Attack of the Fifty Foot Rubber Woman

Hundreds of recovering otaku were sent into shock last weekend as fantasies of their little sister winning the battle against leukemia to grow up into a sex pot were stomped into the dust by a monstrous blowup doll of popular fap fodder Ayase Haruka.



While the house-sized pajama pants had our room wear sexy sensors going off the charts, it's easy to see how long time fans would feel betrayed to see their darling fetish object exposed to radiation and mutated into the frumpy bride of Galactus.



The problem with idols is that they start out cute, but grow up fast into world eating leviathans with love handles to match. Better pick her up one of those scientifically proven Pyramid Powers.



Compound that with the world's fattest camel toe and you'll be thankful to spend the better part of your life in a sexless marriage. If your dutch wife looks like this, file for divorce!

Nuri-E Museum

For the children who lived through the aftermath of WWII, entertainment itself was a valuable commodity. The high cost of paper made manga something to be borrowed and cherished, not consumed on a massive scale. The neighborhood kids didn't gather around their televisions, but rather around kami-shibai street corner storytellers. Children connected their own path to escapism from the scant dots provided.



It is no surprise that nuri-e, or coloring books, enjoyed immense popularity in this time of scare resources and overabundant imaginations. Inexpensive, plentiful, and engrossing, these blank slates--first sold as bags of loose pictures as opposed to the bounded pages we know today--granted youths the creative capital to paint their dreams as vividly as they dared.


Tsutaya Kiichi (蔦谷喜一) was the undisputed king of postwar nuri-e. The middle of nine children, growing up flanked by two younger and older sisters would later help him tune into the hearts and hopes of young girls across the country. His Shirley Temple-inspired designs with Kewpie doll-proportions provided an endless wardrobe of designer kimono and dresses to delight and distract those whose families were left with little more than the clothes on their backs.



As with kami-shibai, nuri-e fell out of fashion with the spread of television and advent of anime, but support from dedicated fans kept Kiichi's unique style planted firmly in the nation's consciousness. The Arakawa Nuri-e Museum, managed by his niece, houses the finest work from his fifty year career, in addition to those by artists who followed the trail he blazed.



Hours of operation and directions to the museum can be found on their English homepage.

The following nuri-e are pieces by other representative artists in the field are also on display.





















More images here:

Nurie Museum

My Posse's on Broadway: Recomints SIDE B

Since its inception 23 years ago, the Recomints group has made it their mission to bring offbeat music and movies to the public eye. From videocassettes to laser disks to DVDs, Recomints Side-B has always supported underground directors and foreign filmmakers.

Looking to get your hands on Roman Porno and Toei yakuza flicks that haven’t yet been released internationally? They carry every notable exploitation flick from the 60’s, 70’s and beyond.

Recomints SIDE-B's recommended directors:

Matsue Tetsuaki

Born to Korean parents, Matsue’s Zainichi upbringing gives him a unique pair of cultural eyes to peer through the camera with. Borrowing a page from self-made porn star Company Matsuo's playbook, his man-off-the-street style documentaries have taken him to the top of the independent circuit as the director to keep watch on.


Annyeong Yumika, his most recent foray into playful lewdness, chronicles his journey to Korea to track down the true story of Hayashi Yumika, a porn starlet who appeared in over 180 films during her 16 year career (one of them a rumored Korean skin flick) before passing away under mysterious circumstances at the age of 35.

Wakamtsu Koji

A virtuoso of the flesh, this reformed Yakuza’s anarchist films made him no shortage of enemies both domestically and abroad in Russia and Germany. He transformed Pink Films into a soapbox for the revolution with Ecstasy of the Angels and others.


After walking away from commercial films when the censors burst the bawdy bubble in the mid 80’s, he has since resurfaced with an award winning expose on the fall of the Japanese United Red Army and his take on the Edogawa Ranpo classic, Caterpillar.

The Wet Dream Quest of Unknown Moe

August Derleth introduced a number of questionable elements to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Posthumous “collaborations”, a paper-rock-scissors system of elemental rivalries between the Great Old Ones, a wholly altered interpretation of the Elder Sign. But above all, he allowed for the creation of fans, an invasion from the common man, the agents of atrophy in a previously closed environment.

Fandom is a slippery slope. If ten years ago you had told me that there would be Cthulhu plushies wearing Hawaiian shirts and bumper stickers showing Dagon eating a Darwin Fish eating a Jesus Fish, I would have laughed.

If a year ago you had told me that there would be a series of tween novels starring Mythos monsters personified as doe-eyed debutantes, I would have told you to go to Hell.

Well, look where we ended up.

