Kazz is David Lee Roth's senior by 20 years, but that won't stop him from jacking his spot in Van Halen the next time they break up.
Watching Kazz and the Gwash Dancers perform Makoto-chan Ondo in these summer festival getups, you would have never guessed that my balls had frozen to my thigh while waiting in line outside!
More like Absolutely Unlicensed!
Yamomark himself posing in his mushroom kaijin mask
Yes, that's Shingo from Megazone 23 riding a lego Garland, and YES, that's a lego Minmay behind him!! More Macross and Megazone 23 legos in the photo set.
The best find of the day! I have been kicking myself for forgetting to go back and buy this before we cut out for the day. Any information as to where it came from would be appreciated.
Super Festival continues their Kamen Rider-themed guests with Ozaki Tooru, the stud behind Kamen Rider Amazon. More Tarzan than Rider, Amazon was infamous for departing from the formula laid out by the previous three series: He transformed not into an insect but a gaudy lizard/angler fish combo, spoke Japanese like a junior high ALT, ran around in a leather loincloth, and was generally inscrutable. Hardly the kind of thing most impressionable elementary students would want to run home from school to catch. Or is it? In spite of historically low ratings and a short run, the friends of Amazon were out in full force, easily dwarfing the turnout for Kamen Rider Stronger.
Okazaki took to the stage with trepidation, face twisted into a mortified smile that did little to hide the fact that he was totally over the whole Kamen Rider thing. Yet as the talk show began his waxen mask of fear melted away to reveal the good humor underneath.
Q: Amazon, your Japanese has gotten a lot better since the show concluded.
A: Oh, you know. After I returned to South America I palled around with the Japanese immigrants there which helped me brush up my skills. Eventually I was comfortable enough to move to Nagasaki where I became a naturalized citizen.
Q: Why did you decide to become an actor?
A: During my school days I couldn't compete with my friends academically. I knew that I couldn't make it into a good university so I had to find another way to stand out. Becoming an actor seemed like the best solution. After graduating high school I left my hometown of Nagasaki to pursue my dreams in Tokyo .
Q: It’s a good thing you did. You were the only thing standing between Japan and the evil forces of Geddon! How did you get the part?
A: My manager approached me asking if I wanted to be Kamen Rider, and that was that. There wasn’t even an audition. I went into the situation blind. Kamen Rider was a social phenomenon, so of course I knew about it, but I had never sat down to watch the show until then. Even so, I was surprised to be playing a lizard!
Q: Was it cold traipsing around in just a loincloth?
A: We started filming in late summer, so it worked to my advantage in that respect. The opening sequence shot in the jungle came back to bite me, so to speak. You see me running through the underbrush, but every time I jumped into a bush it would kick up a cloud of mosquitoes and gnats. I got eaten alive. All you can do is grin and bear it.
The same goes for braving the elements. Come winter I was frozen to the bone, but I wasn’t in a position to complain! I had been given the lead part of a major production despite my inexperience. Sometimes you just have to man up.
Q: You took to the extreme conditions rather well.
A: I was an outdoors kid, always running around half-naked. This helped prepare me for my role as Amazon. All the sun gave me a dark complexion, which meant I never had to worry about sunburns. On the flipside I had to wear super heavy makeup. It wasn’t noticeable during broadcast, but you can see it on the digitally remastered DVDs.
Q: What was your shining moment as Amazon Rider?
A: Fighting the Snake Beast Man at the Fuji Q Amusement Park. In one scene they have me dodging an oncoming roller coaster by jumping to the maintenance platform on the side of the track. The narrow rails were hard enough to maneuver without considering that I was scrambling precariously on top of steel girders. It was a scary, scary shot.
And then you see the final edit, and the stunt is over in a flash. You’d never know what I went through for that shot!
Q: Were you ever spotted on the street?
A: That's the thing about Tokyo people. They’d recognize me, but never seem surprised. Kids would sometimes come up to me and ask me for my autograph. They were always polite about it.
By popular demand, series producer Hiroyama Tooru returned for an encore performance of his circular ramblings.
