Furai Ninpocho, But For Real This Time

It's always incredibly satisfying when I can follow up on a previous post about a rare movie after I have actually obtained a copy of that movie. MASSIVE thanks to wonderful human being Keith from Vintage Ninja for this one.

Since I wrote about this movie previously, there's no need for preamble, so I'll get right into it. But just a quick recap before we start: This is a comedic period piece with a trio of chuckleheads as its main characters, namely Kiyoshi Atsumi as Akugenta the womanizer, Makoto Satō as Jinkyobei who wants to take over a castle someday, and Juro Sasa as Benkei the super-strong warrior monk, all fighting against the Fuuma ninja clan, headed by Akihiko Hirata as Kotaro Fuuma. I was very excited to see this and to see Hirata play such a famous ninja. This is the 120th thing of his that I've seen, which feels like a considerable milestone.

The film opens with some sweet animated credits and an instrumental piece in the background that wouldn't be out of place in an Italian restaurant. The place-setting is during Hideyoshi Toyotomi's march towards Odawara Castle, which is held by the Hojo clan, but we're focusing on these three rascals rather than that action. 

Akugenta, Jinkyobei and Benkei are playing cho-han with some footsoldiers. Oh, sorry, I meant strip-cho-han. With loaded dice. Their aim is to steal the soldiers' clothes because the soldiers had been on a mission to help the women of Odawara Castle escape the siege. Our trio of course wants to get in on any action involving girls.

Having bamboozled the rest of the party that was escorting the women to safety, the trio, disguised as samurai, attempts to put the moves on them. Akugenta produces a rose and whispers sweet nothings to them all. This, for some reason, is wildly successful, and all the women fall in love with him immediately, and take their clothes off. (I will remind you that the author of the source material is known specifically for the erotic nature of his novels.)

Before the guys can react, they're enveloped in a strange mist. From the mist they are ambushed by your standard jidaigeki ninjas-disguised-as-monks gang - the women were an illusion. Well, all but one; one of the monks is really Princess Maya (Yuki Nakagawa), who chides Akugenta for his boorish behavior. He attempts to seduce her and falls into a big hole.

Princess Maya is the granddaughter of the lord of Oshi Castle, who is being held hostage by the Fuuma clan. She is criticized by Owari-no-kami Maeda (Jotaro Togami), currently holding Odawara, for having left the castle, although she was accompanied by bodyguards (the other fake monks). It's here that Kotaro Fuuma makes his entrance, and it's a great entrance; peeling off from the shadows, heard before he's seen. Kotaro tells Maeda that Oshi Castle will be an important base for their plans to defeat Toyotomi. We also see Ichirō Arashima's Nagoya-dialect-speaking Toyotomi, who seems a bit bored, but is excited to learn that a pretty 17-year-old girl might be in trouble. (Ew.)

I believe this is the only time he's played a ninja.

In the meantime the three stooges scam some folks. They stage a scene where Jinkyobei pretends to cut Akugenta's thumb off and then Benkei "sells" him magical medicine that regrows his thumb. They use the money from this scam to hire some prostitutes. Akugenta can't focus on the women he's hired, though, because he's thinking about Princess Maya. He and his friends sneak off to spy on her. They watch her being introduced to the husband who has been chosen for her - Samanosuke (Haruya Kato) - and call him an impolite name which I believe can be translated roughly as "wet noodle". (If I were inclined to take some further liberties I would perhaps translate this as "weaksauce".) They attempt to jump a wall and "rescue" Maya but are foiled by Fuuma ninjas.

Girl the eyeshadow.

Okay. Slay.

A ronin (we later learn he is Sukejuro Aohashi of the Iga clan) who the trio had a run-in with earlier appears and smooth-talks them into joining the Fuuma clan, explaining that if he joins them, they'd be able to be among the contingent of Maya's special guards. They are taken back to the Fuuma clan's secret cave base and meet with Kotaro, who tries to convince them to join. They're reluctant at first, but being shown the secret ninja harem seals the deal. Kotaro uses some ninjitsu to force them to reveal their names and identities, and then orders Akugenta to kill Aohashi as a test of strength, which he refuses to do. Aohashi then dies by Ninpo Spear That Sets Your Whole Body On Fire when he tries to escape anyway.