Lovecraft approved! (Source)

The Crawling Cuteness! Nyarl-Ko, My Maid is an Amorphous Blob, and The Magickal Girl R'lyeh Lulu are a trio of Light Novels (juvenile fiction with an emphasis on dialogue and humor over description and drama) planted firmly in the world of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, though their roots run deep into caverns shunned by even the most fearless Martense or Delapore. They take tropes established by harem and moe anime and run with them to the outer limits of the imagination, with results varying from groan inducing to genuinely clever.

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Title: The Crawling Cuteness! Nyarl-Ko (這い寄れ！ニャル子さん)
Author: Aisora Manta (逢空万太)
Art by: Koin (狐印)
Published by: GX Bunko
Volumes: Five and going strong
Genre: Trouser-shrinking RPG gags

In the world of Nyarl-Ko, the Planetary Protection Organization polices the cosmos and ensures that the Prime Directive—which restricts alien intelligences from meddling in the matters of developing planets—is carried out at all costs. The job is trickier than it sounds, given that Earth's entertainment is the intergalactic gold standard, thus attracting no shortage of smugglers willing to risk life and pseudopod for contraband Dojinshi and porn games.

Our mild-mannered high school protagonist, Mahiro, possesses just the right level of androgynous castrati beauty that drives lonely housewives into fits of thigh-grinding frustration. In a normal world, his looks would land him on the casting couch of some boy band mogul with his pants around his ankles. Instead, they’ve made him the target of a human trafficking organization looking to send his sweet cheeks off to be shuckled in an interspecies homoerotic daytime soap opera. Different means, same end.

Enter Nyarl-Ko, one of a race of Nyarlathoteps, whose demure appearances beguile her world-leveling powers and destructive sexual appetite. The Planetary Protection Organization dispatches her to protect Mahiro from his would-be abductors and break up a smuggling ring operating out of R’lyeh. She fights off Nightgaunts, brutalizes Nodens, and gives the protagonist the biggest case of blue balls he’s ever suffered during his sixteen years. Mahiro resists her molestation attempts and won’t be taken in by her supple appearance—he knows that underneath the mask of Nyarlathotep lurks a horror beyond his comprehension.

Shantanks love carrots! The wackiness never stops when Nyarl-Ko's around.

Despite the blatant disregard for established Mythos protocol, the first volume was enjoyable, providing its fair share of snarky grins. The author clearly knows his pulp horror and isn't afraid to slaughter a sacred cow (or herds) for comedic effect. Sadly, the quality evaporates quickly over future volumes as he introduces an increasingly inbred cast of paper-thin personalities and limp-wrist punch lines. Cthugha is a Loli lesbian! Hastur is a gay Shota! If these sentences are incomprehensible to you, then you’d do yourself well to turn back from whence it came, least you open up a vista of unspeakable madness.

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Title: My Maid is an Amorphous Blob (うちのメイドは不定形)
Author: Shizukawa Tasso (静川龍宗)
Based on a concept by: Morise Ryo (森瀬繚)
Art by: Ayakura Jyu (文倉十)
Published by: Smash Bunko
Volumes: One nail was enough to close this coffin.
Genre: Big sister doting romance

Araizawa Toru has daddy issues. You can’t really blame him. His father, a self-proclaimed archeologist, watched idly as his wife and daughter walked out on the family while he ventured the globe. Now, he’s left his 9^th grade son to fend for himself in order to make time to chase rumors of ruins in uncharted regions of Antarctica. But good old dad has just the ticket to make up for the years of neglect and fix his son’s abandonment complex—a perky maid, mailed freeze dried directly from the Mountains of Madness!

It doesn’t take long for Tekeli, the emerald-eyed Shoggoth, to get to work in picking up the pieces of Toru’s life, both figuratively and literally. He finally has someone to clean the dusty mansion he calls home, make his lunches, and send him off to school with a smile. He finally has his mother back. But these halcyon days are too soon beset by a storm of black magic.

Asahi Peabody, transfer student from Arkham, Massachusetts and latest in a long line of magicians, knows a cosmic horror when she sees one. And to command as fearsome of an entity as a Shoggoth, Toru must be an accomplished sorcerer in his own right. Against the advice of her cat-shaped familiar, Balor, she declares a wizard war on her unsuspecting classmate.

Shoggoth are a servitor race. Just like French maids.

