Month: November 2008

This is Bone Bambara.

He is Inazuman’s fourth foe, fit to bursting with guts and pride.

Emperor Bamba wants him to trigger an explosion in every volcano across Japan, and he attempts to do that by throwing this righteous cross after posing for a screengrab that would look great on a mid-80s metal LP.

This is what happens when his cross strikes.

Bone Bambara can do almost anything. He can disappear at will. He can fight in the darkness, lit only by his glow-in-the-dark essence. He can flip, he can roll, and he can do one heck of a karate chop.

But he cannot defeat Inazuman!

Yesterday I was treated to The Box Set Joseph Luster Has Been Most Excited About in 2008: Inazuman! Let me tell you, Inazuman is one of my favorite tokusatsu series in a world of really awesome tokusatsu series.

I first witnessed its power via an eBay-bought bootleg DVD called “The Golden Age of Tokusatsu.” Its round plastic casing restricted a mighty force of live-action madness in four parts: Kamen Rider Amazon, Denjin Zaboga, the Kikaida 3-D movie, and Inazuman. With the exception of the movie (the third dimension of which was rendered useless and all it was missing was a flashing VHS TRACKING notice), these were all subtitled first-episode-only samplers, and they shaped my life thusly, shrinking MAN into BOY in an instant.

Inazuman struck me as especially special right from the get-go, though. Maybe it was Kikaida himself, Ban Daisuke, in the lead role that made me swoon. Maybe the extraordinarily HOT wheels he commanded made me want to make SCRRRRR noises with my toy cars. Actually, it was probably the fact that protagonist Goro Watari transformed not once, but twice before really sockin’ it to the show’s baddies.

That’s right. First Goro becomes Sanagiman, a brawler rocky enough to make Ben Grimm wanna turn in his superhero credentials. But that’s never enough, Inazuman has to finish the job and right the wrongs of the evil Emperor Bamba (bulabulabulabulaaaa). The theme song is rockin’, the show is nothing but fun, and I’ve only seen a couple of episodes so far! While I could never avoid recommending digging around for that shady disc that once put some curlies underneath m’carriage, JNProductions’ new set is a pretty hoppin’ way to dig into this one.

I leave you with a titillating transformation into Sanagiman.

Alright, the Galactic Ghetto Netflix Queue is in full effect once again, its first order of business being a plate of Speed Racer on Blu-ray served pipin’ hot. I know I talked the movie up big time before it came out theatrically, but I never actually got the chance to “give it the business” personally. I’m sure my $10+ wouldn’t have contributed too admirably to the pile of bottlecaps it earned at the box office, but I still had pangs of regret for not checking it out at the time.

Now I’m glad I waited. Speed Racer is insane on Blu-ray. Being such an intensely colorful movie, it really explodes in hi-def, and it made the eye-assaulting experience that much more enjoyable for me. I guess I can’t really blame people that didn’t dig the flick, but the Wachowskis’ attempt at creating a live-action cartoon is wholly successful. It may be a tad long, and it may start slowly, but Speed is fun as hell and just generally exciting overall.

Next on the GGNQ is April Fool’s Day (1986), and I can’t think of a better time to watch that than… right now!