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Keizo Murase: A Brush With the Phantasmagoric
Somewhere between science and myth, the unknowable and probing curiosity, giant monsters lingers in our minds. Colossal and crawling, Varan haunted the forests of rural Japan in the 1958 film Daikaiju Varan (aka Varan the Unbelievable). Varan, with a craggly carapace (modeled after peanut shells) adorned by semi-translucent thorns, and the countenance of a demon was crafted by one Keizo Murase. Born in 1933, Murase has had an illustrious career crafting the various giant monsters of the Showa era, including Mothra, Gamera, Godzilla, and more.
"Sazan & Comet Girl": A Retro Adventure
Nostalgia is a powerful force and it can even hold sway on us with stories we’ve never seen before. YouTube is currently replete with compilations of 1980s Japanese City Pop set to clips of Urusei Yatsura and City Hunter to the delight of people that weren’t even zygotes when this stuff was out. But the easy breezy melodies combined with the intoxicating intermingling of neons and pastels captivates people and wraps them in a warm blanket of alto saxes. Sazan & Comet Girl by Yuriko Akase and published by Seven Seas Entertainment, goes for this same sort of pseudo-nostalgia, but in comic form.
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Across Time & Space: The Legacy of the Japanese "Starlog"
First published in the US in 1976, the magazine Starlog was conceived by Norm Jacobs and Kerry O’Quinn initially as a Star Trek centric magazine, but became an all encompassing look into the burgeoning world of science fiction a scant year before the release of Star Wars. 1976 was the year before Star Wars would hit the big screen in the US, which Starlog was primed to take advantage of. American sci-fi films seemed poised to take over the world, but Japan was also voraciously consuming scifi (or SF for speculative fiction) for decades. Japanese magazines and fanzines on science fiction go as far back as 1957’s Uchujin.
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Blood, Guts, & Water Colors: The Art of Peach Momoko
Peach Momoko is an artist that has been steadily gaining acclaim for her covers and illustrations that have been used by DC, IDW, Marvel Comics and Magnetic Press. These covers have become highly coveted by collectors and have sent the artist from Japan to tour the United States convention circuit (until Covid put a stop to all that). Her soft pastels, and use of heavy inks give her covers a cute and dreamlike feel, and her convention commissions are often chibi versions of popular American comic characters. Though these illustrations of Harley Quinn, Batgirl, and Spider Woman belie a more sinister world she is constructing within her comics.
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The Super Creators: Moebius in Japan
Jean Giraud (1938 - 2012), also known as Moebius, took the comics and science fiction medium to new heights. Arzach, The World of Edena, and The Incal reverberated beyond just the medium of comics and affected film, animation, and art. Combining simplistic characters with other worldly details, Moebius’ work traveled from France to the US thanks to the comics anthology Heavy Metal, while his work had already spread across Europe, but what about Japan? In this article we'll be looking at how Moebius' work made it's way to Japan and influenced some of the biggest names in anime and manga there.
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Ultraman Z Makes Stunning YouTube Premiere
There’s no shortage of the fantastical on TV and streaming services these days. Star Trek: Picard has fleets of massive starships doing battle, while the Marvel movies dominate the pop cultural landscape. But spectacle without joy is a hollow affair, just a bloated tech demo. Ultraman Z is the perfect union of spectacle, joy, and vision. Ultraman Z is the latest in the long lineage of giant protectors from space, born from Tsuburaya Productions, since the 1960s. Ultraman has delighted audiences for decades, and with so many TV shows, movies, cartoons, and Scatman parody singles, it can be challenging to imagine the show still feeling fresh in 2020. The story, at a glance, is indeed boilerplate. Ultraman Z, a hot blooded rookie of the Galactic Defense Force, lends assistance to Haruki (Koshu Hirano), a hot blooded rookie to the Earth organization STORAGE, which protects Japan from giant monsters
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Phantasmic Quick Read: Early Nirasawa
Yasushi Nirasawa (1963 - 2016) was one of the greats of the garage kit and tokusatsu world. In this video we're taking a look at his earliest published collections of art and sculptures: Fantastic Creature World and Creature Core.
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Ghostrunner: First Person Cyberpunk Ninja Hack & Slash Previewed
The ninja represents a sort of ideal in video gaming. From the first moments Ryu Hayabusa nimbly leapt off the walls in Ninja Gaiden, games have been trying to encapsulate the speed, agility, and lethality of ninja. Ghostrunner, from developer One More Level, aims to capture that speed and fluidity while dropping the player into a grungy cyberpunk world.
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Takayuki Takeya: Ifu no Zokei Quick Read
In 2016, Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno created a terrifying new vision of a classic movie monster with Shin Godzilla. It was belched forth from the ocean and slithered across the usually sleepy neighborhood of Kamata, knocking cars aside effortlessly, and grew to spew lasers across Ginza.
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The Mad World of Toei Tokusatsu is Now on YouTube!
A creature with five faces belches flame from the top of a skyscraper. A young girl finds out she’s descended from an Egyptian goddess that fought demons. A superhero does battle against someone making counterfeit merchandise of them! The spectacular world of Toei’s tokusatsu TV shows have only existed on the periphery of mainstream US access for decades.
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Do the Mandarake Mambo!
Where do you go if you want classic horror manga, toys going as far back as the 1950s, 1970s idol photo albums, and some doujinshi that was just published the other day? Mandarake!
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Phantasmic Unboxing: Vintage Japanese Magazines
In this Phantasmic unboxing we take a look at garage kit magazines, horror manga, and tokusatsu magazines from 70s, 80s, and 90s.