@@akbarrmd7714 M. Bison is based on a character from the Riki-Oh manga named Washizaki. His original portrait in Street Fighter 2 is modeled on a panel from the manga, although M. Bison’s face looks more like Henry Silva in the portrait than he does Washizaki.
Shame these Movies were never localized Here to the US. Kato was Japan’s answer to America’s Movie Monsters of Both the 1950’s & 80’s. The only Hopes that I can think of to get these Films Here is ether a “GoFundMe”, “Kickstarter” or Fans doing Fandub to these Films. Sure We Have “Doomed Megalopolis” & “The Great Yokai War” Here, Both Dubbed & Subbed, but still....... Since a lot of Characters adapted From Kato Has found there way Here to the US, We deserve to see the source of there inspiration.
EXACTLY. Nosferatu, the Hammer Dracula, Darth Vader, Freddy Krueger...Kato seems to be an echo of all these characters. I think Japan was still searching for a similar cultural icon (like Darth Vader) that they could proudly claim as their own. Remember in the 80s the Japanese movie market was being overwhelmed by Hollywood blockbusters...America was basically defining their pop culture. Creations like Kato sort of represent a backlash against that trend, but also an attempt to reconcile with it. The irony is thats sort of the story of how TEITO the source material came to be in the first place. Hiroshi Aramata was in love with H.P. Lovecraft and the scholar who pushed him in the pursuit of his career was Hirai Teichii, the author who translated DRACULA into Japanese. TEITO is both an attempt to assert a distinctly Japanese identity while simultaneously building upon the foreign post war influences that changed Japan. It's a cross cultural dialectic (in a way). That's partly why it was so significant in Japan and why it continues to influence so much Japanese pop culture to this day. However we in the West only hear the sound of one hand clapping.
Actually, the first film was released in the US on DVD by ADV Films; the sequel never got released. However, Media Blasters just released a BD of the First movie with English Subs and the UK Exclusive English Dub which was significantly edited. MB is also going to release The Last War
I like the fight scene between them later on in the movie, where Nakamura (the psychic) tries whacking an Advancing Kato of Doom over the head with a pipe, and all he does is laugh. It looks like something out of Terminator.
LOL, I love that scene as well. However TERMINATOR wasn't the movie I was thinking of. I was thinking of one of the HALLOWEEN movie where one of the protagonists tries to beat down Michael Myers with a lead pipe. Indeed the Kato of this film almost resembles the unstoppable villain from a slasher flick.
LegendoftheCapital: I noticed this movie in general is a lot more like a slasher flick than the last one. Darker, grittier setting, and much more gore. Kato stops to brutally kill guys in his way instead of quickly incapacitating them so he can get stuff done. And then there's the freaky ending! I kind of wish I knew enough Japanese to hear why Nakamura has that weird creature inside of him. Was that a symbiont? Did Kato infect him earlier?
AverageLurker My understanding (based on my very limited Japanese) is as such: Nakamura is a psychic. Every time he uses his powers though, there's a backlash; he builds up this "psychic waste" inside his body that causes him all sorts of misery. At the end, basically he just vomits or transfers that waste matter into Kato. Inside Kato, it acts like a sponge sucking up all of Kato's spiritual energy. So at the end, Kato's soul is trapped inside the psychic waste matter. That's what bursts out of Kato's body at the end. In his weakened state, this gives Yukiko the opportunity to pray to Masakado to seal him away. Suffice to say, this has nothing to do with the original novel (to the best of my understanding). Regarding the change in the tone of the film, most of that apparently had to do with creative decisions of the director/producer Takashige Ichise. You probably already know about his affiliation with the J-Horror genre. NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET had been released in Japan just a few years before, and I'm sure that had an impact on the subject matter and tone of this movie. This change didn't go down terribly well. Shimada expressed some disapproval with how they portrayed Kato. He felt that the film turned Kato into too much of a big scary monster, when he felt he should be portrayed more like a fanatic with an agenda.
LegendoftheCapital Ah, thanks, that makes a lot more sense now. That particular scene reminded me of Alien rather than Nightmare of Elm Street. But speaking of which, Doomed Megalopolis has a scene in it straight out of Nightmare on Elm Street: that scene in the third episode where Kato pulls Yukiko right through her bed! I'd have to agree with Shimada, there (and not just because I think he's a cool actor) - scary Kato is good, but it's best when he also has a bunch of plans!
AverageLurker Right! I've always found the scariest thing about Kato to be how human his reactions are (anger, conformity, idealism, etc.) when his ambitions, by contrast are quite inhuman! It's scary how there are real aggressive people out there like that who can convince themselves that they're the heroes and justify the most barbaric of plans. BTW, Aramata also wrote ALEXANDER SENKI (which got turned into that bizarre anime REIGN) about the life of Alexander the Great, so he's familiar with the history of ambitious conquerors. Whether you consider Alexander a hero or a ruthless warlord, you can't deny that he was certainly ambitious. I sometimes get the impression that Kato was intended as a perversion or a mockery of that archetype.
One can really wonder _why_ these movies weren't localized... Were we just not interested in Japanese movies back in the 80-90's (not very plausible, given the overall success of stuff like TMNT) or were the Japanese perhaps not confident enough in the movies to attemt to find a market for them and distribute them overseas? Also, yeah, the Hammer movies are probably an even better comparison.
Maybe it's just me...but the presence of tokusatsu (Japanese live action SPFX) films in the West seemed to take a huge dive during the 80's. It seems that the Hollywood Blockbuster overshadowed everything. Anime was beginning to gain popularity at that time, but it was still a cult interest. The J Horror genre only caught fire in the West in the late 90s. The first 2 TEITO films fall into between all these niches, so yeah...most likely the Japanese producers had very little confidence in their success overseas and didn't see much reason to push them for localization. Thats just a guess though. Nowadays, with the explosion of the internet and the cult movie market, they should really give these movies another chance I think.
Well, maybe... I mean, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a big hit in the early 90s, and that was as close to Tokusatsu as the west will ever be able to produce... And while it might not have been a J-Horror movie, Mr. Vampire _did_ recieve localization. (To be fair, people kinda lumped all east-Asian countries together back in the 70-80s and didn't think it mattered that China and Japan were two different countries, so people would've probably called it a J-Horror even though it was Chinese.) But yeah, the Japanese should give these movies another go. Mr. Vampire has been given VHS, DVD _and_ Blu-Ray releases (well, it has recieved a Blu-Ray release in Japan at least) and I kinda feel it's a waste not to give the Teitou Monogatari movies at least the same amount of attention.
