I would rather spend a day filled with nothing worthwhile than one with everything worthless. Life in Tokyo presents endless adventure with scripted consequences. After months of excitement, the most fulfilling is often the least glamorous. Sometimes you need a lazy Sunday to take you back down in order to once again enjoy the thrill of soaring back up.
Hence our visit to Koganecho, a small town in the suburbs of Yokohama where even the busiest shopping promenade is sleepy by comparison. The day’s wanderings took us to Isezaki Mall, the areas most charitably dull quarters.
Snake Powder Emporium: Hebiya
Walking by, your eye unconsciously skips over the drab external décor, until you peer into the showcase and realize holy shit, a stuffed cobra! Step inside and its like you wandered onto the backlot of Hammer horror. Its walls are lined with taxidermy set pieces of snakes fighting mongooses, the cubbyholes filled with rows of rare serpents in formaldehyde vats. The owner must be either a mad scientist or the world’s tackiest serial killer.
In reality, the establishment is managed by an elderly couple that, staying true to the store’s Scooby-Do façade, don’t take kindly to meddling kids or strangers. Sadly they wouldn’t let us snap any photos, but you can still visit their online shop to pick up cobra and Okinawa habu powder for all your super-induced boner needs.
This cozy coffee shop gave off the relaxing aroma of fresh cut wood, something between a log cabin and your dad’s workbench. Their beans treated by hand in their patent tumble roaster and brew up the cleanest cup of coffee that I’ve ever tasted.
Being inside made me miss the little niceties about Autumn that you just can't get here. I would trade all the crepes and choco-cro in Harajuku for a single cider mill doughnut and slice of pumpkin pie.
Mysterious Antique Toy Store
Trolling for retro games is one of the small joys of life in Japan. Sadly, most of the charm fades away upon the realization that a colossal find like Chrono Trigger mint in box can be had without much fanfare at the neighborhood Hard Off. It hardly seems worth exploring if the final frontier is standing in plain sight around the corner. When everything you want is at your fingertips, the thrill becomes discovering things you never knew existed.
Pure Wrestle Queens is one of those games I never knew I needed until our paths stumbled across one another. Its fetching package wraps it in mystery. Is it rare due to unpopularity, or rather because it’s a masterpiece that none dare part with? Pure Wrestle Queens, I can’t wait to get home and unwrap you.
Normally “indy movie theater” is code for “shoe box with a digital projector”, but Jack and Betty shatters this mold with their stadium seating and (comparatively) wicked huge screens. Their standard sound system was swapped out for amps and stacks as part of the Bakuon film festival sponsored by folks from the sub culture rag Trash-Up!
Bakuon literally means “explosive sound” and the gimmick lives up to its name. You haven’t seen They Live until you experience John Carpenter’s ponderous soundtrack at bone-rattling decibels.
And thus concludes a day well wasted. I wouldn’t want to go back to Koganecho anytime soon, but I’m content in the knowledge that these urban retreats still exist. These wonderfully useless neighborhoods serve to help color the metropolis, who would soon normalize to a neutral gray without them.
HEY! Dr. Senbei and I were featured in an artsy fartsy magazine called Prints 21 this month! Support your favorite local otaku scumbags by going out and grabbing a copy! If you're a cheapskate like everyone else at least you can skim through it and the accompanying interview at the newsstand. Don't live in Japan, or do but have been reduced to a useless shut-in? You can pick it up on Amazon here.
For (most of) you ladies, this is the only chance you'll ever get to see the inside of my bedroom- Don't waste it!
Thanks to Tsuzuki-san and Yasui-san from Prints 21 for putting up with us, as well as Itoh-san from Umezz.com for everything else!
Toot toot! The Black Ships are once again sauntering into the harbor, this time all the more wiser for wear. After their imperial degree to adopt bro culture with the X-Box and Abercrombie and Fitch fell on deaf ears, they’ve regrouped and come back with something more pleasing to the Japanese palette.
The preferred method of transport for White (and now Yellow) Trash.
Hooters Japan may sound like an oxymoron, while in practice the two go together like spicy wings and blue cheese. Legitimate doubts about proportions aside, the real mystery is why Hooters didn’t launch in Japan sooner. The franchise embodies all things holy to the country’s male populace. Let me break it down:
Uniforms
Not pictured: Thick ribbed socks of +10 fetishism.