My Maid is an Amorphous Blob is sometimes heartwarming, but mostly just embarrassingly calculated. Far too much page space is dedicated to selling the chibi-Tekelis, a platoon of mini-maids resulting from the Shoggoth’s unique physiology which allows them to split their cells into any number of independently controlled organisms. Naturally, one of them stows away in Toru’s pocket and the reader has to suffer the accompanying wacky hijinks. Still, it goes on to cover the history of the Elder Things’ war with the Great Old Ones and Mi-Go, keeping it from being a total wash for Mythos fans. Think of it as a way to get your girlfriend interested in Lovecraft, assuming she has the brain mass of an intelligent space vegetable.

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Title: The Magickal Girl R'lyeh Lulu (魔海少女ルルイエ・ルル)
Author: Hazawa Koichi (羽沢向一)
Art by: Pierre Yoshio (ピエ〜ル☆よしお)
Published by: Atomic Bunko
Volumes: One, with more waiting in the wings.
Genre: Magical girl rape comedy

R'lyeh needs women! And men, and anyone else available to worship Great Cthulhu. Everyone’s favorite Great Old One has sent its adorable daughter, Lulu, up from under the sea to where the people are in order to drum up cult membership. Her winning smile is as infectious as the latest pop sensation, and if her cute-as-a-button looks let her down, she’s got her daddy’s tentacles to weasel her way into the hearts (and panties) of her classmates.

True to her idol singer fashion, Lulu’s fans end up bruised and broken on the business end of her pseudopods, prostate in worship and begging for more. The thrill of domination and the mindless joy of subservience leap from the pages and electrify your most base desires with a cacophony of whip cracks accompanied by the wet sucking of trembling lips on sugar cubes. The stock protagonist, Naoya, begins as an impotent virgin, but is soon hardened into deflowerer extraordinaire by a gauntlet of forced urethral play. Arisa, the sadistic queen bee of the school, rules with an iron fist until Lulu cleans out her honey pot.

Any Mythos references are mere plot contrivances to grease the action between the sheets. Imagine the damage that a Hound of Tindalos could do with its piercing, proboscis tongue. The Son of Yog- Sothoth is at that age where a young boy’s fancy turns to violent tentacle rape. And the Deep Ones are skilled with their webbed hands, as luck would have it.

The publisher, Atomic Pocket Novels, guarantee to turn your little boy into a fat man or your money back. They titillate the reader with the best that harlequin horror has to offer. “He gazed hotly into her puckered abyss of unspeakable symmetry.” “His passion ignited the flesh which came from beyond the stars.” “Her divine lineage was the only thing keeping her internal organs from spilling across the pavement”. Sex need not be pleasant, or even consensual.

Busty blondes trampling boys, reverse tentacle rape, loli-pops: Lulu in a nutshell.

Lulu may not break new ground by combining eldritch monsters with nubile young co-eds, but it makes up for that by being the most self-conscious piece of pornography ever forged by man. It goes out of its way to cutoff any moral quandaries the reader may have, leaving them to revel in the cosmic orgy guilt free. So what if Lulu is the most corrosive kind of jailbait since Morning Musume? The main character doesn’t have a Lolita complex, so as long as he complains about her flat chest during intercourse, there’s totally nothing weird about it. And besides, she’s the one that started it! A graphic depiction of rape is spun into the villain playing right into the heroine’s hand. The tone swings from deprived and demented to sugar and spice in one coquettish wink.

Such a lobotomized world caters perfectly to the audience’s taste. People will pay good money to avoid having to think for themselves. Everyone is free to be a pervert in their own mind, but if you’re tortured by your repressed desire, at least have the self-respect to take off the training wheels. Lulu makes the rest of us sickos look bad by comparison.

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From a fan perspective, the burning question is: So what do these titles bring to the Mythos? Well, practically nothing.

Apart from clever name-dropping and borrowed settings, none of the stories bare the slightest semblance to Lovecraft’s revered works. Granted, the Light Novel medium isn’t designed to create anything greater than parody or self-serving juvenile fantasy. In that regard, it fulfills its role admirably.

This intellectual vacuum gives birth to a liberating revelation—why linger slavishly to past authorship and ideas? Admiration comes in many forms, with imitation being the greatest form of flattery, and innovation the pinnacle of devotion. A truly worthy adaptation, be it cover song, film, or moe-ization, makes possible what would be impossible for the original author. It adds to the work by detracting from its bad habits.

These books have Lovecraft spinning in his grave and the villagers running for their torches to slay the monster. But consider this—tasteless as they may be, they can only be fully appreciated (and hated) by the most stalwart of followers.

In the end we only have the fans to blame, or thank, depending on which side of the fence you fall onto. Stuffed Cthulhus paved the way for anthropomorphic body pillows of a lithe Nyarlathotep. Lulu rode the soundless wings of Nyaruko out of the void of our paradoxical modern morals to simultaneously repel and tantalize. Once culture has reached its highest point, it can only spiral downwards, and I for one am excited to see what depths of depravity it is willing to descend to.

