completed, this will be the only Japanese theater in America. Can't wait!

Ichi + Za Toichi

A couple of recent updates on Twitch on Zatoichi-related film projects. The first is Ichi, a retelling of the blind swordsman tale with a woman in the lead. Helmed by Ping Pong's Fumihiko Sori, the film stars Haruka Ayase as the wandering bad-ass. See the teaser trailer here. Check out this older post with a news clip on the casting of Haruka Ayase.

In related news, Sonny Chiba has announced his debut project as a director. Called Za Toichi, it tells the tale of a blind money lender, as played by actor Ginji Yoshikawa, last seen in the Steven Seagal vehicle Into the Sun. Za Toichi is both a pun on the famous film and television series and "the toichi," "za" being the Japanese pronunciation of the English "the" and "toichi" being an abbreviation of "tooka de ichiwari," or usury parlance for a loan that charges 10% interest for every 10 days. Oh, and it should be mentioned that Sonny Chiba will not be using his new moniker JJ Sonny Chiba for this project, nor his established Japanese name Shin'ichi Chiba, but Rindo Wachinaga. Hey, the man can call himself whatever the hell he wants as far as I'm concerned. He's... well, whatever name he goes by he's still a bad-ass.

Monster In Translation: Godzilla and Gamera Come To America

Title: Godzilla, King of the Monsters
Japanese Title: Gojira
AKA: Godzilla
Directors: Ishiro Honda, Terry O. Morse
Actors: Raymond Burr, Takashi Shimura, Akira Takarada
Year Released: 1956
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Gojira
Otaku Alert: US helmsman Terry O. Morse was a more prolific editor than director and his resume includes the great Robinson Crusoe on Mars.
Availability Note: Available as part of a double-disc set with the original Gojira.

Title: Gammera The Invincible
Japanese Title: Daikaiju Gamera
AKA: Gamera
Directors: Noriaki Yuasa, Sandy Howard
Actors: Albert Dekker, Brian Donlevy, Eiji Funakoshi
Year Released: 1966
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Gamera
Otaku Alert: US director Sandy Howard went on to produce tons of genre pictures in the '70s and '80s, including the first two Angel movies and The Devil's Rain. Classy stuff.

It's the mid-1950s. You've just a great but depressing little subtitled Japanese movie called Gojira down at the Toho Theater in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo. As a producer, you know you can do something with it, but what? The monster stuff is great but the connection to the atom bomb is way too obvious. Also, there's nary a white face to be seen.

Solution: Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

A drastic re-cut of the original film, King of the Monsters is nothing short of bizarre. Rather than just dub the whole thing, cutting scenes as necessary, the US distributor decided to shoot an entirely new subplot featuring actor Raymond Burr, of Perry Mason and boxy suits fame. A journalist, Steve Martin (snicker), lands in Tokyo just in time for a newly awakened Godzilla to start his antics. Martin survives Godzilla's attack, sees the monster destroyed, and makes some pithy comments about the world being safe again. But it's the way in which the film was re-purposed that's just so weird, it bears exploring.

Rather than just insert scenes of Burr in different locations, parallel to the action of the original film, every effort is made to include him in the action. We go with Burr as he tags along with whatever the actors of the original film are doing. They act, the films cuts to Burr, who reacts, then we cut back to the original. However, the original is in Japanese. So we get people speaking Japanese (with no subtitles), a Japanese person explaining to Burr what they said, and then Burr commenting. This round robin style is thankfully not consistent and sometimes the Japanese actors are dubbed in English. Why this isn't maintained all the way through is a mystery. But when they are speaking in Japanese, we have to wait for Burr to get the translation. Thus, we wait with him. We are made to identify with him, which makes things all the more creepy.

Burr comes across as some kind of weird voyeur, smugly watching the goings-on, smoking his pipe and waiting for translation. He treats his translators in an odd way too. Remember, this is just a few years after the US occupation of Japan ended. His attitude is subtly patronizing and "father knows best." Often, the Japanese actors are made to appear as if they're asking Burr for advice, rather than any of the more qualified scientists or government officials in the film. Perhaps that's the way the American audiences wanted it to be.

Oddly enough, Toho released the American version in Japan. How odd would that be, watching Japanese conversations being translated into English, and then subtitled back into Japanese.

It's the mid-1960s. You've just seen a Japanese film about a giant, fire-breathing turtle called Gamera that's extremely reminiscent of Godzilla. Although lots of Japanese giant monster movies have been released in the US with few changes save dubbing, you decide that what your films really needs to captivate American teenage audiences is a bunch of old, white guys sitting around and arguing.

Witness Gammera The Invincible.

A trio of Soviet jets stray into US airspace over the arctic and are shot down. The nuclear bomb one of the jets is carrying explodes, releasing the giant turtle Gammera, who makes a bee-line for Japan, eats fire, almost kills and then inexplicably saves an annoying kid in short-shorts with a turtle fixation, and is then shot into space, from which he returns for another 10 or so sequels.