Maya travels to Oshi Castle to see her grandfather about the arranged marriage that she wants no part of, but her palanquin is ambushed by Iga ninjas. Her Fuuma bodyguards fight them off but become so carried away in their own spat (the Iga vs. Fuuma rivalry is long and storied; this is Ninjas 101) that the trio makes off with Maya. However, the palanquin that they thought was carrying her really only contained Jinkyobei, bound and gagged; the Fuuma bodyguards had taken her away. The trio still wants to get to Oshi Castle, though, so they hitchhike inside a cart full of radishes with some women.

There certainly are daikon in the cart ("daikon" can also mean "ham actor").

It was a trap, of course. The women were Fuuma ninjas in disguise. (The music that accompanies the reveal scene is almost comedically over-the-top. It doesn't feel like a big enough deal to require a musical cue.) The trio is captured but escape by convincing their Fuuma captors that the secret behind the Odawara Castle intrigue is that there's a big jewel hidden there. They promise to tell the Fuuma men where the jewel is and end up trapping them in a hut.

The trio admits to themselves that the Fuuma are a force to be reckoned with, and conclude that they need to undergo Fuuma training to be able to match their skills. They return to Kotaro and ask to be put through ninja boot camp which involves getting buried to the neck in sand and a very goofy training montage, during which they try to do the disappear-in-a-puff-of-smoke thing but fail, get chucked into boiling water (Jinkyobei loses his clothes somehow), are menaced by flaming torches, and are given gross stuff to eat. This all does nothing for their ninja skills, but it is pretty funny.

They're sucky ninjas, but it's war, so Kotaro hires them without them having completed their full course of ninja training. They are ordered to Odawara Castle to further refine their skills. Another fairly goofy sequence follows where Jinkyobei and Akugenta (Benkei isn't there because he sucks too bad) "demonstrate" their new "skills" against some of the Fuuma guys.

get a load of this guy

While this is happening, the Iga clan attacks the castle and kidnaps Maya on horseback. Kotaro and the Fuuma gang intercept them and we get the film's only really lengthy swordplay scene, with the Fuuma and our trio (mostly the trio) versus the Iga ninja. Both clans want Maya for their own purposes, but they are also bitter rivals, which seems more important than the princess. Kotaro seems to have Maya for good and is leading her by force across a rickety suspension bridge, but Akugenta swoops in on zipline and rescues her. Still pursued, Kotaro and his ninjas corner the trio in a cave and think they have them trapped.

But the trio are halfway to being Fuuma ninjas and have some skills of their own. They lure the ninjas into the cave and roll a big rock in front of the entrance (while forgetting that Benkei is also still inside). There follows a very funny moment where Jinkyobei and Akugenta are essentially Wack-a-Mole-ing Fuuma guys ("omae ja nai" - "not you") while trying to extract Benkei without letting the ninjas out. They then rescue the princess and thus ends this chapter in ninja history.

That was mildly amusing. I watch a lot of movies that feel like they either need to be juuust a little bit funnier or juuust a little bit more serious, and I can't tell if this was one of those or if the jokes just weren't landing. It doesn't help that the three guys are lecherous creeps and it's played for laughs. Hirata as Kotaro was at least fun; he does a good job being evil, as he always does, but this Kotaro is just plain evil, not the kind of "evil and loving it" that we've seen Hirata do in things like Ebirah, Horror of the Deep or Rainbowman. And it's nice that he's in the movie - I've been watching so much stuff lately where he's in one scene and then leaves. So, not the best movie ever, but still worthwhile! If I get my hands on the sequel, you will know about it.

See this movie for yourself on archive.org if you wish.