All it took for an otherwise blasé and overpriced chain like Anna Miller’s to get their entry permit stamped was cute costumes that were cleverly cut directly below the breast. The tank top and hot pants combination share the same basic concept, but in this case is augmented by the hereditary obsession with school bloomers. Guaranteed millions overnight!
Line Dancing
From Obon to Pink Lady to Para Para and beyond, choreographed dancing has long served as a means to unite the hearts of the audience and bridge the gap between the attendee and the artist. When the girls spontaneously break out into the YMCA, back in the States it’s laughed off as goofy and mostly harmless. Here it’s like being at the backstage rehearsal of your favorite idol group. And who can go back to AKB48 after seeing HTR36-26-36?
Girls and Beer
My tongue told me to go for the Hoegaarden, while my heart told me to go for the Coor’s Light for the authentic American experience.
There will always be establishments dedicated to serving schmucks that are willing to dole out the cash for the honor of breathing the same air as a female. Yet these businesses have largely been one-dimensional affairs that choke the potential clientele into a bottleneck. Nobody goes to a Maid Café for the cooking (even if the omelet rice has ketchup hearts on it), and only the recklessly rich frequent cabaret clubs for a few drinks.
Maid cafes make me feel like I'm a player in a 3rd-world puppet show. This, however, is too surreal to be awkward.
Hooters marries the need for good food with the demand for pleasing eye candy as never before. It represents a previously invisible demographic—The ordinary working dude, too grown up for moe and too wise for hostesses, who just want to relax with his crew and a brew and watch cute chicks without any hang-ups. Hooters is tasty, fun, and best of all, doesn’t make you feel like a total weirdo.
Overall Impressions
Of course, there's more to Hooters then girls, girls, girls. The menu should be first and foremost in the mind of any self respecting slob. It'll have your guts doing backflips.
Authentic wings to set your mouth ablaze. "Spicy" means spicy, not "a few hits of Tabasco."
Fresh sour cream and guac. These quesadillas are the real deal.
Fried pickles? In my Japan? I must be dreaming.
Real nacho cheese, straight from the pump.
While the bar may be set low, Hooters outdid themselves in every conceivable way for their opening day festivities. I'm not talking about the red carpet hoopla that was the black-tie ribbon cutting, or how they sounded the call for gaijin waitresses to hype up the foreign entertainment experience. This is all industry standard.
Signatures are necessary so you can prove to your friends that you talked to a female.
The big payoff came in the form of their two top calender girls, flown in from the States for a meet and greet with the first thirty customers in line. Voidmare is so NASCAR that when the rest of us were returning to the office on Monday, he was camping out for the sake of spectacle.
Dude she totally wants you, she drew a heart!
They even transferred in super employees from back home who served as trainers that made sure that the girls were all perky, all the time. If they ever revive the woman's prison genre as a musical, the inmates would be played by Hooters girls. Not that the atmosphere felt the least bit exploitative, mind you. The experience is more Bikini Carwash than Showgirls. You don't have to feel like Tokyo scum to enjoy yourself.
Though I wouldn't go bragging about it to my friends, either. At least, not with a straight face.
Title: Gekiman (激マン) Lit: Hardcore-Man Serialized in: Shukan Manga Goraku, 2010-present Art and story by: Nagai Go and Dynamic Pro Genre: Respect knuckles essay manga
What it's about: 1972 saw Japan riveted to the television in fear and revulsion. The United Red Army marched into homes with a marathon broadcast of the Asama-Sanso Incident, followed by the Lod Airport massacre in Tal Aviv. Yokoi Shoichi, a WWII holdout, returned home alive “with much embarrassment” after slinking in the jungles of Guam for nearly 20 years. And America had re-launched its mass bombings of Vietnam. If your job is to create dynamic, provocative imagery, how do you compete with the classic, chilling photograph of children running mortified from the acrid smoke of napalm death?
If you were Nagai Go, you’d start with something like this:
Gekiman is the autobiographical account of a young Nagai Go struggling to break out of his typecasting as the go-to guy for gag manga by breaking into the sophisticated world of story manga. Once establishing himself with bawdy comedies like Harenchi Gakuen (Shameless School) and Abashiri Ikka (The Abashiri Family), he experimented with a pair of dark adult narrative works, Oni and Mao Dante (Demon Lord Dante). Their critical successes propelled him to make the jump to primetime with his anti-social masterpiece that stained the verdant field of boy’s comics crimson with the blood of childhood innocence lost—Devilman.