My Posse's on Broadway: History

If you've found our blog, chances are you don't need someone convincing you that Nakano Broadway is one of the greatest pieces of post-war architecture in Japan. It is a luxury that has become a necessity. Yet even the most stalwart shoppers are unaware of its true nature. The concrete walls hide a living, breathing organism with a forty-year history of revolution and storefronts that come and go like mirages. This post is the first in an ongoing series exploring the lore, individual shops, and new ways to appreciate Nakano Broadway.

Why Nakano Broadway?

The media has lied to you. Shibuya, Harajuku, and Akihabara are not the pinnacles of pop culture that the Ministry of Tourism would have you believe. These places represent merely the tip of the great pyramid they draw inspiration from, whose true riches are buried deep and far away from the international eye. Nakano Broadway is the one true bastion of authenticity, where consumers are in complete control of the trends and brand image.

A time capsule of collectibles from past and present loaded with out of print manga, forgotten toys, limited-edition soft vinyl, vintage film memorabilia, antiques, and record stores catering to your every taste, Nakano Broadway has everything you never knew you wanted under one roof. The four-story shopping center is held together by years of history, and its adjoining rooftop apartments have been home to influential celebrities and politicians. Forget everything you know—Nakano Broadway is it’s own world, a glass-bottle boat floating in the sands of time.

The History of Nakano Broadway

Miyata Keisaburo, founder of Nakano Broadway, dreamed of marrying consumer space with living space. Originally a dentist, Miyata’s studies took him abroad to seminars in America where he discovered architecture that combined shopping malls and high-class homes. He took this American dream back to Japan, and over the next few years constructed a series of designer apartments, including Harajuku Co-Op Olympia, Shibuya Co-Op, and others. The crown jewel of his career was Nakano Broadway, though it wasn’t long before his prized treasure was stolen away from him.

Nakano Broadway opened in 1966 as the Roppongi Hills of its time. This blue-blood image was pruned by the startup investors of Tokyo Coup. While the group were capable marketers, they were inept landlords, and the combination of low occupancy due to high rent, favors cut for preferred residents (including Miyata himself), and an overall mismanagement of profits kept their books in the red over the initial eight years. When Miyata was eventually booted from the board of directors, it sparked a bloodless coup d’etat in which store owners and residents bought Broadway back from the corporate suits.

This revolution liberated store owners. Now everyone is free to run any kind of operation they want, so long as they have the cash and are operating within the law. Over the years the building has seen a DIY medical clinic, a butcher specializing in snake meat, a no-panty café, and a second-hand store dealing exclusively in items left behind on trains. In this buyer’s market, it’s anyone’s guess as to what stores will remain standing until your next visit.

The segmented nature of the building’s culture guarantees you’ll find something that scratches your itch, or at the very least leaves you with a rash in unexpected places. Have a Polaroid of your aura analyzed by professional auraologists. Take the foot-high ice cream challenge. Explore the building’s Escher-like architecture. And prepare to lose yourself in the endless halls where lives are spent, found, and remembered.

Kazuo Umezu Live in Kochijoji (9-5-2010)

This Sunday, Umezu Kazuo was the opening act for the crochety (though somehow socially accepted) Izumiya Shigeru who took the stage with songwriter Wakui Koji and his ensemble. The event was the latest in a series of free outdoor concerts sponsored by Art Life, a local movement working to raise art awareness through public galleries and performances.

However, as Izumiya Shigeru is the kind of prick that would ask someone in a wheelchair to give up their seat to him, we're only going to talk about Kazz and his band, Caps!


The rock and roll trio of Caps is: Vocals: Kazz; Guitar: Kurobe; Drums: Nai-nai.

They kicked things off with Umezu's self-proclaimed theme song, Hebi Shojo.

Kurobe mugging for the crowd.

Cat-eyed boy KICK! You know you've got a good thing going if you're 74 and still pulling off moves like this on stage.

Kazz and Demerin bust out the titular pose for Gwash! Makoto-Chan.

MJ's backup dancers have nothing on Makoto Mushi.

Not everyone can be The Rolling Stones, but we can all pretend.

After Kazz and Co. evacuated the stage, we took a stroll through Inokashira Park to cool off. Once there, we were lucky enough to catch the manga reciting guy right as he was closing up shop.

He gave us his spirited interpretation of Umezu's brutal horror hodge-podge, Left Hand of God, Right Hand of the Devil. Thank you in advance for the nightmares. Not bad for a lazy Sunday.