大学のお姐ちゃん / Daigaku no oneechan / 3 Dolls in College (1959)

Release date: March 3, 1959

Director: Toshio Sugie

Studio: Toho

Cast: Reiko Dan, Sonomi Nakajima, Noriko Shigeyama, Akira Takarada, Akira Kubo, Yoko Tsukasa, Yosuke Natsuki, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Akihiko Hirata et al.

Availability: 35mm English-subtitled print held at BAMFA. VHS release and infrequent television broadcasts/theater screenings. Now available on archive.org.

____

Remember when I said at the end of my "Rainbowman in Hawai'i" post that this had a VHS release and that I had saved searches for it? And, to my friends in real life, remember when I swore I would get my hands on it if it ever came up for sale again? Well... I did, and it wasn't cheap.

Some background information: The Onee-chan ("Sisters") series were films starring Reiko Dan, Sonomi Nakajima, and Noriko Shigeyama as a trio of girl friends nicknamed Punch, Pinch, and Sench (this sounds better in the Japanese pronunciation, trust me). These films were made in the late 1950s and were part of a trend of movies that depicted spunky young people doing spunky young people things. Eight films were made in total from 1959 to 1963; 3 Dolls in College was the first of them. This film is of further interest because apparently it was the first Japanese film to be fully dubbed into English. I find this hard to believe and am still searching for anything that would refute it, simply because it seems unlikely to me that such an obscure, forgotten film would lay claim to that fairly distinguished title, but it does seem to be the case. In any event, this Neocities page has more information on the film's stateside release, and in the interest of keeping this intro short since this post will be image-heavy, I'll leave you that instead of explaining it myself.

In March I started to write about this movie but ultimately abandoned and never published it because there was just not enough information out there (especially about Hirata's role in the film) to fill out an interesting post. But, as I said, I did learn that there was a home media release, and began watching carefully to see if it would come up for sale. As it turns out, I only had to wait three months, and now we can all experience this one for ourselves.

The picture quality is... not very nice. At all. Which is ironic, considering the actual tape arrived in such pristine quality it looked like it had been manufactured yesterday, and the seller even opened it up to put some bubble wrap between the tape and the case to keep it from jostling around.

Shigeko (Shigeyama), Mitsuko (Nakajima) and Toshiko (Dan) are students in French at Nichinan University. The opening scene sees them all in French class falling asleep and not concentrating; they're dressed anime protagonist-style, in bright colors that distinguish them from the drab clothes and uniforms of all the other students.

Their three nicknames don't seem to be fully developed yet; Dan's character is called "Tonch" in this first film and neither of the other two are referred to with anything but their real names. Mitsuko borrows some money from Toshiko so she can go on a date, and in return Mitsuko lends Toshiko her great big fur coat. Rumiko Sasa, who I liked in University Bandits, plays Mitsuko's younger sister Sumiko. 

Toshiko in turn lends the coat to Kiriko (Toki Shiozawa), a waitress at a club. This will turn out to have been a bad idea, but 2,000 yen is 2,000 yen. (I mean, not today it ain't.) Kiriko's important because she's got a yakuza boyfriend and that yakuza boyfriend is Hirata's character Iwafune. So now we've got Mitsuko, Shigeko, Kiriko, Iwafune and Mitsuko's date Hitamaro (played by Haruya Katō, who I am also quite fond of) in the same club together. Mitsuko literally bumps into Kiriko while her and boyfie are jitterbugging.

Shigeyama was a professional dancer in real life and she's really talented, so it's nice to see her show off.

I am having just the worst time taking screenshots of this thing because the motion blur on this old VHS is so bad. I'm not even getting great screenshots of Hirata since he's wearing his yakuza shades most of the time. He's also slapping somebody every few seconds. He's in full-on bad boy mode here, I don't think I've ever seen him play this archetype except perhaps in some of the Ankokugai films.

Aww, not his other eye.