Why it’s awesome:
These days there’s no shortage of guys making bank from the crude sketches you’d find in the notebooks of a junior high metalhead. Consciously or not, all of them are biting off a bit established by Nagai Go, the OG of hustling rudely drawn gore and tits for scratch. But he didn’t get rich overnight. He paid his dues as assistant to Ishinomori Shotaro, where he sacrificed sleep and shaved years off his life to produce prototype gag comics that would lead to his first serialized gig with Kodansha.
The man clawed his way up, and now that he’s at the top, he’s stretching his hand back down to help others make the climb.
The credits on the cover would lead you to believe that manga is one-man show, but in reality a successful author is more factory foreman than artist, juggling a team of talent to take care of everything from inking to backgrounds to character designs and even story development! Nagai Go has always been up front with crediting his team, Dynamic Pro, and with Gekiman he throws back the curtain to reveal each member, their artistic contribution to the big picture, and how hopelessly screwed he would be without all of them storming ahead at full steam every single day.
Nagai Go does more than just tip his hand. He lays his cards onto the table and goes all in. Names are dropped and shout outs leap from the page. No human work is created in a vacuum, and anyone who implies otherwise is a fraud and a thief. You get the feeling that he's trying to set the record straight. My best ideas actually belong to everyone else.
Bird-woman and woman-bird are two very different things.
One issue is dedicated to Tsuji Masaki, scriptwriter for the Devilman anime and all-around mystery buff, and how he fed Go the design for the iconic harpy-demon Silene. Incidentally, Nagai Go was grateful for having another pair of breasts to draw, and his editor was grateful for another outlet to crank up the nudity in the manga to differentiate it from the family-friendly anime.
There’s more to Gekiman than anecdotes from behind the drawing board at Kodansha. It represents manga’s oldest bad boy falling into step with the subliminal wave sweeping the industry at large.
Nagai Go’s development as an author mirrors the evolution of the medium. Cheap gag comics got the ball rolling and paved the way for character-driven story manga, which widened the playing field, allowing experience-centric essay manga to drive in a wedge and stake their claim. Though not in a position to usurp the throne, essay manga have been gradually picking up steam by combining the timing of gag manga and the narrative techniques of story manga. Oishinbo, My Darling is a Foreigner, and A Drifting Life are all excellent examples of the variety within the genre. With Gekiman, Nagai Go admits that the greatest story he has left to tell is the facts surrounding his fiction.
Why it won’t come out in America:
I’m sure many readers of the blog are familiar with the Devilman anime, but let’s see a show of hands from those of you that have read the actual manga. And I don’t mean the nostril-augmented monstrosity, Shin-Devilman, released by Danzig and Verotix. Scanlations don’t count either. That leaves either you who sluthed out the bilingual edition (Japan only, naturally), or those that hunkered down with the original moon language. In either case, it means you were forced to jump through flaming hoops for the privilege to read a cornerstone of the medium that should be readily available!
It’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy keeping Nagai Go's works quarantined to Japan.
Bone-crunching fight scenes, snot-nosed adolescents piloting giant robots, smutty hijinks rendered innocent by their sincerity—Japan’s greatest cultural products, both domestic and international, were first manufactured by Nagai Go and Dynamic Pro, but the profits for exports went straight to his predecessors. It’s a damn shame that the West has systematically been denied the chance to know the genesis behind its favorite “original” stories.
Three things Nagai Go hates: Hippies, drawing clothes on women, and people that borrow his car without filling the gas tank. I wonder if Iwaashi Hitoshi would blush if you pointed out Parasyte is Devilman with tree hugging instead of nuclear war. Or if Miura Kentaro would openly admit that, yes, Guts and Griffith are essentially Akira and Ryo. I’m sure Anno Hideaki would break into a cold sweat if you showed him a side-by-side comparison of The End of Evangelion and Devilman's devise final scenes.
There’s a tacit understanding that no idea is truly original, and that it doesn’t matter where you got something, but where you take it. Still, credit earned is credit due. The class of authors inspired by Devilman will be remembered for their contributions to the next generation of manga-ka, while the man who laid the foundation they built their carnival tents on will be disregarded as embarrassingly old hat within a generation. And saddest of all, the West never had a chance to pick him up before unceremoniously dropping him with the recognition he deserved.
