Kaiju Blue brings the American Halloween spirit of creep-out and gore to Shinjuku with their exhibition of monster masks and photography by special effects school Amazing School Jur. This is the same team responsible for the putrid princess fashion show at Design Festa, so you know we're talking about the best in the business.
This is just a taste of the ghastly decor. Normally Shinjuku is nothing more than a bump in the road to someplace more interesting, but with exhibits like these you have a compelling reason to stop by the arsehole of Tokyo.
Students from Amazing School Jur will be there through Halloween to give you the self-mutilation version of a temporary tattoo. I would get phantom pains every time I looked at my hand, but maybe it was just the latex pulling my skin. Check their blog for more info and details about their special demonstration on Halloween!
Artstorm tightens their stranglehold as king of giant vinyl toys with their release of KaijuGyo!
The beast is loose from the pages of the 1972 horror manga of the same name by UmezuKazuo. I can't get over the details and chromatic color scheme of each fleshy scale and membranous appendage. Imagine the damage this veritable land shark could do with its double row of teeth.
Gyo attacks! This should put the size of this guy into perspective. He'll eat your other figures for lunch. Seriously, handling it feels like you're cradling a mutant baby dipped in formaldehyde.
As it's common for mythological Japanese creatures, Gyo settle their differences in the sumo ring. Judging by the battle-damaged Baltan Alien standing ringside, refereeing is an occupational hazard waiting to happen.
UmezuKazuo wrote Ultramanmanga for Sun Wide comics in the late 60's. However, given the technology at the time, the production studio only had still photographs from the set to provide for reference materials. Without detailed schematics of the characters, Umezu was forced to fill in the gaps with his imagination, hence the line of Ultraman figures designed with that special Umezu touch. The winged Baltan Alien in particular stands out as an Umezu original.
It's unfair to tease you with these awesome figures once they're already sold out, so luckily we have one extra KaijuGyo and Winged Baltan Alien available for sale. Shoot us a mail if you're interested!
Last Saturday, Rock Joint GB in Kichijoji held a night dedicated to the globe trotting trombone rocker Jackie! They offered a discount at the door for people sporting “the look”—leather jacket, striped shirts, and boots, offering extra incentive to grease up your pompadour and squeeze into some ass-tight pants.
One thing about shows in Japan: When they give you a start time, they mean it with a vengeance. So being the idle slob that I am, I showed up late and nearly missed Moody Rudy’s entire set which is a shame given how pro these guys are. What’s up with putting the best band on as the opening act?
The would-be flower children of Jackie’s cosmic jam band filled the room with space guitars and squelching brass. If you consider the soundtrack to Naked Lunch easy listening then they should be right up your non-euclidean alley.
When I saw these guys standing at attention with the Fuck You guitar, biker jackets and booming drums I was expecting some good old fashioned rumble, but the singing turned them into a popabilly act, like a group of Yoyogi dancers had been bitten by Teen Wolf.
Still, the right look coupled with call-and-response fist pumps is all it takes to win over a crowd. If you have a mood-making gimmick, people are almost guaranteed to love you. The mini mosh pit was practically tripping over itself in excitement. Throwing out a hailstorm of Halloween candy didn’t hurt either.
I still can’t believe this is the same Suzumiki from Wasting Time! Suzuyakko’s leopard spotted skirt should have been a dead giveaway, and Mikitei blended seamlessly into the crowd with his greaser camouflage, having traded in his signature hat for an awesome fake pompadour.
Halfway through the set they were joined by the rest of Futomomo Satisfaction, Jackie and Lumiere. The photos of these bikini girls with saxophones were taken during their Texas tour last March.
A band nerds wet dream come true. I’m too much of a goon to truly appreciate technical improv like this, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t get down the Blaxploitation keyboard and bongos. Stick around for the double drum solo around the eight minute mark.
*BONUS* Jam Session!
The members of Zen Ra Arkestra called everyone holding an instrument up to the stage for a final sendoff. Even La Rocca was back with their washboards and hand horns. And how many nights have come to an end one way or another with a round of tequila?
Jackie was the hardest working muscian of the night and deserves extra props for organizing her own birthday party! Make sure to check out everyone's homepages for information about upcoming shows.
There was so much going on at this year's Design Festa I don't know where to begin! We already mentioned the putrid princesses fashion show in our previous post, but there's no way you could cover the 2700 booths of artists and artisans over the two day weekend, much less the one Sunday we were there.