Mitsuko and Kiriko get into a fight that everybody else gets dragged into. Akira Kubo's character Ōkubo (yeah) happens to be passing by and intervenes. Ōkubo and Iwafune get into a brawl and the police arrive. Officer Ichirō Arashima interviews the involved parties about the loan of the coat, who punched who, who's a student where, and whatnot, but not too much seems to come of it. Next we see the three dolls they're cheating in French class.

Shigeko swallows the evidence but it's too late, they all get caught and are expelled from the class, meanwhile master cheater Maehara (Tatsuyoshi Ehara) in the seat behind them was a much cooler cat about it. Maehara is a classmate of the three friends and is involved with real estate, and as we will see later, he not only cheats on tests but is a scammer as well. Each of the girls will eventually gain a boyfriend along the way, and at around the thirty-minute mark these relationships have begun to gel: Ōkubo with Mitsuko, Yosuke Natsuki's character "Lucky" Nakagi with Shigeko, and Maehara with Toshiko/Tonch.

The girls' next scheme is to ply their French teacher with alcohol so he won't fail them all out of his class. They go to his home in Kamakura, but they are greeted by noted ikemen Akira Takarada's character Takada (...yeah), who explains that the teacher is ill with a heart issue. They offer their alcohol as planned but the teacher rejects it, since he's sick, and Takada returns it to the girls. They decide to go to a Hinamatsuri party instead.

Sonomi Nakajima sings the film's theme song and I would not have guessed she had a set of pipes on her. She has the squeakiest speaking voice you've ever heard, but in real life, she was a professional singer. Mitsuko and Ōkubo dance for a bit at the party but he ditches her to go eat tiny sandwiches.

There's also this weird-looking dog.

It is at this party that Maehara gets Toshiko to agree to a shady real estate contract while she's a little drunk. The party spills over into the same club where everybody got into a wee tiff earlier and Shigeko finds her boyfriend with another girl. Ōkubo is kind of the only honest guy here, but like, he also got so hungry at the party that he ate dog food (and this after the tiny sandwiches!), so I think he's a bit on the himbo side.

All three girls have decided at this point to drop out of school. They're demotivated and, except for Mitsuko and Ōkubo, are having boyfriend trouble. But when Takada turns up as the substitute French teacher, they forget all about their plans to quit. How could anyone maintain their resolve to drop out of college while sitting in a class where Akira Takarada is singing chansons?

Girls go to college to get more knowledge, yes, but also to ogle Akira Takarada.

Unfortunately, there's one of him and three of them. Each of the girls thinks they're being sneaky by going over to visit him, but they all run into each other at his house, and have all bought him the same necktie. While waiting for Takada to come home they have a boob size competition; I did not take screenshots of this. Alas, as it turns out, Takada has a fiance named Michiko (Yoko Tsukasa). Michiko also bought him the same necktie.

Then the movie wraps up pretty abruptly. Despite the relationship and money issues, the film concludes on a high note, at a party for the previous French teacher with all the girls and their boyfriends in attendance, plus Takada and his fiance. Ōkubo has won the boxing championship and is wasshoi'd in on the shoulders of every oheya actor Toho could muster. Nakajima sings us out with "Ginza Burabura", an incredibly bouncy song about being a young lady strolling around Ginza, with a melody that reminds me of "Frosty the Snowman" for some reason.

I gotta admit I found this one a bit boring around the edges, probably because I expected it to be a straight comedy and it's not, it's mostly a drama with three spunky main characters who get into typical modern young woman situations (or what was imagined to be such in the 1950s). It's another walk-on role for Hirata, but the Nakajima/Dan/Shigeyama trio is great here. I can only imagine that they get better as the series goes on, but unfortunately the other films are very obscure as well.

The Post Where I Talk About Yoshiki Onoda

I'm surprised I've made it so long without writing a post like this. To be honest, I've kind of been assuming that my readers probably already know who Yoshiki Onoda is, but I'm realizing that isn't necessarily the case. I have no idea if it's common knowledge that Akihiko Hirata had siblings who were also in the film industry. I don't even know if most people are aware that Hirata was not the name he was born with. (I constantly think about the xkcd comic when I'm writing for this blog.)