Reader, beware. Umezu Kazuo's serpentine hold only tightens with each turn of the page, and once his fangs send their hypnotic venom into your veins, you will never be the same again. The supernatural magnetism he exudes is evident in his legion of fans that remain vehemently loyal more than fifteen years after their master has hung up his ink pen.
The mesmerist of the printed page has since turned Pied Piper. If anything, retiring from manga has given him the time to focus on his second passion: Music. Umezu began writing songs for popular musicians back in the 70's and even recorded two full length CDs, Yami no Album (The Darkness Album) and Gwash!! Makoto-Chan/Umezu Kazuo World. The Umezu Carnival is held both to celebrate his birthday and scratch the rockstar itch that has been driving him batty for the past quarter of a century.
In typical fashion we kick things off with HebiShojo (Snake Girl) , an Egyptian lullaby designed to pull the dreamer down to face their innermost demon that writhes within all those arrogant enough to love.
Illustrated monster manuals were all the rage during the height of the late 60’s Yokai boom. Mizuki Shigeru is remembered as the king of the ring with traditional Japanese spooks, but Umezu was undisputed champion of the Western division with his renditions of Universal Monsters and European folk creatures.
For Kimura no Ni-San (Big Brother Kimura), Umezu sheds his sultan costume for bat wings, hearkening back to the image of crumbling castles, black cats, and vampires that set him apart from the rest of the pack who were racing to catch Mizuki’s scraps. The song itself is about a vampire contemplating how to consume his victim—Plain, or with spice?
Actually, the jacket is a Creature from the Black Lagoon motif (hangyojin look, as he calls it) , complete with metallic scales, armpit fins, and fish bone running down the back. This is a prime example of the intricate gags he constructs for himself and himself alone.
SanbadeMakoto-Chan (Makoto-Cha Samba) may not follow an actual samba rhythm, but that doesn’t stop Umezu from getting festive with his sunhat, which is purportedly left on the sill to sun the plastic flower and collect cosmic rays.
Break out your yukata and uchiwa, it's time for the Makoto-Chan Ondo! Here Demerin provides a short how-to session in an attempt to incite the crowd into joining the Edo equivalent of para-para dancing. Better take notes now so you don’t feel like a chump when the crew hits the streets of Kichijoji during the next O-Bon season.
ShinjukuGarasu (Shinjuku Crow) is the tale of a young gutter snipe (Umezu) who is discovered rooting through the trash piles of Showa-era Shinjuku by a pair of married minstrels who have hit rock bottom. The mother (Masuda from Shogakkan) can't charm the patrons like she used to, and the father (Demerin) has lost his voice at the bottom of the sake bottle, though his fingers still remember the strings.
The song was written for Orochi, one of the few faithful theatrical adaptations of his work.
Senrei (Baptism) is a masterpiece of psychological horror about a mother who raises her daughter as a walking organ bank. Specifically, a carefully plotted brain transplant is her ticket to renewed youth. Keyboardist and literal scream queen Honey K provides an operatic overture while Umezu recharges backstage.
The lyrics of Papa and Mama Rock mention Mama Momo and Papa Kazz—The former refers to the pop idol with the voice of a sukeban, Yamaguchi Momoe, while the latter is her co-star turned husband Miura Kazuhito. Of course, the song is actually about fecalpheliac pre-school student Makoto (who is either based on a young Emperor Akihito or Tamami from Akanbo Shojo, depending who you ask) and his equally demented family (whose mother is quite possibly modeled after Empress Michiko).
おとぎ話のヨコハマ [Track 07] and エレクトリックラブストリー [Track 15] The next pair of songs were written by Umezu reference the locales he was enamored with at the time. Otogi-banashi no Yokohama (Yokohama is for Fairy Tales) is self-explanatory, but Electric Love Story requires some exposition. The lyrics mention the rumors of a man named George, which in Japanese sounds like Joji, or Kichijoji, Umezu's base of operations.
Electric Love Story was originally a hit song from 1979, performed by pop sensation Chikada Haruo and the YMO. Being asked to create his lyrics would be like John Lennon coming to you for song writing advice.
Chikada Haruo and YMO's version of Electric Love Story. SET IV
No song benefited from having a full band more than Bichi-guso Rock (Diarrhea Rock). The wet, muted bass hit those low rumbles that sound right before you accidentally fill your trousers.