Still, we had our Awesome Stuff radar to help us sort through the chaff and bring you the best of Design Festa! Here are a few highlights, but make sure to check out the album for more, plus artist information and links to their homepages.
Warning: Album contains some NSFW images of creepy dolls.
Monster girls in bikinis strutting their stuff to lousy metal? Nope, Rob Zombie isn't touring Japan. It's the horror SFX-makeup fashion show from yesterday's Design Festa Vol. 30! If you dust off your imagination and look real hard, you just might be able to see the morbid fairy tale theme they were going for.
Here is our quasi-entry for the Italian Horror Blog-a-Thon. Check it out and learn something new about the gory sub-genre that could.
Susperia is more faithful to Umezu's manga than the films based on his actual works, with beautiful girls dying brutal deaths, an otherworldly soundtrack, and gorgeous Gothic sets. Am I the only one hoping to see Argento bring something like Baptism to life in the future?
While you're waiting for the stars to align and bring us the horror collaboration that was always meant to be, enjoy this clip from Umezu Kazuo's 1994 visit to Rome where he meets special effects man Sergio Stivaletti, Dario Argento, and receives a guided tour of the Argento museum located under his movie memorabilia shop, Profondo Rosso.
The special is around an hour long and can be seen in its entirety here. If you're sick of celebrity travelogues where they prattle endlessly about how oishiithe local delicacies are, you'll be happy to see him learn how to eat eyeballs at an open air meat market, turn the town's fountain into a geyser of gore, and tour crypts for the nameless dead.
Those of you living in Japan or studying Japanese are likely familiar with the social networking site, Mixi. Mixi is similar to Myspace with a few important differences. New users need an invite from a preexisting member to enter the network. There is a “footprints” system that tracks other users who have visited your profile. Also, while the search system allows you to find people by name and location, most people are registered under a pseudonym, making it nearly impossible to zero in on a particular person. Compare this to Myspace’s service which accurately locate people within minutes using only their zip code and last name!
My Japanese friends are amazed at how much information us Westerners voluntarily put up in plain view for anyone with a Yahoo account to peruse. Even with the safeguards afforded by Mixi’s closed network, Japanese people tend to be hesitant about putting traceable personal information online. While this could be chalked up to cultural differences, urban legends such as the Hairy Butt Burger Incident play an important part as well.
Flashback to October 2006. Mixi had finally his its stride after launching in April 2004 and was attracting around one million new users per quarter. Users still felt secure in their digital backyards, some even registering under their real names. For a certain unwitting young couple, this powder keg of complacency was primed to explode and take everything precious to them with it.
The boyfriend received a computer virus over the file sharing program Winny, which then leaked compromising pictures he had taken of his girlfriend to other users. The pictures immediately found their way onto 2channel, the world's largest anonymous BBS and home to a rogue's gallery of ruthless Internet trolls. The denizens of 2channel took time out of their busy schedule of organizing phone bombing and slander campaigns to find the boyfriend's Mixi, registered under his real name, using information leaked from his Winny account. From there all it took was a click to find his girlfriend’s profile, also registered under her real name.
There they found details about her job as a juvenile parole officer. The trolls smelled blood. In their Internet feeding frenzy they stripped the couple of every last shred of decency, resulting in a veritable dung heap of posts that encouraged users to torment the couple's friends on Mixi by posting the illicit pictures in question along with defamatory messages, not to mention the obligatory threatening phone calls to their places of employment. Sleazy weekly tabloids jumped on the story, and there were even unconfirmed rumors that the girlfriend committed suicide after losing her job over the incident.
Mixi was quick to respond with a mighty swing of their ban hammer, excommunicating not only the users directly involved, but everyone on their friends list as well. Hundreds of accounts vanished overnight. After the dust settled, both users and the media alike called the responsibility of social networking site moderators into question. Mixi denied all involvement, and while stock prices temporarily dropped, registration numbers continues to climb. The incident has since become an Internet meme of sorts, and has even spawned an independent comic!
The only loose end in this unfortunate tale is, well, where did the name Hairy Butt Burger come from? As such graphic imagery would violate the rules of the Japan Blog Matsuri I'm not at liberty to say, but curious readers can Google their way to the truth. But we warned. Once you sink your teeth into those juicy buns, there's no forgetting the flavor.
