Scummy Manga Reviews #2: Ryu, Strongest Man on the Face of the Planet

Title: Ryu, the Strongest Man on the Face of the Planet (地上最強の男竜)

Serialized in: Shonen Magazine 1977

Art and story by: Kaze Shinobi and Dynamic Pro

Genre: Super New Sense Manga

What it’s about:

Karate fighter Raion Ryu is so unflinchingly powerful that, during a sanctioned match, his strikes accidentally explode his opponent into piles of steaming meat. As punishment he dons a sutra-infused mask to suppress his horrific might and goes into hiding with his psychic sister, but the two are eventually hunted down by his ex-master and the fiancé of the man Ryu killed. While their modus operandi would appear to be revenge, they follow divine instructions from up above—Destroy Ryu before he can awaken as the Antichrist! God himself has put out a hit on our masked hero.

When his assassins fail, God revives his begotten son, the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, to take down Ryu once and for all. But Ryu is merely a good-natured man struggling with the absolute power that threatens to corrupt him. Wouldn’t antagonizing him run the risk of stirring the dark energy within? Is Christ really who he claims to be? And what do the unborn children of the universe have to say about this wantonly destructive clash?

Why it’s awesome:

Before you get the wrong idea that this is a high-handed parable between good and evil, note that Jesus uses his necromantic powers to enlist two of history’s greatest ass-kickers, Bruce Lee and Miyamoto Musashi, as his generals.

Kaze Shinobu’s crisp and clean artistry makes it easy to miss that, yes, what you are reading is indeed a parody. Or at least tongue-in-cheek. The 1970 Osaka World Fair brought with it a spiritual boom that opened people’s homes to the lure of occultism. Shirato Sampei's ninjas were replaced by psychic warriors and black magicians. Yokai took a back seat to ghosts and Biblical demons. Cloaked in the tropes established by this Cultural Revolution, Ryu is free to commit storytelling murder. Where do his sister’s prophetic powers come from? Why were Jesus’ body parts sealed away in Buddha statues? How does Ryu eat with his mask on? Readers accept these discrepancies as par for the course, while the mad author suspends disbelief until it’s blue in the face.

Ryu adds insult to injury by punching his ex-master in the face with his own fist. His mocking whoops of "Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself," join the parade of slapping meat.

Nothing is explained. Ever. Ryu is the precursor to the irreverent action OVAs from the late 80’s that washed up on American shores in the mid-90’s. Ninja Scroll, Fist of the North Star, Wicked City —these names should send a tingle down the spine of anyone who discovered anime when it was still called “Japanimation.” High octane is the name of the game, and like Ryu, they don’t have time to waste expounding on how the cast came to obtain super-human abilities, opting to let the brilliantly bizarre fight scenes do all the talking.

The resulting tableau of fists, skulls, and sutras resonates deep within your reptilian brain. It harkens back to a time when anime and manga where bombastic events, where storytelling could be pushed to the side by evocative art and high concepts. Kaze Shinobu isn’t shy about stealing layouts and visual motifs wholesale from his chief inspiration, French comic artist and visual designer Philippe Druillet. When one artist copies another from the same sphere of influence, it’s considered derivative. When it brings together two estranged schools of art, it’s cause for celebration.

Why it won’t come out in English:

This western sensibility made Kaze Shinobu the perfect harbinger of manga in the Americas . After obtaining a foothold on foreign soil in the March 1980 issue of Heavy Metal magazine, his work seemed poised to spearhead the invasion. Alas, for whatever reason his time in the spotlight never came. (Perhaps a knowledgeable manga historian could clue me in.) In any case, he missed the boat. Fandom has since outgrown such egregious blood and brain smeared fare and returned to its pre-occultism roots: Ninjas and pirates. The parody, it would seem, has outlived its usefulness.

Still, there will always be an audience derisive enough to appreciate the title at face value. Kaze Shinobu may be a forgotten hallucination in his native land, but the cosmic gravity of his art only grows stronger as the years pass. The final image of Ryu splitting the earth in two with a Mach 90 megaton punch is too sensational to ignore. Ryu creates more questions than answers, each brutal blow sounding the same unspoken inquiry: "When will people be ready for me?"