Umezu enters his final form and transforms into hip-shaking rocker Kazz for the last leg of his marathon set composed of Super Police and Old Rocking Band. The sudden explosion of energy made me wonder if he hadn't been sandbagging up until this point. Super Police in particular had him far and away in his own private universe spinning cryptic gags incomprehensible to us mere mortals. Girl in love/It's written on your face/Speeding on your Saturn motor bike/Man hanging from your mouth.
Someday Umezu wants to have a hundred thousand dancers behind him, but for now he'll have to be content with what they could squeeze onto the stage. Spilling out into the crowd, their numbers are steadily growing. It's only a matter of time before he storms to Budokan.
Of course, no event is complete without Gwash!! Makoto-Chan. If you haven't seen the YTMND, do so now! Words cannot contain the madness.
Momo-Chan, the little girl scissored between Demerin's arms, is part of the new blood that are spending their formative years reading Umezu and getting a leg up on their peers. The early psychological trauma will serve to toughen them up for examination hell and similar rights of passage.
What more can be said? The Umevinz added an extra layer of distortion on top of the already eccentric proceedings and the crowd was all too happy to be swept away by the wave of frantic energy which celebrated the fans as much as the man himself. Happy birthday, Umezu-Sensei! And... Gwash! Check out the rest of the photos here!
The 5th annual Kichijoji Film Festival was held yesterday as part of Kichijoji Anime Wonderland. Hometown animation companies Studio 4 C and studio Studio Deen, as well as manga publisher Coamix, were there to represent their turf. They were backed up by academic manga researchers from Kyoto Seika University, Takekuma Kentaro and Tsugata Nobuyuku.
From early Studio Ghibli to gag and gore manga maestro Umezu Kazuo, Kichijoji has a long history as a fertile birthplace for alternative media. According to the judging committee, these works walk the fine line between art and entertainment, never being so mindless as to be hollow, but at the same time never so pretentious as to loose the audience.
These selected works best fit the committee's unique image of Kichijoji's smart entertainment. Sadly, only a handful are available online, so this collection does not represent the opinions of the judges.
One final note: When you have all the world's media at your fingertips, it becomes easy to scan and skip over what does not immediately grab us. Each of these works are comparatively short, so please stick with them until the end.
Did you know that Twinkies used to be made with real cream and eggs? Shocking but true. None of this white foam grown in a lab that we’re accustomed to today. But this moist, fresh goodness carried a fatal flaw—Their limited shelf life created a bottleneck for distribution and potential profit. Incorruptible, artificial ingredients proved to be the vehicle that spread Twinkies across the land to fulfill their manifest destiny and fill the coffers of their masters. Even in today’s age of hypochondriac health nuts, business is still as good as ever. We may be educated enough to balk at the potential dangers of foods laced with unpronounceable chemicals, but we are not sophisticated enough to keep ourselves from eating it.
Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt is likewise devoid of all nutritional value. Brash, crass, and brazenly derivative, my gut reaction was that I was seeing anime finally swallow it’s own tail. Japan is now taking pot shots at America for biting its style which evolved from Tezuka who stole from Disney. Is that the joke? Is Gainax banking on a parody of weeaboo Western cartoons? Of course, nothing is ever so straightforward with the most subversively innovative studio in the business.
Series director Imaishi Hiroyuki has never been shy about his love for American cartoons. His contribution to Fooly Cooly (Episode 5 for those counting,) was laced with South Park references about as subtle as Kenny getting impaled by the town’s flagpole. The super flat, super hectic shootout between Amarao and Haruko in the barbershop owes itself as much to Genndy Tartakovsky as to John Woo. Panty and Stocking’s visual style is the obvious evolution of a man obsessed with chunky lines and clean action. The look is more pragmatic than political.
It is also sinister in its economics. Chemicals are to Twinkies what digital animation is to anime. It’s no secret that physical ink brushes have been replaced by electronic tablet pens. Japan is holding onto their pencils and paper for dear life, but the harsh fiscal reality is prying away their fingers, one by one. You can’t fight being undercut. You can’t fight the rise of India and Korea, and you can’t fight the raw cost efficiency of digital animation.
Panty and Stocking may not be a game changer, but they embody a larger paradigm shift. Waving farewell from atop their makeshift ark, the titular lovely angels openly mock the old guard with the stunning results of what a glorified Flash animation is capable of. Those who don't make preparations to jump ship will find the bedrock that the industry was built upon eroded and eventually swallowed up by a sea of change.