Sub culture mega-zine Trash Up!! invaded Club Saeta last weekend with the Kichijoji Shock Festival to celebrate the release of their fourth issue.
Their latest offering features an interview between Kool Keith and Masaya Nakahara to celebrate his first Japan tour, an in-depth look at the bands that make up Nagoya's underground music scene, a talk with Martyrs director Pascal Laugier, along with the customary DVD filled with live concert footage and whatever grindhouse trailers they've managed to dig up.
If Polysics redesigned their signature orange jumpsuits to look like Zack Morris' trapper keeper and wore handmaid furry masks, they would be a lot like de!nial. Behind the electronic noise loops and animal skins it was hard to tell how much of their sound the band was producing themselves, but this aural camouflage set them up to mob the crowd and go totally nuts on stage.
It was a waste to put these guys on first. The crowd was sparse and if anyone would have benefited from audience interaction, it was de!nial.
Doddodo wouldn’t be as terrifying on stage if she wasn’t so cheerful and personable off. Seeing her stomp barefoot back and forth with wild eyes leering from behind her tousled hair like an agent of chaos, I have to ask myself if this is the same person who was trying to sell me vegan sandwiches but a half hour earlier. Her sound was equally schizophrenic, oscillating between adorable pop and gothic sutra chanting.
At multi-act festivals such as this, performers tend to melt into the crowd and disappear after their set. Unless they’re Doddodo. She was everyone’s biggest fan, literally howling at the other bands and dancing herself stupider. You don’t meet many people with the same sense of hand-made determinism. Just look at her live DVD, why the hell did I put down good money for a CD-R? Because Doddodo gets under your skin like a bot-fly, that’s why!
Katsurei are old enough to respect as an authentic classic rock group. Their sound was heavy in that bluesy 1970’s way, but it was the Hare Krishna drummer that made the group work for me. As the other members worked their fretboards solemnly, he wailed on his kit with the ferocity of a monk at an exorcism.
Something about these guys just didn’t click with me. Their instrumentation was on point and their onstage banter was engaging, but their sound never came together as one cohesive whole. It was like each member was from a different band and their playing just happened to sync up. They were, however, shameless self-promoters so I’m sure they’ll find their audience. Talking Dead Goats”45
These dudes drove non-stop overnight from Osaka to deliver the event’s most exciting set by far. They began by rearranging the holy trinity of rock by placing the drummer on the left so he could face the guitarist on the right, while the bass stood at attention in the back. Their frontman used a series of delay pedals to layer spacey riffs on top of one another, creating a nebula of noise and freeing up his hands to conduct his bandmates, while cutting off and distorting loops with the battalion of pedals at his feet. Speaking of feet, they were the second and final barefoot band after Doddodo. Must be a Kansai thing.
You need to see them live to truly appreciate their on-the-fly sound design. Thos of you over by Osaka, take note! For everyone else in Kanto, come out to see them on December 19th at Shinjuku Nine Space.
I approve of SIKASIKA if only for their guitarist whose face is constantly contorted into a sneer, mugging for some invisible camera. Her and the singer had to be extra-crass to make up for the coquettish bassist and drummer. At one point the singer donned a keytar simply to swing around his body and cause a general ruckus, falling over monitors and crashing into the other members. Well worth your time if you liked fuzzed-out guitars and respectful acts of vandalism.
Tons of math-rockey fun with equally obtuse banshee vocals. The combination of screeching guitars and strobe lighting made it feel like someone was squeezing my guts with a wrench, but isn’t that why we pay money to go to shows? Long live the experience.
For whatever reason Japan is totally bonkers about UK pop rock. So when you have a group that labels themselves as the Japanese Artic Monkeys, you’d be right to expect the floor to explode.
Everything about 6eye’s performance was larger than life. The frontman had the whole sexy-in-a-totally-creepy-way thing going on with his Mick Jagger, the tip of his mike protruding purposefully from the top of his jeans as he moved offstage to incite the crowd. And what a crowd! Japanese venues are normally as awkward as a junior high dance, but 6eyes had everyone moving and flailing their hands like, I don’t know, they were watching a kick-ass band for a change.