Pretty standard kids' kaiju fare by the mid-'60s. Daei did the best with what they had, which wasn't much compared to Toho and its genius special effects wizard, Eiji Tsubaraya. But really, was it worth the American distributor the trouble and money to shoot a bunch of new scenes and stick them into an already full-length Japanese movie? Apparently so.

I like to think the lunch meeting at the Brown Derby went like this:

Suit #1: I don't know, this Gamera thing looks like a piece of crap. How can we liven it up?
Suit #2: How the hell should I know? What are the kids into these days anyway, surfing and go-go dancing? Can't we just put some go-go girls over the opening credits like everyone else and be done with it?
Suit #1: Sure, we could, but what I think the kids really, REALLY want to see in a giant monster movie is third-tier actors arguing. You know, the kinds with too much Brylcreem and jowls that hang over their stiffly starched white-collar shirts.
Suit #2: That's funny, Bob. But really, what should we do?
Suit #1: I wasn't joking, Randal. It's my wife Brenda with the dough to release this POS, so I say what goes.
Suit #2: Jeez, Bob, OK. Ease off. Here, let me order you another martini. Waiter!

You notice that the producers left the rest of the films well enough alone.

Hmm, I feel like having a martini now.

Son of Godzilla

Japanese Title: Kaijuto no kessen: Gojira no musuko
Director: Jun Fukuda
Actors: Tadao Takashima, Akira Kubo, Bibari "Beverly" Maeda
Year Released: 1967
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla's Revenge aka All Monsters Attack
Otaku Alert: Akira Kubo, who plays parachuting freelance journalist Goro, has a long and distinguished career that includes appearances in such films as Chushingura, Kill!, and, um, School of Sex.

I've been sick. Never fails. Semester ends, I stress out for finals and get sick. The only saving grace of being sick is renting bad movies from the local video place, and this I did with glee. Lo and behold, they had a few Godzilla movies I hadn't seen lately so I plunked down the $4.32 for Son of Godzilla, the 1967 entry in the series and the episode in which Godzilla jumps the shark.

Godzilla movies were my favorite when I was a kid. I especially liked his signature moves. In each film, Godzilla does some cute little move that humanizes him. In Hedorah he wipes his snout like a cat, and in Invasion of Astro-Monster he does that hilarious low-gravity jig. The move I've been looking for is like clapping, or flapping arms. After besting a foe, Godzilla flaps his arms like he's excited. Actually, I could be mis-remembering this move with another kaiju thing, like Ultra-Man. I've been through all of the Showa series save Megalon, and that one's hard to find. So anyway, I pop in ol' Son of Godzilla, grab the tissues and Tylenol, and am roundly and summarily disappointed.

Some scientists have set up a lab on a South Seas tropical island to conduct experiments on freezing the local atmosphere. Something about wanting to find new ways to farm frozen landscapes. In that case, doesn't it make more sense to just go farm in Siberia rather than freeze a tropical island and then farm it? The experiment goes wrong and the island is irradiated and super-heated, causing the already horse-sized praying mantis monsters on the island to become super giant size, which are named Kamakuras by a gonzo freelance journalist who parachutes into the island for a scoop. I was waiting for some kind of eco-disaster subplot to emerge but no, giant insects are just par for the course. Turns out there's already a massive spider named Kumonga hanging around. Pretty soon, Godzilla shows up, his son hatches from an egg, and…

OK, there are two things lame about Son of Godzilla. First, the giant insects—although admittedly pretty cool looking—are basically marionettes, not guys in suits. This drops their Godzilla battle potential to almost nil. If Godzilla tried to wrestle one he'd get tangled up in the (visible) wires. So he stands there while they fly by or spray him with silly string. The other lame thing is Minira. I mean, he looks like a tadpole, brays like a donkey, and single-handedly infantilizes the series. Take a look at 1969's Godzilla's Revenge aka All Monsters Attack for more of the same. Actually there are three lame things, the third being when hot, semi-naked island girl Saeko discovers pants.

A lot of the film is devoted to the "touching" relationship between father (mother?) and son, but it's kinda weird. I guess it's supposed to be funny, but Godzilla is really just a dead-beat dad. He accidentally knocks baby over with his tail before the kid can even walk right. During the part where he teaches his kid to breathe fire, Godzilla repeatedly brandishes his fist in a cowering Minira's face, threatening him with physical violence if he doesn't perform to his father's expectations. When Minira comes up short, Godzilla stamps on his tail. Finally, Godzilla spends a lot of the movie napping, no doubt sleeping off some kind of monster drunk, leaving the kid to wander around an island known to be populated with giant insects and spiders. It's all well and good when Godzilla wakes up long enough to save his kid, but if he had just been paying attention in the first place…

Even as a kid I never liked Minira all that much. There's something weird about his face. Oh, speaking of, what's up with Godzilla's face in this movie? He looks like an idiot. No wonder Gamera got so popular. At least he never spawned.