So let's have a Yoshiki Onoda post. The occasion is that today is or would have been his 100th birthday. I don't know if he's still alive, and I don't know if anyone else does either. I have heard that as of 2023 there were rumors that he was collecting a pension, but frankly, I would not trust my source for that statement any farther than I could throw it. In any case, there definitely are living 100-year-olds out there, so one can hope.

Poster for What Day Will You Come Back? When Will You Return?

Masahiko Onoda was born in Tokyo on July 12, 1925. He graduated from what is now Tokai University and joined Shintoho afterward as an assistant director. His first credit was What Day Will You Come Back? When Will You Return? [Itsu no hi-kun kaeru nan'nichi kunsairai], released in June of 1950 and starring Ken Uehara and Mieko Takamine, but since there are many different levels of assistant director within the Japanese film industry, not all of which are always credited, it is possible there may be some slightly earlier uncredited work. In 1958 he made his solo directorial debut: The Record of Lord Kusonoki's Loyalty [Nankō ni-dai seichū-roku], starring Tomisaburō Wakayama. After that film he would change his name to Yoshiki¹ and continue under that name for the rest of his career. Late in 1960 he married Utako Mitsuya, who he had worked with a an actress, and they would soon have two sons. They were married for 44 years until her death in 2004, and he must have been very fond of her, as after she died he wrote her biography.² According to his eldest son, he was very strict and serious about getting good performances out of his actors, but he treated all of his actors equally. You can find a list of films he worked on during his time at Shintoho (including as AD under his birth name) here. 

There is one picture of Onoda as a young man from his Wikipedia page that is typically used to represent him, but the blog that his son ran for the acting school the two of them operated posted many pictures of him in middle age, directing period dramas, and as an older man, teaching at the school. Here are a few of them:

I've censored the student's face because I understand that's kind of de rigeur for pictures taken of random people in Japan.

The years immediately following WWII were a time of tremendous change in the Japanese film industry. In the late 1940s, some Toho employees who were in favor of stronger labor unions and fairer working conditions split off and formed their own company, Shintoho. Shintoho, for all of its relatively short existence, was never very healthy. Still technically under the aegis of its parent company and usually at odds with it about finances and distribution, it consistently struggled to make a profit, sometimes even having to shut its facilities down. In the mid-'50s, however, it achieved its first real financial success with a trio of patriotic films about the Emperor Meiji, and subsequently the landscape of the wider Japanese film industry began to change even further when each studio realized it could solidify its place in the market by catering to one specific audience. Shintoho found its niche in making films that were often quite lurid or sexual in nature and appealed to teenagers - in an ironic twist, these sex-and-violence films that the studio had had no choice but to make due to lack of budget in its earlier days were now the kind of films that company management decided should be the studio's bread and butter. The result of the crystallization of each studio as purveyors of only one type of film was that lesser directors had little to no creative control.

This is the environment in which Yoshiki Onoda joined Shintoho. He was with the studio from its rough beginnings to its very end in 1962, and after a time he would become a freelance director, working almost exclusively in making jidaigeki for television. He also has three screenwriting credits from his time at Shintoho: Homecoming [Kisei], Cave Queens [Onna gankutsu-ō], and Beware of Suspicious People [Ayashii yatsu ni goyōshin no maki], one of the two Comedy Trio films he directed (starring Yoshiko Otowa). Interestingly, although Akihiko Hirata was a bit younger than him, he actually joined Shintoho before his older brother, also as an assistant director. I'm not sure what the policy was about family members working at the same company at the same time, but I will note that the Onoda brothers' individual stints at Shintoho do not seem to overlap.