It felt like I was as a sold out stadium and not a middling club with fifty-odd people. Where did this energy come from? Oh sure, the music was driving and danceable and catchy in a formulaic sort of way, but the presence of the band themselves was hypnotizing. They had all the charisma of someone that you’d expect to be famous, and the privilege of being in the same room as them was exciting.
After developing asthma from spending five hours in a smoky snuff box I decided to cut out early and unfortunately missed them. Sorry guys, maybe next time!
On the way out I snagged a delicious yam and pumpkin sandwich in a moist focaccia from Vege Canteen. They serve up vegetarian dishes every Wednesday in Koenji so stop by and give your colon a break from all the beef bowls and curry.
I was hoping for a larger turnout, although it was hard to tell how many were in attendance at any given time with all the action in the lobby. People were relaxing at the makeshift horror manga café between sets, guys were selling old Troma VHS tapes, and the bands were trying to hock enough swag to make gas money back to Nagoya.
Talking Dead Goats"45 and SIKASIKA I would definitely pay to go see again. Let's hope that Trash Up!! brings everyone back to Tokyo sometime soon.
Given the recent success of high-profile theatrical anime such as the Evangelion re-imaginings and Summer Wars, I’m excited to see what the industry has brewing in the ‘ol percolator for us.
There was a group handing out flyers for a new film by the station so I made it a point to snag one. That’s the nice thing about living in Japan, you get to experience things on the ground floor. Anime is on the level here, man.
Rebirth of the Buddha, huh? The character designs look kind of generic. But I’d be interested to see a story about the Buddha in modern Japan.
Wait, Ryuho Okawa? I know I’ve heard that name before…
Even if you’re not familiar with his name, anyone who ventured near a train station without their tinfoil hat during last election’s campaign period was surely bombarded with his policies. Eliminating taxes, opening the door for foreign workers, stressing the nuclear danger that North Korea represents… I could only be talking about the leader of Japan’s most ineptly benign cult, Happy Science!
Happy Science started in the mid-80's as a new-religion fringe group. They made headlines at the time for their lawsuit against Kodansha claiming defamation of their holy leader, as well as their public fight against the Aum Shinrikyo shortly before they carried out their the infamous Sarin gas attack. Then, radio silence from the mid-90's until last year with the sudden formation of the Happiness Realization Party. But protest and politics make for a poor business model. How was Mr. Okawa funding his revolution?
Any self-respecting snake oil salesman in Japan these days claims to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. Ryuho Okawa needed something to help him breakthrough the entrenched competition, Sokka Gakkai International, who had beaten him to the punch by a good ten years. Say, aren’t we due for the Second Coming of Christ any day now? That’s right, the King of Kings has returned to our world to take up residence inside Ryuho Okawa with the Buddha. It’s like Saint Young Men, except the punch line is gullible old women being swindled out of their retirement money.
Wielding his divine powers, Mr. Okawa can reach back through the eons and speak to the spirits of leaders past. Gandhi, Lincoln, Florence Nightingale —Happy Science has them all on speed dial for consultation and has published countless books detailing their super-dimensional exchanges. Amongst them, The Terrifying Revelations of Nostradamus was made into a movie to bring their warnings of the Apocalypse to the masses.
Laugh at the cheap special effects while you still can, because if Mr. Okawa and his cronies are to be believed, it's only a matter of time before the Norks rain nuclear destruction on Tokyo and Japan finds itself colonized by invading Chinese forces. "But Japan has missile defense systems," you scoff. Tell that to these guys!
I’m ready to man up and pay the fifteen hundred yen and risk the possibile brainwashing for the sake of entertainment by seeing Rebirth of the Buddha when it comes out in theatres this weekend. Perhaps it’s opening somewhere close to you? Just be sure to put a tack in your shoe beforehand. Focusing on the pain will help keep Mr. Okawa from opening a direct portal into your brain.
The undisputed grand master of manga, Osamu Tezuka, once said that a good manga artist should arm themselves with three weapons. He was referring to writing three successful titles in three different genres. But times have changed. Manga artists these days are blowing up the scene as photographers, figure makers, columnists, and, true to their indie roots, garage musicians!
Last Sunday, Shinjuku Red Cloth hosted a night of bands led by underground manga authors and personalities. We went in somewhat apprehensive of the comic writers' power to rock, but by the end of the night they had converted us into a loyal believers.