Scummy Manga Reviews #3: Hakaijyu

Title: Hakaijyu (ハカイジュウ)
Serialized in: Shonen Champion Comics, 2010-present
Art and story by: Honda Shingo (本田真吾)
Genre: B-grade sports splatter horror.

What it’s about:

Any given sports manga could be improved if monsters killed off the starting lineup within the first few pages. Imagine, endless volumes of tired clichés and pre-fabricated character arcs liquidated before the first practice. You would only be left with the good stuff—Cock-sure teenagers now pissing themselves in abject terror as they flee from an unknown, unstoppable, malignant force. Hakaijyu delivers a care package from 80’s monster movies topped with a bow fabricated out of bloody jock straps.

Takashiro Akira is your typical high school underdog waiting for his day. He wishes he was a baller, but lacks the chops to make it off the bench and into the game. He’s been living in the shadow of his best friend, Eiji, the team’s golden boy, for the entirety of his basketball career. And to put further strain on their friendship, they both have the hots for the same girl, Miku, whose bipartisan attitude towards them ensures that the iron love triangle forged as children will never be broken. Thankfully, this melodrama is thrown from the cradle to the grave when a Richter six earthquake awakens horrific beasts, who then rise from the bowels of the earth to murderize anyone within tentacles-reach.

The hero, the bully, the honor student, the nerd. This small group of students that escaped the initial attack must now set aside their schoolyard personas and work together towards mutual survival. Teamwork is their sole advantage over the creatures hunting them. For the various species of monsters are competing for the same food source, and resources are dwindling quickly…

Why it’s awesome:

There are two types of brutality in horror films. The kind that reminds you of your humanity, and the kind that makes you sick to be human. I don’t need to watch someone have their eyeball blowtorched or have their fingernails removed for sport. I will, however, pay good money to see some asshole get headbanger face ripped, or drawn and quartered by zombies. Hakaijyu is a gourmet meat lover’s pizza heaped with steaming entrails, still-twitching limbs, and all-purpose gore. It takes us from the sterile prisons patrolled by Eli Roth and back to the creature factories staffed by Rob Bottinz and Stan Winston.

Every character has one redeeming quality, and that is the guarantee that at some point they will die in the most spectacular fashion.

Hakaijyu wastes no time in setting up the desperation of the situation. An early scene drags us along a pulse-pounding chase through an apartment complex from what we think is a pack of toothy pseudopods. They’re slobbering down stairs, crashing through ceilings, and hoisting themselves over balconies. How many of these things can there be? It is only after the cast escapes to the ground floor that they realize that the bundles of slavering jaws all belong to the same bloated monstrosity, who now encircles the building like a titan centipede. Their lives have been saved, but all hope is lost. For across the city, countless variations of the same lumbering silhouettes tower over the skyline like uncontrollable trellises looking to choke out the sun. Humanity is doomed, and it’s only a matter of time before the teens join their classmates in the belly of the beast.

This type of story could only be possible in Shonen Champion. From Eko Eko Azarak to Kyofu Shinbun, the magazine is infamous for its darker, though not necessarily maturer edge. Consider the market leader, Shonen Jump, whose mission is to brainwash children into productive worker drones through their message of friendship and perseverance. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again—Don’t work smarter, just work harder! Hakaijyu presents a philosophy that’s closer to home for teenagers: Entrance Exam Hell looms over everything like an eternal eclipse, friends are more valuable as decoys, and once the academic floodgates open, it’s a never-ending struggle to stay ahead least you be dragged down into oblivion.

Is this a life lesson or a course in Monster Films 101?

Of course, any hints of social subversion are likely accidental. Honda Shingo’s previous work, Ping Pong Dash, was a fight manga where combatants pulverized each other with jerry curl assisted serves and explosive volleys powered by Georgia MAX can coffee. His handling of the subject manner has all the finesse of a child ramming Matchbox cars into each other at top speed. Hakaijyu revels in its puerile stupidity, like a kid in his uncle’s VHS stash grinning from ear to ear as he watches Jason turn people in human accordions.

Why it won't come out in America:

The Creature Feature is an untapped creative resource in manga waiting to be thawed from the ice. If Parasyte is Tremors, an undisputed masterpiece of the genre, then Hakaijyu is the direct to video sequels. Not bad by any means, and definitely serviceable by the standards of most fans, but also not good enough to turn heads or draw a new audience to the fold. Too niche for the mainstream and not underground enough for the hardcore crowd, Hakaijyu will remain marooned on monster island, waiting for its chance to sneak away on a tourist ship and stow away to the mainland.