This is not to say that simplified, tablet-based animation will bring creative genocide upon the medium. If anything, it will have the opposite effect. Going paper-free will allow studios to produce more footage with smaller teams and modest budgets, the windfall from which will provide the capital for ambitious, experimental projects that challenge boundaries and keep fans interested. Do you really think Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs would have hit the market without their creamy filling that doubles as embalming fluid?
There’s no denying that the all-natural is slowly being phased out in favor of the artificial. Like most matters of taste, once acclimated, we won’t be able to tell the difference. Sure, we instinctively know something’s not right when we look at the ingredients. But if you’re honestly worried about the nutritional value of what equates to a cultural snack cake, it’s something you shouldn’t be imbibing in the first place.
(For coverage of last year's Umezu Carnival, see our report on Same Hat! )
Fall brings with it a crisp change in the seasons, the reappearance of oden at Family Mart, and, most importantly to fanatics like us, Umezu Kazuo's birthday and the resulting Umezu Carnival!
This year, the Kichijoji Theater provided the backdrop for a three-tiered event grounded with a talk show delving into the man's obsession with snakes, followed by an appearance by anime diva Horie Mitsuko, then topped off with a performance by his band CAPS!! and the Gwash dancers. Grab a spoon and dig in for your recommended annual value of Umezu trivia! Part One: Snakes
Demerin steals the show in her Hebi Onna cosplay, complete with tongue-flicking action.
From black cats to phantom spiders and genius chickens, animals and the curses they bring are one of Umezu's core themes. No creature is so heavily featured as the snake, or to be more accurate, people who transform into snakes, and vice-versa. In the literary tradition of Ueda Akinari, Umezu's demons fascinate us with their beauty and slither into our homes to prey upon our children. The horrific folk tales from the author's youth followed him from his countryside home in the mountains of Nara to the urban jungle of Tokyo, and young girls followed in the serpent's wake with excited terror.
The final installment of the Snake Girl trilogy is available in English under the unfortunate title of Reptilia.
The snake, which propels itself without the benefit of limbs, is far more malevolent than Sadako could ever be. Umezu succeeded in tapping into this collective human fear and used it as the fulcrum for more than a dozen short stories and serialized tales involving man's oldest foe. Often a stepmother or likewise unfamiliar adult will prove to be a serpent in disguise, leaving no avenue of escape for the poor girl who has to share a roof with the beast conspiring to swallow her whole. Other times, the snake masquerades as a jealous friend, whose venomous heart manifests itself as scaly skin and cold blood.
If you ever find yourself about to be swallowed whole by a snake woman, just remember that they hate the smell of tar and blow some second hand smoke in their face. Be sure to stock up before the tax hike.
Super Festival host and figure maker Art Storm teased us with their prototype model from Uroko no Kao (Face of Scales). Her head twists around Linda Blair style from normal to horrible snake monster! Note the unnecessarily awesome mouth on the elbow.
Check out this segment of Orochi released in English!
The mysterious wanderer, Orochi, shares her name with the eight-headed serpent from Japanese myth, but this is more than mere allusion. Umezu explains, "Snakes were once worshipped as Gods or Devils, bringers of fortune or disaster. My Orochi has transcended her existence as a snake into something far more powerful." His character crossed the boundaries between mortality and divinity, while his work served to bridge the gap between Shojo and Shonen comics. Orochi was the first heroine to grace the pages of the boy-centric publication Shonen Sunday in 1969, a bold move against the previously unchallenged male monarchy that Demerin equates to his "rock and roll spirit."
A young Umezu cameos as the cab driver in 1968's The Snake Girl and the White Haired Witch, based in the comic of the same name (which was essentially a mash-up of Akanbo Shojo and Uroko no Kao). Take notes, there will be a quiz later.
The front landing in Umezu's Kichijoji-based live in fun house is shaped like a snake's mouth, with visitor's shoes standing in as the teeth.
Umezu shares such an affinity with his scaly friends that they have evolved to match his trademark red and white stripes! Here we see a fan's pet snacking down on a hairless mouse.
The event's MC, Kihara Hirokatsu, pulled some strings and exhumed this rare footage from the vault of Umezu's star studded past: The long lost music video for Kimura no Ni-San, a psychedelic-pop song about a vampire with very specific taste in blood, thank you very much.