Yojo Jin’in/Excess personnel (余剰人員) Yusaku Hanakuma (花くまゆうさく), Tokyo Zombie
These guys set the tone of the night with their amateurish but heartfelt cover of Under My Thumb. They weren’t the best band there, but that’s not the point—People didn’t come out to have a Phrygian scale pissing contest. Everyone was content to just do their thing and hang with their contemporaries. That’s not to say that their final song, Ningen Roller, didn’t bring the noise!
You have to respect Taske for being a self-made man. Or women. Or whatever. Actually, I'm not sure what Taske is, but I do know that it has to be seen to be believed. This entity of unintentional hilarity has compiled a book of reprehensible poems and was more than happy to give a live reading for everyone locked into the club.
(Taske video coming soon!)
Taske’s shtick is funny for about ten minutes, at which point you realize there is no shtick and grow fearful for your own safety. Even the most extreme entertainers turn off the switch when they go home. Taske, not so much. The Feavers
If you write comics about awkward twenty-somethings who have fallen through the cracks of society, then forming a college hardcore band ten years after the fact is the next logical step. There’s something cathartic about watching someone else’s eyes bug out for a change in rage over girls and their crappy nine-to-five.
They even had their own mascot, Taske, to incite the crowd with it’s raving and impromptu air guitar. Koizumi hyped Taske’s poems which is what got it through the door in the first place, so I assume he feels responsible to placate Taske with stage time in order to keep it from blitzing the stage and destroying other bands’ instruments.
Takashi Imashiro Band
A last minute addition, this funky trio laid down some smooth psychedelic riffs and washed the taste of Taske from our mouths. While they only played three songs, each was a marathon jam session of King Crimson proportions.
Tokarevs is essentially Joyo Jin’in with pair of lovely ladies taking over the vocals. The disconnect of watching men in jumpsuits perform old idol songs like Koi wa Question was nothing compared to the shock of realizing that we've become such sentimental fogies that we can appreciate folksy songs like RC Succession's debut single, Takarakuji wa Kawanai (I Don't Play the Lotto).
Remember what we said earlier about how no one was here to show off their chops? Rouden Ginza blows that theory out of the water. They killed the stage and took no prisoners. Sakabashira made his Bo Diddley scream like a bloody goblin, and the minimalist, taught bass lines harkened back to goth rock you could actually dance to. Unfortunately we failed to record those songs, but the rest of their set was nothing short of electrifying.
This manga artist super group brought their Korgs out to play and assimilated the audience with their pre-programmed beats and synchronized fist pumping. Their group hypnosis must have worked, because two days after the fact we still can't get this chorus out of our heads:
There are some things that only an old man can know, such as the joy of watching one's daughter grow into a women, the best way to drink shochu, or what it feels like to have a prostate the size of a kiwi. Aging can be a gradual, lonely process. Thankfully, Pathos is there to help us find humor every step of the way to death’s door
Genki Ii Zo (げんきいいぞう)
The show couldn't go out with one foot in the grave! Suddenly there erupted a primal scream from the back, followed by this guy rushing the stage, carrying an acoustic guitar over his head like the Honkey Tonk Man. His paisley shirt, boxer shorts, and silken voice reminded us of Rage Kage from Tenacious D fame. Watch him lead the night's performers in one final send off!
Time for the artists to meet Joe Public! A manga author's work isn't finished until they ruin their drawing hand writing messages to the fans. At 200 yen per pop, these guys were practically begging to be bothered!
Looks like Shimao Maho liked our post about her show at Trancepop Gallery.
Imiri Sakabashira is in love with his guitar, but who wouldn't be?
Hanakuma with his heta uma drawings. So bad, they're good.
No, that's not a blind Buddha, it's Utamaru from Rhymester. You all owe it to yourselves to check out his Cinema Hustler movie podcast!
Not a moment went by without some form of spectacle to behold. You didn't even have a second to grab yourself a drink between bands (or, in VoidMare's case, hit the can) because they turned the interim period into an R-rated Reading Rainbow! We wish we had time to subtitle them, but they come with their own laugh track so you can figure out where the jokes are for yourself.
The New Kid is a Brain in a Jar
Women's Prison: Release the Bats
The Limits of Love
And there's hours more of this nonsense on the Kami-1 DVD! These artists are relatively unknown even in Japan, but English translations of their works are starting to trickle out. Support starving Manga-Kas!