The Whisperer in the Darkness: H.P. Lovecraft Audio Books in Japanese

Finding a decent Japanese language podcast is difficult, with audio books of fiction rarer still. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across these curious recordings…

Lovecraft's works have always read more like travel logs than prose, and hearing his words piped directly into your brain enhances the experience of having stumbled across the dream diary of some ethereal explorer. Free samples are available for each of the nearly thirty stories split between two categories, Cthulhu Mythos and Lovecraft Mythos.

Noteworthy recordings include:
The Color out of Space,
The Statement of Randolph Carter,
and my personal favorite,
Beyond the Walls of Sleep.

Though the production values aren't as high as masterpieces like the Atlanta Radio Theater Company's dramatization of At the Mountains of Madness, they still possess just the right amount of grit and weird while avoiding spilling over into camp.

This is a great springboard for those of you who have always wondered how Lovecraft translates into Japanese but were put off by the prospect of consulting a dictionary at every instance of cyclopean, eldritch, and gibbering. And if Lovecraft's not your cup of turn of the century pulp, they've got Sherlock Holmes up for your listening pleasure as well.

Design Festa Vol. 31

We waded our way through the swamp of prostitute cosplayers, Suehiro Maruo knock-offs, and art school dreck to bring you the very best of Design Festa! This season's offerings felt sparser than last but there's still a decent amount of goodies to be had.

MARINBA


A student film project produced by members of Out Studio at the Chuo Institute of Technology.
The film's titular monster was standing outside the booth, flailing its vines menacingly at passers-by with the help of its puppeteer like a reject from Pee-Wee's playhouse. I haven't watched the DVD yet so I'll paraphrase their homepage:

The only thing that stands between earth and the alien invader is PURE MUSCLE. Just like how this analog film is the only thing that stands between you and 3DCG movies!

More recently they made kung-fu movie about people getting wrecked by a giant foam snake. Check out the previews on their site!

Dolls by Hayashi Midori


Pages upon pages of demonic home-made clay dolls, spider babies, franken-fetuses and other nightmare fuel.

CP-Ex Rebirth

Takes weirdo naked marionette fetishism to new depths of perversion by photoshopping gothic lolita girls to look like Pinocchio. Also contains composite photos and, uh, music videos of cosplay.

Iyasakado



Dealing in panoramic paper craft of Shita-Machi and the independent anime Hashi no Mukou (The Other Side of the Bridge). Imagine The Triplets of Belleville set in Showa-era Japan.

Seibei


Our pal Seibei hauled a lifetime supply of T-shirts on an auspicious journey east to make his Japanese debut. His designs bridge the gap between between Saturday morning cartoon nostalgia and hipster humor. Be sure to check him out!

Makiuchi Molding


Alligators, T-Rex, Chameleons--Reptiles from every shirt you owned in the 3rd grade, cast in solid metal!

Mr Ballhead's Helpless Circus

This title of this self-mutilating performance art wouldn't be out of place in a Perry Fellowship Bible comic. Check out his tumbler of faceless souls and spiral into the depths of depression together.

And that's it this time around. Did we overlook anything that needs a shout out? Drop us a line.

TSB gets Prolly'd!

Image lifted from courtesy of prollyisnotprobably.com

On the very day I planned to email Koenji-based figure maker Velocitron about doing an interview, I find out on the Mishka bloglin that we've been beaten to the punch! It turns out that Hell's fixed gear ambassador, John Prolly, already did a very good job of it on his blog. Among the topics discussed are manga (never expected to see Tsunozou Murotani in anyone else's favorite mangaka list!), horror movies and the vinyl figure business. If you like any of the three, you owe it to yourself to READ IT HERE.

Scummy Manga Reviews: Prince Shotoku

Title: Prince Shotoku (聖徳太子)
Serialized in: Shonen Sunday from November 1st, 1977 to March 21st, 1978
Script: Kai Takizawa
Gekiga: Fukushima Masami
Genre: Super Gekiga

Prince Shotoku is a prominent religious figure in Japanese history. He is celebrated for bringing Buddhism to the country and sending the first envoys to China.

What it’s about:

Lightning tears the sky asunder. The earth quakes, the seas boil—Prince Shotoku has returned from beyond the grave to extract his terrible vengeance upon the Soga clan for betraying his lineage. His callous self-resurrection breaks the laws of Hell, prompting Enma, the judge, jury, and executioner of the Buddhist underworld, to send his best shock troops to apprehend the renegade prince. Shotoku is dragged to Hell and finds its supposed ruler squeezed into submission between the meaty thighs of the muse Benzaiten, while a legion of restless undead plot a revolution. With the threat of nuclear war looming, will Shotoku side with the historic Buddha Shaka and his United Red Army, or with the piss-drinking Enma and his Machiavellian power fantasies?