Come with me on a journey into the subconscious of a grown child.
This video is proof positive that Umezu was crazy about stripes before it was anyone else's business.
...and for some reason Umezu ends up in a Tin Man costume encircled by Makoto-Mushi. This concept video was born in the wrong decade. It looks like it was created in the 70's with state of the art Obayashi Nobuhiko-style blue screen technology, but in reality is a child of the mid-90's! Umezu and his crew were on top of retro remakes and (un?)intentional camp long before stylized kitsh was so much a glint in the public's eye.
It's hard to make out on a third generation VHS copy being projected at double its original resolution, but here Umezu has been taken out of commission by a paper charm, Kyonshi style. Chinese vampires were a big deal at the time, and far be it for Umezu to pass up such a tasty gag. Part Two: Special Performance by Horie Mitsuko
Our Mayan Queen takes us to El Dorado.
Horie Mitsuko (堀江美都子) is affectionately referred to as the Diva of Anime Songs for providing the vigor for such legendary opening songs as Candy Candy, Hana no ko Runrun, and Choudenji MachineVoltes V, as well as breathing life into countless characters as a voice actress. Her explosive success spurred her record company, Nippon Columbia, to invest in the first ever sub-label dedicated to anime songs, a lucrative move which other companies were soon to jump on.
How does this link her to Umezu? In the mid 70's, Umezu's younger brother, a Toei Animation employee, invited Umezu to write an anime theme song in an attempt to capitalize on the his recent success with Shojo horror titles such as Snake and Black Cat. The resulting opening song for The Adventures of Pepero, sung by no other than Horie Mitsuko, would be the first of many pop collaborations for Umezu.
The track captures the heroic essence of venturing across the Andes mountains in search of adventure while managing to avoid falling into the pitfall of modern anime songs who twist themselves into unrecognizable knots struggling in vain to match the ambiance of the series.
The common complaint with seeing your favorite singer live is that they sound different than the recording. Mitsuko, by comparison, was CD pitch perfect more than 30 years after the fact. Here the two of them perform the opening and closing themes for The Cat Eyed Boy. Shunned by his native monster kin for looking too human, and feared by humans for his monstrous appearance, the Cat Eyed Boy is compelled by his conscious to help a world that hates him. Mitsuko's clear and powerful voice was the natural choice to express the pathos of this tragic character.
Like most girls from her generation, Mitsuko has Umezu to thank for a childhood of trauma and life-saving common sense. According to Umezu, "children need to learn boundaries to keep themselves out of danger. Fear is the most easily understandable of inhibitors, and my manga is the best teacher of fear! I'm doing society a favor by scaring kids safe. The pretty lady living down the street might turn out to be a snake woman!" Part 3: CAPS!! and the Gwash Dancers
Where does a man of 74 find the energy to pick up the mic and rock the house year after year? Having a legion of female followers willing to sulk sinuously across the stage during Hebi Shojo (Snake Girl) is a good place to start.
Is Umezu going furry on us?
Put down the torches and pitchforks! He's just getting into character for a rock and roll rendition of The Cat Eyed Boy, though he looks more like a pushy grannie from Osaka than a serial yiffer.
For today and today only this is Umezu's world, and the rest of us just happen to live in it.
In the heat of the moment he forgot his cue for wardrobe change, something he seemed genuinely apologetic about.
This thick leopard print jacket is a surefire way to give yourself heat stroke, but the fans were on top of things.
Alas, their efforts were to no avail. Umezu rocked around the clock one time too many.
The Gwash dancers took the stage in festival garb for the long awaited unveiling of the Makoto-Chan Ondo! This little girl has been preened by her parents to be the ultimate Umezu fan and made papa proud by busting out the moves during Gwash! Makoto-Chan. Once her skull gets a little bit bigger, she'll be ready to swap brains with mama.
Once the chaos of the stage receeded, Umezu sobered up and hunkered down for a somber signing event. Voidmare got his homemade De(ka)metanbo inked, thus morphing the maddening spiral of fan obsession into a self-referential Mobius strip.
Umezu was cool enough to not only sign Voidmare's stinky homemade sneakers but draw a Makoto-Mushi as well!
By now I know what to expect going into an event such as this, but they always manage to sneak in enough new gimmicks, gags, and guests to keep things fresh. I can't wait to see what they have waiting in store for us at Umezu Carnival 2011!