After Rider 1, 2, and V3, I knew we had to mix things up. Rider X was a bit of a poof, but Amazon was a man’s man! A lizard man! And scary! How manly is that?
I’m not the one that chose Okazaki for the part. No, I just did what I knew the women wanted! I could tell they were waiting to be swept up in his muscular arms and coddled like babies.
When you imagine a sentai hero you normally don’t picture them in their underwear. However, Tarzan’s New York Adventure set a precedent that I would be a fool not to follow.
Ozaki had a great body, which is why I kept him in his skivvies for as long as I could. The guilt has been eating me up the whole time. I tried to compensate by giving you a vest and leggings mid-season! The last thing I wanted was for you to go down in Kamen Rider history as "the naked one." For the grand finale I sent him back to the Amazon in a suit to leave the audience with the image of Okazaki as a clothed, civilized man.
I apologize for the years of embarrassment. But now look at you! It all paid off in the end You’re a made man, now its all suits all the time, yessiree. Doesn’t he look good in a suit, ladies?"
At this point they escorted Mr. Hiroyama off the stage before he got around to reminiscing about Amazon’s wardrobe malfunctions on and off the set.
The mandatory mugging for the camera begun awkwardly, but Okazaki soon slipped back into character. He looked as genuinely terrified as Amazon had been when accosted by the paparazzi’s flash bulbs and abrasive questions.
Thankfully, Okazaki regained his composure once things quieted down and the fans queued up for their big chance to score an autograph from Amazon. The line was twice as long as it had been for Stronger, surprising given the relative popularity of the two shows. The wait dragged on. Vendors closed up shop, people wandered home, until only the fans and their mentor remained in the building. Okazaki remained chipper to the very end, laughing with the children whose parents grew up in awe of each week’s adventures. Seeing the sincere joy on his face reminded me that a true Rider wears his heart on his sleeve, even the perpetually shirtless ones.
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.
Nobody enjoys waiting in lines, especially in the middle of the winter. But the risk of dying of pneumonia is preferable to the alternative of missing out on limited edition Ultraman figures, so it’s to the back of the queue we go.
Artstorm continues their excellent line of Ultraman figures based on Umezu Kazuo's character designs from his late 60's manga. If Ultraman looks pudgy and awkward, it's because Umezu was given dody reference materials and had to compensate for missing details on the fly. Like all worthwhile pieces, these guys glow in the dark.
Of course, there’s more to the event than just frivolous spending. This Super Festival's special exhibit was a dedicated to 70’s super heroes who made the hearts of a generation burn with the fires of justice, including Boken Rockbat (upper left), Lion Maru, (upper right), Specterman (bottom), and Tetsujin Tiger Seven.
Ever wonder how the actors navigated their foam rubber prisons? Kaiju logistics are simple and no-nonsense.
These old props and toys have a certain kitsch charm that their modern counterparts lack. Somehow they feel more innocent, authentic, and pastel. Though objectively flawed and technically awful by today's standards, they provide enough wonder to make the user want to fill in the tangible gaps with their imagination.
You'd think that Dr. Gori would outfit his goons with something fancier than a wind-up go kart.
Our special guest was Hiroshi Fujioka, most famous for his roles as Segata Sanshiro or the first Kamen Rider. Fujioka looked great for a man who recently rounded sixty. His physical prowess filled the room and his smooth baritone voice shook the floor. His stint as Sega’s marketing hit man may have led Western audiences to lump him in the unfortunate category of “Wacky Japan,” but in reality he is a serious method actor who advocates volunteer work and worldwide peace through love for your fellow man. He also has a black belt in coffee brewing.
Homemade Adam Bakelite samples from Super Festival. These managed to stand out in a crowd that included Real Head, Blobpus, an endless assortment of bad-ass kaiju, an Ultraman retrospective exhibit, the actual Godzilla and a slew of other indie makers (all of which will be addressed in my next few posts!). Wanna get your megalomaniac pedophile dictator in-the-making hands on one of these? Shoot us a message on Twitter!