The skeletonized United Red Army, presumably modeled after the domestic terrorist group of the same name, display the writing duo's panache for reckless black humor.

Why it’s awesome:

How Eisner-nominated Urasawa Naoki handles a cliffhanger:

Close ups! Big noses! Dangle that carrot in front of us for another 100 issues!

How Fukushima handles a cliffhanger:

Dino-rockets from Hell are racing through the universe to eat your face! Carnage guaranteed!

It’s criminal that such purposefully plodding pacing has become the standard for serials, while electrifying artists such as Fukushima have fallen by the wayside. His break-neck style bucks the system, cramming so much into each chapter that you’d forget you were reading a serialization if not for the lavish title pages breaking up the action. His trademark use of jarring two-page spreads would never fly with the current conservative administration. Which is a shame, because they form the nitro that propels his stories to increasingly outrageous heights. Half the fun is seeing how Fukushima will top himself, and he never fails to deliver.

Don’t write off the gushing intestines and hardcore perversion as mere shock value. Takezawa’s scripts are a lesson in intelligent excess. The concept that Japan’s benign father of Buddhism would return as a vengeful God is entirely acceptable given his tragic history. His family was assassinated for political gain, he himself was denied the exonerated funeral standard for royalty, and to top it all off, his image (a fabrication drawn 100 years after his death, no less.) was disgracefully placed upon the ten-thousand yen note, the ultimate embodiment of the earthly desires his beloved Buddhism seeks to liberate us from.

Yeah, I think a little vigilante ultra-violence is in order.


Even the most extreme gags have religious precedence. The demonic hosts of Fukushima’s Hell are taken directly from the ancient lore of the Kojiki, the Shinto Bible/Monster Manual. For example, the Shikome (seen above) were sent by the goddess Izanami to drive her husband Izanagi from the underworld. And what better way to send a man packing than saggy breasts and vagina scorpions? It’s like learning about world mythology though an X-rated Ray Harryhausen movie.

Why it won’t come out in English:

First there’s the question of taste. Shotoku and Enma engaging in a literal cock fight where they ejaculate buckets of ropey snakes at each other. The aforementioned Dino-Rockets (Genbu, if you want to get technical,) are equipped with a posterior hatch to shit on people from orbit. Misogynist undertones bulge from the page like Shotoku’s ever present erection.


More damning is the fact that the series was never completed. Fukushima went into hiding mid-serialization, and following his insane sense of artistic stoicism, burned the originals. These scans are yellowed because they came directly from 30 year old weeklies. Unfortunately for the rest of us, no publisher in their right mind would go through the effort to digitally re-master a derelict such as this.

Even accepting Prince Shotoku as collateral damage, I doubt we’ll ever see a major release of his completed masterpieces, Saint Muscle or Nyohanboh. Fukushima’s works pose as a threat to the status quo. His red-hot pages illuminate readers with the intensity of a super nova, revealing everything else being fed to them as mere shadows on the wall. To walk with Fukushima is to relinquish your life as manga fan, but it is the way towards enlightenment.

Haco X Big Comic Spirits 30th Anniversary

Was there ever a greater feeling of accomplishment than watching your favorite Saturday morning cartoon while wearing underwear festooned with the characters? Now's your chance to return to your glory days with these stylish briefs created in collaboration with Haco to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Big Comic Spirits. The Mori Mokkori inspired design will keep Heavy D and the Boys from sticking to your thighs this summer.

Left Hand of God, Right Hand of the Devil (By Umezu Kazuo)

Uzumaki (By Itoh Junji)

Ping Pong (By Matsumoto Taiyo)

Check out the 15 varieties available from Haco's homepage.

Super Festival 52: Joe Shigeru Triumphs Over Evil

Super Festivals start to blend together once you've been to a few and acclimated yourself with the dealers, so thankfully Art Storm always manages to bring in interesting guests and exhibitions. The obvious draw for Super Fest 52 is Araki Shigeru, AKA Joe Shigeru AKA Kamen Rider Stronger! But before we get to the main event we have to sit through amateur hour.



