Could it come to T.O.? Let us hope!
This 2004 Takashi Miike effort is well worth seeing. Here's the whole NYT capsule review:
A downtrodden schoolteacher, a disabled boy and a government agent suffering from an embarrassing itch: these are the unlikely heroes of “Zebraman,” Takashi Miike’s bizarre detour from ultraviolence into family fare.
It’s 2010, and all is not well in the Yachiyo ward of Yokohama. Rape and arson are on the increase, bearded seals are swimming upriver and a crustacean-headed serial killer is on the loose. When reports of more “nonhuman life forms” begin to circulate, Japan’s defense agency dispatches fabulously inept “Men in Black”-style agents (including the one with the itch) to investigate. Also on the case is Ichikawa (Sho Aikawa), a mild-mannered teacher who, along with his disabled student, is obsessed with a long-canceled television show about a superhero named Zebraman. Donning a homemade zebra suit and a new heroic identity, Ichikawa sets out to save his district.
Driven less by civic duty than by the need to escape his dreary life, Zebraman is a tragic, touching figure too often obscured by Kankurou Kudo’s hyperactive screenplay and a special-effects team drunk on alien slime. Mr. Miike fashions unexpectedly arresting images — the weird stillness of an ocean of emerald ooze, the surreal beauty of Zebraman’s lacerated costume — but the movie heaves with possessed schoolchildren, aggressive eggplant and a pea-green baby. “Japan doesn’t need nukes,” says a sign near the end of the movie. With all this going on, who would?
I wrote the following in a 2005 blog posting about the IFC movie house in New Yawk:
Two perfect midnight madness showings, for me, are Takashi Miike's Gozu and Zebraman (I saw both at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2003 and 2004 respectively).
Why? They're hilarious, totally irreverent and wildly imaginative, and that makes them the ultimate in cult moviegoing fun (of the two, Gozu is a bit more violent, but nothing like, say, Ichii the Killer or Audition). I love absurdist black humour, and nobody does it like Miike.
I watch Hollywood movies when I want a totally predictable movie experience. I watch Miike when I want a film that will be predictable only in its complete and utter unpredictability.
Speaking of Miike, he's back at TIFF this year! Observe:
SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO Takashi Miike, Japan
Tighten your saddlebags, load your revolvers and pack your chopsticks for cult cinema bad boy Takashi Miike's audacious wagon ride mash-up into the wild, wild east. A familiar spaghetti western premise that involves a mysterious stranger arriving into the middle of two clans feuding over hidden loot gets sliced and diced into new Americana-Kabuki-baroque fare: Buddhist temples sit alongside saloons, samurai swords hang from gun belts and sake flows with blood. Blue-eyed samurai Quentin Tarantino makes his first Japanese film appearance in Miike's first English language film. Starring Hideaki Ito, Koichi Sato, Yusuke Iseya, Yoshino Kimura, and Masanobu Ando.