Pure TokyoScope Podcast 114: RIP Manga Legend Kazuo Umezu + Godzilla Day 2024!
Patrick Macias and Matt Alt bring you pop culture from Japan!
In this episode of the PURE TOKYOSCOPE Podcast, author Matt Alt (Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World) and Patrick Macias (Mondo Tokyo: Dispatches from a Secret Japan) say goodbye to horror manga legend Kazuo Umezu and sift through the wreckage of Godzilla Day 2024!
Show Notes!
Pioneering horror manga artist Kazuo Umezu dies at 88
Makoto-chan Trading Card by Kazuo Umezu
Kazuo Umezu’s Nutty House in Tokyo
Godzilla Day Live Stream Event 11/3/2024
Plush 1:1 Scale Oxygen Destroyer Pillow
The “Godzilla Burger”
Trailer for Godzilla Fest 5 Short Film: All Monsters Showdown
Complete short viewable here
‘Godzilla Minus One’ Writer-Director Takashi Yamazaki Returns for New Godzilla Movie
All the Godzilla Movies Ranked (Variety)
Talking Minya Scene from Godzilla’s Revenge (1969)
Godzilla Game TV Commercial (1979)
What is the PURE TOKYOSCOPE Podcast? Well… Author and fellow Substack writer Matt Alt and I have been recording together for over 100 episodes.
Our show is a mix of Japanese pop culture news and features and some of our best episodes to date have been:
New Book from the Author and Editor of TokyoScope Blog!
Mondo Tokyo - Dispatches From a Secret Japan
On Sale Now!
 | A guest post by
|
Kayoco Anne Patterson! I will never forget that name.
I might suggest that the way Toho handled the Godzilla anny in America shows the danger of the Cool Japan thinking, that is, it seems to be all or nothing. Godzilla is loved, but it’s a specific kind of love, I feel. It’s also many loves. Polykaiju? Godzilla Minus One is a terrific film, one that can be appreciated on many levels. I would say the same of the original ‘54 Godzilla, and it’s great that now a person has the ability to see both the Japanese and American versions. Then you get all the rest. Some are just insane. I love G vs Megalon but that story makes no sense. None. G vs Hedora is a mind trip, everything else is just, well, either fun or annoying. Shin Godzilla, I struggled with that watching in the theater until I keyed in that it was all about the stupidity of Government that can’t get anything done.
There was an old saying in fandom, nobody can screw up a release like the Japanese companies. The handling of G Minus One in the U.S. is a prime example, and it ties to the Anniversary. Toho dithered and dithered over a Blu~Ray release. Instead they pushed the idea that one should buy the Japanese BD, at of course Japanese price( to clarify, the normal release BD of a film in the U.S. tends to be $29.99 MSRP. Steelbooks or boutique company releases move that to $34.99 MSRP. Japanese domestic releases tend to cost more than that, even allowing for the soft Yen currently). No subtitles either, at first. This did not go ever well. The super hard core were doing that already via Amazon Japan and CD Japan and paying much less for it, even with shipping. Now there’s an actual American release coming, but wait, it doesn’t include Minus Color or the English dub. I expect there’ll be a ‘double dip’ edition that has Minus Color and the English dub. But maybe not as the studios are pushing that ‘nobody buys physical media!!!’ Nonsense pretty hard now.
But see, I wonder how many fans may pass on this version of Godzilla Minus One, waiting for a better, more complete release. Which would create a self!fulfilling prophesy, Sales not meeting (way too high) projections causing the canceling of another edition. Don’t laugh. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.
They should hire you both to be the ‘checkstation’ of bringing stuff to America. “You put the songs for Zeta Gundam back in! Don’t you give me that ‘it can’t be helped’ crap, I know you took it out to discourage reverse importing! You’re really that worried about a hundred Japanese nerds that will buy the American release? So do a price~down reissue with more bonus content! They’ll ignore the bare bones American release!”
Sorry, I rant. It’s frustrating! I can’t have Xabungle, there’s STILL nonsense with Macross, I will never have Queen of a Thousand Years in an American version (with the english dubbed first episode!) and whine whine.
Cool Japan works best if one just turns things loose into the wild and let its market find it. Pushing hard, trying to say that watching Patarillo is exactly the same as watching Starzinger just creates disenchantment.
(Actually I want Patarillo. And Muteking. And StarZanS. Very much StarZanS. :) )