Henshin, V3!
Youtube presents the film in 7 parts. There are no subtitles, so I have provided a running commentary under each video for those of you sane enough to forgo the ancient tongue. For those of you proficient in the maddening runes, you may proceed to Niko Niko Douga to enjoy some wwww with your Iä, Iä!
PART I
A number of queer coincidences conspire to bring our protagonist, a freelance photographer played by Sano Shiro, to the worm-eaten village of Innsmouth. After encountering a grotesquely featured man on the streets of Tokyo, rifling through the company archives reveals a photograph taken in Innsmouth of a person with identical deformities. His cursory research into Innsmouth is inconclusive, only managing to scrounge up an article from a weekly gossip mag detailing an incident involving the decayed corpse of a fish man washing up into the bay.
He convinces his boss (who bears a striking resemblance to Lovecraft) to send him to the forgotten hamlet. Through their interplay we learn that the protagonist has a sordid past. His father is deceased and mother is hospitalized in Room 209, suffering from an unspecified illness.
At (6:05) he arrives at the most ominous of crossroads, teetering on the edge between Arkham, Dunwich, Kingsport, and Innsmouth. The bus driver is unusually suspicious and standoffish, leaving our protagonist in the dust when he steps off to break a bill for his fare.
While contemplating his next move he is accosted by a rough codger who warns him to stay far away from Innsmouth. He spins tales of the fishing village, once frightfully prosperous with its catch, now impoverished and dying, with only old people left to hold up the rotting infrastructure.At (2:05) our protagonist rolls his first sanity check at the local greasy spoon, the Fujimiya Eatery.
Next he checks into the Fujimiya Inn, talking the reluctant owner into letting him stay the night.
Near the end of Part 2, he encounters the beautiful woman he glimpsed on the bus who bears an odd semblance to the one from his dreams.
Part 3The two discuss the pictures on the wall taken by the famous photographer, Fujimiya Iemon. Our narrator comments that, while he used to find these works repugnant, as of late he has grown to appreciate, and perhaps even view them fondly.
When pressed about the beautiful woman seen in town, the curator chuckles knowingly. “She’s a widower, of sorts...”
Afterward the protagonist catches up with the mysteriously youthful widow. As they pause for a drink, she remarks that the water in town tastes vile. The contents of the glass she holds were taken from the mountain, where the streams are clean and sweet.
Once again the protagonist notices the lack of accent. It is revealed that she is not of Innsmouth stock, but rather was brought here an unspecified time ago.
Upon returning to the inn, he finds that his film has been stolen. His attempts at police intervention are foiled when he comes under suspicion himself, grilled by the officer in a Kafkaesque exchange. “Do you have any ID? No? If you can’t prove who you are, you’re no-one. You’re no-one.”
PART IV
Later that night, the protagonist manages to snap some shots of a strange ritual on the beach.
Against his better judgment, he has begin to fit together pieces of the puzzle. He notices that everyone in town shares the family name Fujimiya. Returning to the Folk Museum, he inquires into the cultish activity witnessed on the beach. The curator is free with his information. The townsfolk idolize a being named Dagon though an amalgam of foreign, that is to say, Buddhist rituals, and indigenous sea-god worship.
Stranger still are the rumors scarcely believed even by those who whisper them. That the head fisherman pledged for his clan to live in the sea... That ocean provided its bountiful catch as reward for human sacrifice…
And the relic behind them? The Boat of Resurrection. When people die they are sent out to sea in this vessel where they are said to attain eternal life.
Reeling from the unfathomable horrors the curator’s hinted dialogue alludes to, the protagonist shirks, overcome by the damning feeling that he has seen all this before. As if to comfort him, the curator offers a piece of cryptic advice.
“Man needs to create stories. Where you were born, where you were raised, what you are doing at this very moment―These thoughts are nothing more than chapters in a story we create for ourselves, a story called ‘memory…’ These memories are mere illusions. Yet man needs these illusions to live... or so was written in a book I read, long ago."
At (5:00) we reunite with the delivery girl and learn of her history. Born in Arkham, she doesn’t want to be like all the others who left the region for Tokyo , a cowardly move she feels amounts to abandoning one's roots.
The protagonist echo’s the curator's previous statement. “Life is an illusion, so what does it matter?” Impressed by his unconventional insight, she invites him to spend a night in Arkham, but he blows off her advances with aloof flourish.
We return to the widow’s waiting arms. “I always knew you would come back,” she coos enigmatically. Just as things are heating up, Peeping Toms with hideous unblinking eyes show up to spoil the mood.
PART V
Delirious with fright, he staggers into the moonlit streets where he is grasped by a singularly grotesque man. The beast half-speaks, half-croaks a single word: The name of the protagonist!
In a fit of mad disgust and sexual frustration, he kills the man in cold blood and tramples the corpse. Unbeknownst to him, the delivery girl observed the brutal proceedings in their entirety.
Somehow he manages to stumble back to the inn, visions of his childhood memories becoming increasingly vivid and urgent. He has no time to contemplate their sinister implications, as a mob of ghastly vigilantes descend upon his room!
Ducking into a dim alleyway away from his pursuers, he phones the delivery girl, who returns his cruelty in kind. His hopes are dashed against the falling receiver.
PART VI
The mob finally catches up with him, but they are no longer interested in vengeance. It’s almost as if he’s been accepted into their brood.
He returns to the Folk Museum to make a series of maddening discoveries. First, pictures he has taken lined up next to those by Fujimiya Iemon. Next, the blood-dripped corpse of the man he killed, placed in the Resurrection Boat.
As the insane reality presented by the facts at hand comes bearing down on him, the curator appears to give our chilling tale its last rights.
“Seeing your two photographs side by side, I finally understand. The family resemblance is striking... You did an awful thing to Fujimiya Iemon, your father.”
“You were born fatherless in Tokyo , an only child, your mother hospitalized with an incurable disease and no hope of discharge. You hate yourself for abandoning your mother, and you hate yourself for resenting her for taking your life away. But this is a story you have crafted for yourself… It is an illusion, a memory. You were born in Innsmouth, as the son of Fujimiya Iemon.”
“If you think I am lying, then answer me this. Who is this women in the picture with you?"
In a last ditch effort to save his sanity and soul, the narrator calls the hospital. Alas, his mother is not registered. There is no room 209. He has no choice but to gaze upon the true face of his father, and his future.
Meanwhile, the delivery girl, in a change of heart, arrives in Innsmouth to save him, only to be abducted by its monstrous inhabitants and forced to wear a ring, the same one seen on the beautiful widow’s hand.
Across town, mother and child are finally reunited...
PART VII
The curator sighs as he shuts a paperback edition of the Necronomicon, cursing his return to this shunned place.
On the beach, a trail of blood suggests that the father went out to sea to attain life eternal.
Our protagonist returns to the office, seeming no worse for wear, and delivers his film and report, titled The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Note the hilarious pen name, a literal translation of Lovecraft.
In the final reveal, he drives off into the sunset with the delivery girl, back to their ancestral birth place, to spawn a fresh batch of progeny.
Analysis
Tasty tidbit: The Japanese word for cockroach, gokiburi, is a misspelling of the earlier form gokikaburi (御器噛り), with goki meaning "serving plate" and kaburi "to chew." Roaches are infamous for their tenacity, chowing down not only on your leftovers but on the dish it used to be on as well! If you want to know more about these living fossils, the Meguro parasite museum is running a special exhibit on them through August 26th.
I'm like a kid in a candy store!
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?"
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.
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