Lastly, shouldn't the son of Godzilla be named Jesuszilla? Just a thought.

Sukebandeka The Movie 2: Counter-Attack of the Kazama Sisters

Japanese Title: Sukeban Deka: Kazama san-shimai no gyakushu
Director: Hideo Tanaka
Actors: Yui Asaka, Yuka Onishi, Yuma Nakamura
Year Released: 1988
Genre: Action
See Also: Sukebandeka The Movie, Battle Royale
Otaku Alert: Hiroyuki Nagato, who plays Dark Director Kurayami, starred as Kinta in Imamura Shohei's great Pigs and Battleships.

I've recently discovered that I love the Japanese '80s, and for completely different reasons than I love my own '80s, which is based largely on nostalgia. From where I'm standing, on the outside looking in, the '80s in Japan were the last days of innocence before the bubble burst and teenage girls began selling themselves to salarymen for cell phones. Before the loss of childhood and Love & Pop, before all of today's weird, alienated murders and shut-ins, there was the '80s, a squeaky-clean time of flared hair and good intentions, earnestness and bubbliness.

The difference in idol presentation is telling. The video diary that accompanies the DVD for Sukebandeka The Movie 2: Counter-Attack of the Kazama Sisters follows star Yui Asaka as she does her best on set, does her best in press conferences, and does her best in concert. The clothes are priceless but so is her attitude, all fresh-faced smiles and "gee whiz" pluck. I don't for a minute believe that the idol industry in the '80s was any less corrupt and soul-crushing than it is today, but what is different is that then people wanted to believe that it was somehow innocent. The projected image becomes reality, or at least the desired reality.

What better way to highlight that innocence than in contrast to fascist youth thugs? Yui (the character's name is the same as its star), the third Sukeban Deka, or girl gang cop, has been recruited into a leather-headband-wearing government group of teens who dispense justice with spiked yo-yos and Aqua-Net'd bangs, shutting down discos like pre-college exam Nazis. Yui leaves the group, but is called back into action by her two sisters, Yuka and Yuma (the actresses who play them also having identical first names) when the Sukeban Deka program director is kidnapped and a floppy disc containing the youth group's nefarious plans is obtained.

Unlike the first Sukebandeka movie, which often played like a toned-down '70s exploitation film, number 2 is light all the way. With its "kids in trouble" side story and cheap lighting, it looks more like an American TV show like The A-Team than a Toei movie. But hey, that was the '80s for you. The Japanese film industry was in dire straights—not every film can be a Tanpopo. That being said, Counter-Attack does have its moments. The series' trend of making school-girl accessories into weapons continues with knitting needles and a boomerang metal origami crane. And Yui Asaka, it has to be said, is pretty damn cute.

Kenta Fukasaku recently added to the series with his Yo-yo Girl Cop, a terrible movie whose only saving grace is an overacting Riki Takeuchi.

Riki Takeuchi Sings!

You've joined his fan club, now own his single.

Patrick Macias was kind enough to post MP3s of Riki's 1995 single, "Yokubou no Machi," or "Town of Desire." Lots of wailing guitar, thick synth strings, and one gravely voiced bad ass. There's even a karaoke version so you can do your own Riki.

Get it here.

Gamera, Super Monster

Japanese Title: Uchu kaiju Gamera
Director: Noriaki Yuasa
Actors: Mach Fumiake, Yaeko Kojima, Koichi Maeda
Year Released: 1980
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Gojira, Gappa the Triphibian Monsters, Dogora
Otaku Alert: The Belgian video title for Gamera, Super Monster is Phoenix Dominator. I think I just found my new DJ name.

Gamera, Super Monster is the "clip show" of Gamera movies, comprised of stock footage sequences from all six previous Gamera films. Battle sequences from the earlier films have been shoe-horned into a seriously odd sci-fi adventure film about three super women from space and their mission to befriend a boy with short-shorts, making this 1980 entry into the kid's kaiju series a sort of "greatest hits" of Gamera and pretty much the only Gamera movie you need to see.

OK, that's not entirely true. I really do enjoy Gamera. Not as much as Godzilla, of course, the big lizard being my childhood hero and introduction to Japanese culture. But there's just something so endearing about Gamera. I mean, he's a turtle. Who stands. He's like those mariachi frogs you buy in Tijuana, glued into position so they look like they're standing and playing instruments. A turtle shouldn't be standing on two legs, but there he is. Oh, and now he's sticking telephone poles into his ears—how cute!