Yoshiki Onoda seemed to enjoy casting his family in stuff. After marrying Utako Mitsuya, he continued to work with her, and both of his younger siblings show up pretty often in his films (and especially his later jidaigeki television work, in Hirata's case). He also frequently directed his son Masayuki Onoda during his acting career, which lasted from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. As I've said before, the Onoda Venn Diagram is surprisingly complicated, and the addition of a son makes it even more so: the eldest Onoda directed both of his younger siblings and his son, but never both siblings at the same time, and never either sibling at the same time as his son. I do wish we had at least gotten one full three-sibling team-up at some point.³

Otowa is on the right in the purple sweater and apron.

Onoda was very prolific, but few of his films have received English subtitles. His most famous work outside of Japan is Female Slave Ship, something of an extremely minor proto-exploitation cult classic, undoubtedly better known for starring a ridiculously young Bunta Sugawara than for its direction. As of the time of writing, including that film, there are currently six of Onoda's films that you can go on the internet and watch (or buy) right now. The others are Stray Wolf (1982), The Flower Flute Murders (1983), Araki Mataemon: Duel at Kagiya Corners (1993), Onihei Hankacho: Heizo the Demon (1995), and Samurai Justice: Mother and Daughter. Heizo the Demon, like much of his Onihei Hankacho work, also stars his son. Cave Queens was shown at the Far East Film Festival in 2010 and critics evidently liked it.

Poster for I Am a Mountain Man in the City, also featuring Yoshiko Otowa (left-most column, holding... ladles, maybe?)

Although his last work as a director was in 2008, he was interviewed in 2010 for a documentary⁴ about fellow Shintoho director Teruo Ishii. The full documentary unfortunately never received a home media release after its initial premiere, but a trailer is on YouTube, which contains literally about two seconds of footage of Onoda speaking. (We do live off scraps over here.) He is 85 in the documentary, and he resembles his younger brother enough that seeing him at that age gives me a very strange feeling.

____

1 Machine translators don't know how to handle his name. You will sometimes see Yoshimiki, Yoshimi, or Yoshimoto, but it is pronounced "Yoshiki".

2 This was The Cherry Blossoms Bloomed Twice [Sakura wa ni-do saita], released in 2006. I don't have a solid source for this either, but I have heard that Mitsuya recounted falling in love with him on the set of Man-Eating Ama, when she was hesitant to do a nude scene and he told her she could just wear a towel instead.

3 Something I like to do because I'm a huge nerd is keep track of actors who have worked with all three siblings, which there are less of than you may imagine. Currently, I'm aware of Masayo Banri, Toyoko Takechi and Tōru Yuri.

4 Tokusatsu fans take note: Shiro Sano and Yuriko Hishimi also appear in this documentary.

Ranking Every Manga Iwamoto (That I Could Find) For Ultraman Day

1) Yuzo Takada's Ultraman The First

This is probably my favorite Ultraman '66 manga. Yuzo Takada's art style is so precise and impressive on a technical level, and although he doesn't try to be realistic, he doesn't go full caricature either. I also really like that he draws all the characters' height accurately.

For the most part, the three volumes in this manga stick closely to selected episodes from the original series, but there's enough original content to make it fun. Some of the episodes are combined into one chapter ("My Home is Earth", "The Monster Graveyard", "Farewell Ultraman", and one or two others are all kinda smashed together as the finale, for example) and as a result Dr. Iwamoto ends up in story arcs that he wasn't actually a part of, which I will never complain about. Takada also establishes that Fuji is a gamer, and although it isn't canon, it is canon in my heart. There's another much-needed new female character in the mix as well: a tomboy mechanic named Hinata (who uses the "ore" pronoun); if I recall correctly, she's the only original character in the manga, and she's very cool.

At the end, Fuji is the one who gets bodysnatched by Baltans, instead of Iwamoto getting bodysnatched by Alien Zetton, which is an interesting choice. I highly recommend this manga and I wish it was translated.

Also this panel goes unbelievably hard:

Text says "I won't forgive you, Baltan!"