It’s not a comic-con without porn stars. and ASAMI was there to meet the quota. ASAMI is mostly known in the west for showing up in a number of Z-Grade shlock action films such as Robo-Geisha and Machine Gun Girl, but her fellow countrymen will never forget her early hits like Beautiful Girls Who Think They're Ugly Grovel in the Dirt For Sex and It's All in the Wrist.

Accompaning her was good-girl co-star Miwa Hitomi to promote the upcoming Sukeban Hunters series. Films like this mark the end of respectable V-Cinema. Imagine a Hong Kong remake of a direct-to-video version of Grindhouse and you'd be close to the level of inbred awfulness which has somehow become the accepted norm thanks to enterprising hacks like Iguchi Noboru.

What the world needs now is... a hero!



Sounding his whistle of justice that would make Proto Man blush, Kamen Rider Stronger took to the stage in his pedestrian form amidst spectacular fanfare. Let the questions begin.

Q: How did you end up playing the part of Stronger?

A: At the time I was doing commercials and playing bit parts in TV shows. One day I was contacted by Fujiyama Hiroshi, the first Kamen Rider. Fujiyama was an old friend from school and he became my key to the industry. They gave me the choice between Condor Man, Go-Ranger, or Kamen Rider. I had been a fan of the series, so it was a no-brainer--Kamen Rider!

Q: You were a national hero during the show's heyday. Were you ever spotted by fans or children?

A: The script kept us shooting on location up in the mountains and at abandoned factories, so I hardly had the chance to see anyone outside of my co-stars and crew. My schedule was an endless cycle of eat, sleep, shoot—I didn’t have time to live it up and mingle where the people were.

Q: You have such prominent features that I’m sure someone must have recognized you.

A: On the contrary, I went undetected at my own events! One time I did a gig at Korakuen Amusement Park (now Tokyo Dome) and while waiting for my show to start I sat myself down in the middle of the stands. No one looked twice! But then again, whose expecting a celebrity to be in the audience for their own show? The suit probably threw them off as well—People are used to the jeans and denim jacket.



Q: You did all of your own stunts. Did you ever hurt yourself during production?

A: I sprained my ankle 6 times jumping from tall places. It’s not fun—I could hear it snap inside your head when I landed. Of course, the show must go on, so if I messed up my right ankle I would put my weight on my left side. The problem is, what do you do when you’ve used up both of your good ankles?

Q: Didn’t you have crash mats to cushion your fall?

Oh we did, but they’d be all the way on the other side of the location. The director didn’t want to waste the 15 minutes it would take dragging it over to us. It was like that with everything. I remember one episode I’m hanging from a cable car—I was supposed to have a life line in case I fell, but I was having a hard time attaching it. The director’s yelling at my from twenty feet below to “Get on with it!” so eventually I just said screw it and did the scene free-hanging.

It wasn’t life-or-death, but it was a lot more dangerous than you would know watching from home.



Q: What’s your favorite scene from the series?

A: Around Episode 30, Stronger’s partner Tackle gets killed. I’m holding her body in my arms as the sun goes down behind us. We did a few test shots, and let me tell you, her actress, Okada Kyoko, was a hefty girl! My arms were shaking by the time we started shooting.

Q: She is part robot so it only makes sense that she’d be on the heavy side.



Now came the part of the show that gave hard-core Rider fans the motivation needed to leave their houses that day. Araki stepped out from behind his protective placard and let it all hang loose, acting out his classic transformation sequence and striking some manly poses for the cameras.

No sooner had the crowd gotten itself back under control that Tooru Hirayama took the stage and set them off again. Hirayama was producer for every Kamen Rider through the mid-80s, as well as the original Go-Rangers and stranger fare such as Mizuki Shigeru's Akuma-Kun. Unfortunately the years of concentrated hustling on the Toei lot have taken their toll on the man's mind and he was barely coherent enough to hold his mic. Before they cut him off, he left us with these words of wisdom:

"Nothing gets your old ticker pumping like being on location! Why, sometimes when the girlies fall down you get a fresh shot of their white panties!"


Spoken like a true mogul. Araki Shigeru himself is still active and on the prowl. When he's not in the studio with Four Saints, his folk-pop band from the 60's who recently staged a revival, he's operating a singles bar in Fujishima-Ku, Komagome. He may not be building schools and digging wells in Africa like his mentor Fujioka Hiroshi, but he's still making the world a better place for lonely baby boomers everywhere.



Enjoy a special sendoff from him and the boys of Four Saints, too preppy to sing the opening for Kamen Rider Stronger.