Sadly, that telephone pole sequence isn't included in the clips (so you really do have to watch more than one Gamera film) but the general weirdness of the past Gamera films is maintained in Gamera, Super Monster. This, I believe, is due to the fact that director Noriaki Yuasa was sitting in the folding chair with "kantoku" printed on the back. The man helmed all of the Gamera films to this point save one and was obviously the driving force behind the general weirdness of the series.

A ship that looks suspiciously like the Imperial Star Destroyer from The Empire Strikes Back wants to take over the Earth, so it begins sending monsters to attack the cities of Japan. Gamera, of course, rises to the occasion, as do three women in Jazzercise tights and capes, inspired, no doubt, by the Superman movies. There's lots of Yamaha organ product placement and plenty of cool Xanadu-like visual effects as well. Ultimately Gamera triumphs over little-boy-hating aliens, and flies off into space with (inexplicably!) clips from Starblazers and Galaxy Express 999 running under him.

Gamera, Super Monster was released as part of the Elvira's Movie Macabre series, packaged in a double-disc set with They Came From Beyond Space. The film is in widescreen, the only domestically available Showa-era Gamera film in such a format, although it's still dubbed into English. It's also obviously a VHS port. You can watch it with or without the original Elvira TV show segments. I opted for with, as I never saw her show back in the day. Sushi and geisha jokes abound.

Update on Viz San Francisco Theater

I spotted this in Kaiju Shakedown's interview with the folks from Viz:

We're even in the process of building a new art-house theatre in San Francisco, VIZ's hometown. In addition to the theater, this building will house a J-Pop bookstore, café, and some girls’ fashion retailers from Tokyo. It's scheduled to open in the winter of 2008.

I heard some time ago about the theater but the other stuff sounds good too. But how will they fill programming? Viz doesn't have that many acquisitions in film format...

Oh, also, Viz is bringing Nice no Mori: First Contact aka Funky Forest to DVD. That's the kind of news I like to hear.

Learning Kanji From Movies

One of my favorite things about studying kanji (the written characters that come from Chinese) is learning a character that I've seen in movie titles. So much of the kanji I learn is without context. Until I'm living in Japan, it's just characters that I forget after taking the test. But to see it in the context of a film title, or in credits, well, then it sticks.

So here are some characters you may see watching Japanese films, starting with the basics.

映画
Pronounced "eiga," this means movie.

作品
You see this one in credits a lot. It's pronounced "sakuhin" and means, essentially, a work of art, or more simply, a production. As in a Toho production.

七人の侍
"Shichi nin no samurai," means, in English, Seven Samurai. The last character is the one for "samurai." "Shichi" is the first, meaning seven, and "nin" (sometimes read "hito") is the second, signifying that it's seven people.

生きる
Another Kurosawa title, this one is "Ikiru," which means, "to live." You may have noticed (if you're at all familiar with how Japanese is written) that not all of the characters are kanji. The second two (as well as the third one in "Shichi nin no samurai") are hiragana, phonetic characters unique to Japanese. In the case of 生きる, the hiragana changes as the verb conjugates. The の (pronounced "no") in the above title denotes a possessive, essentially (seven people that are samurai).

風林火山
The Japanese title for Samurai Banners, "Fuu rin ka zan," actually means, "wind, woods, fire, mountain."

やくざの墓場
The title for Kinji Fukasaku's Yakuza Graveyard is written in kanji and hiragana. The first three characters are "yakuza," then the "no," and then "hakaba," which means graveyard. It's made up of the characters for "grave" 墓 and "place" 場.

下妻物語
This is "Shimotsuma monogatari," better known as Kamikaze Girls. The English title has nothing to do with the Japanese title, which means "Shimotsuma Story." Shimotsuma is a city in a rural area a few hours north of Tokyo. But what is useful to know is the word "monogatari." You've seen it tons of times in Japanese movie titles. "Zatoichi monogatari," "Tokyo monogatari," "Hachiko monogatari."

武士の一分
This is another with an alternate English title. In English it's Love and Honor, Yoji Yamada's latest samurai film, but in Japanese it's "Bushi no ichibun," or "one part of bushi." "Bushi" is, of course, the warrior spirit, or "bushidou" 武士道.

妖怪大戦争
Any guesses? "Youkai dai sensou," which means Great Yokai War. The first two make up "yokai," which is like a spook or goblin. Next up is "dai," or "great," then "sensou," which means "war." I saw a poster for the Takashi Miike film when I was last in Japan, before the movie had come out here on DVD, but I couldn't read the characters yet. After learning "sensou" in kanji class, I looked up "yokai" to make it complete.

And my personal favorite:

怪獣
"Kaiju," as in rubber monster movie kaiju! The characters mean "strange beast." Hey, I just noticed that the first character, "kai" 怪 (strange) is the same as in "yokai" 妖怪. Wow, I just learned a new character.

I love Japanese.