This week Guest Star Michelle Kisner writes about Kaoru, tennis champion and Lady Battle Cop. Keep up with Michelle’s work on Instagram at @robotcookie. ~~~ RoboCop (1987) took the world by storm when it came out, spawning many knock-offs with varying degrees of technical expertise. While some of […]
Japan Times profiled Seizo Fukumoto, an actor who specialized in ugly deaths in period samurai movies. “As a young actor, one of Fukumoto’s own role models was not a martial artist at all but Charlie Chaplin….’I thought the way he fell was great. He went down with a […]
“With the exception of the late Robert Dunham, to whom major roles in Toho’s Space Monster Dogora and Godzilla vs. Megalon assured significant recognition among genre fans, one of the most familiar – or at the very least persistent – Western faces in Japanese cinema of the 60s and 70s may […]
“1987 was a remarkable year for manga adaptations. Not remarkable in volume—manga adaptations were nothing special in themselves—but for the commonalities that emerged. This year, we would find anime reaching for a measure of subtlety.” More at The Golden Ani-Versary of Anime.
In chanbara, Japanese sword-fighting movies, actor Seizo Fukumoto is a master of the art of dying. Anthony Kuhn interviews him about his life dying on screen. “In a trademark move, Fukumoto is dealt a fatal blow, then bends over backward, seemingly suspended in midair for a moment of […]
When’s a vampire really more of a werewolf? When it’s Toppei from Osamu Tezuka’s Vampire. Todd from 4DK writes about the mostly live-action television adaptation, starring Tezuka as himself, beret and all, and they remind him of both Kurosawa’s High and Low and Fukasaku’s Black Lizard.