Release Date: 1988. Rating: Cultural Masterpiece. Akira (Japanese: アキラ) is a 1988 Japanese animated post-apocalyptic cyberpunk action film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, produced by Ryōhei Suzuki and Shunzō Katō, and written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on Otomo’s 1982 manga of the same name. The film had a production budget of ¥700 million ($5.5 million), making it the most expensive anime film at the…
Rubber’s Lover
Release Date: 1996. Rating: Good, but slow. Often interpreted as a prequel to 964 Pinocchio, Rubber’s Lover details a clandestine group of scientists who conduct psychic experiments on human guinea pigs they take from the streets. Using brain-altering drugs, sensory deprivation and computer interfaces, they subject their patients to gruesome scientific tortures that often end in brutal death. After continued failure, they pursue one last…
Pinocchio 964
Release Date: 1991. Rating: Good, but slow. 964 Pinocchio is a memory-wiped sex slave cyborg who is thrown out by his owners for failure to maintain an erection. It is unclear in what ways he has been modified beyond having no memory and being unable to communicate. He is discovered by Himiko, a homeless girl, while wandering aimlessly through the city. Himiko has also been…
Tetsuo: Bullet Man
Release Date: 2009. Rating: Excellent. Two long decades after the archetype flesh/metal mutation in Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), and seventeen years after Taniguchi Tomoo’s equally majestic transformation in Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992), another fine specimen–the American-Japanese white collar worker, Anthony–embraces the catalytic power of pain and rage, when a mysterious driver runs over and kills his only son, Tom. Unable to come to…
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer
Release Date: 1992. Rating: Classic. Three years after the Metal Fetishist’s nightmarish transformation in Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), the ordinary salaryman, Taniguchi Tomoo, sees his world crumble when fanatic metal-worshipping skinheads abduct his only son. Forced to unleash his dormant destructive power, Tomoo will finally embrace the cathartic effect of the ultimate metamorphosis, as his naked rage transforms the once-feeble flesh into a grisly…
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
Release Date: 1989. Rating: Classic. Mad with pain by the festering wound in his thigh, an extreme sado-sexual “Metal Fetishist” dashes out into the street, and is accidentally hit by the car of a white-collar worker and his girlfriend. But, strangely, instead of dying, the salaryman finds himself before a mysterious and agonizingly majestic transformation–one that twists and bends the pliable human flesh, inextricably intertwining…