2) Eiichi Shimizu & Tomohiro Shimoguchi's ULTRAMAN

It's debatable whether or not Edo actually deserves to be here. His whole look is an obvious nod to bodysnatched Iwamoto from the final episode of Ultraman, but whether or not Edo is actually that specific Zetton is never specified. We do see Edo watching what appears to be a recording of Ultraman's fight with Zetton in a (possibly non-canon) bonus comic at the end of one volume, but for the most part Edo's relation to the 1966 Zetton is left up to the imagination.

This one bothers me a little bit though. These mangaka CAN draw likenesses (Shiro Maki from Operation: Mystery is also in the manga for some ungodly reason, and he looks recognizably like Shin Kishida) but Edo's human form is fully just Some Guy.

In any event, Edo gets the #2 spot because he inspired an AO3 fic that is deeply funny to me:

3) Kyōta Kawasaki's Ultraman: The Science Patrol's Battle Chronicles: Operation Giant

I found pictures of this on an auction listing and I was so intrigued that I tracked a copy down and bought it. I thought at first that it was just somebody's random doujin, but it's actually officially licensed. It is [takes breath] a manga adaptation of Toshihiro Iijima's novelization of his own unproduced pilot script for Ultraman. I believe this was published around 1994. 

I have read the whole thing and it's great fun. The art style is very rudimentary, but Kawasaki is really good at drawing action scenes, and it's like watching an episode of Ultraman that never got made. The story is about a little scrap-metal robot who is commandeered by an unknown force in order to announce the arrival of "G", which turns out to be an enormous - bigger than Ultraman - and extremely powerful black robot that looks like a suit of armor. The Baltans appear as well, and there are a lot of characters who are original to the manga. Iwamoto only shows up once in the second-to-last panel on the last page. 

Possibly the rarest thing on this list, but maybe not for long. If this ever shows up translated, yours truly may or may not have had a hand in it.

4) Kazuo Umezu's Ultraman

Man, something about Generic Shounen Manga Iwamoto just gets me.

I do want to award extra points to this manga because Umezu at least gives Iwamoto more of a dynamic role than he ever had in the series. He volunteers to take Mummy Man to his house since he has the requisite facilities to keep its body from decomposing(!) but the truck he's driving (with Mummy Man in the back) ends up getting scooped up in Dodongo's jaws and he has to be rescued by Ultraman. This entire manga somehow survived the MangaDex purge, and it would be just absolutely horrible if you were to read it there for free instead of paying for an officially-licensed translation (which doesn't exist).

By the way, the reason why so many artists draw him with that weird Clark Kent-style single lock of hair out of place seems to be because of one scene from Cry of the Mummy. He doesn't look like that at any point in any of his other episodes. I guess that scene made an impression on people.

4) Gendai Comics (Hideoki Inoue)

sorry about the poor image quality but the lighting situation in the original auction listing photos seemed to be "haunted basement"

If I couldn't read his name in kanji, I would have no idea this was Iwamoto. Points on for being funny, I guess. Gendai Comics' Ultraman is one of those series that has incredibly good cover art and then the actual manga itself is just eh.

5) Gendai Comics (Osamu Kishimoto)

Really good Ide, though. That's what I look like after I've been typesetting for five hours straight.

Non-Manga Honorable Mention: Elisabetta Stoinich's RRParksCards Sketch Card

Sneak peek inside guzareshirei HQ. That is indeed the one and only Rakugo Nagaya wa Hana Zakari script in its shadowbox in the background.

I had to special-order this as soon as I knew it existed and a series of events then unfolded that led to what was ultimately a nine-month wait time (largely my fault for mistaking a years-old Kickstarter for an active project), but we got there in the end. Nobody ever does fanart of Dr. Iwamoto. If you're a fanartist and you're reading this, consider it your sign to do fanart of Dr. Iwamoto. I compel you. Show it to me. (Here's some.)

I hope you enjoyed this goofy post. I did. One of these days I'm going to make a "Fictional Characters I Have Heard People Say Look Like Akihiko Hirata" post and it's gonna be the craziest thing any of you have ever seen.