A Little Tribute to One of the Greatest Days of My Life.

 This coming Tuesday (January 6) will be 35 years since one of the greatest days in my life (the details of which I'll post about one day)! Long story short, I went to NYC Creation Con for the 4th time, with my mother, and bought a couple of videos (including the first five episodes of Ultraman, in English; finally seeing an Ultra Series for the first time, after hearing/reading about it for so many years), watching samples of other videos (including The Space Giants and Kamen Rider Black), and to top it all off, bought the first issue of the short-lived Markalite (Summer 1990), one of my favorite magazines of all time! (And yes, named for the Markalite FAHP/Flying Atomic Heat Projector mecha from The Mysterians.) It's like much of my questions were answered, including learning the word "tokusatsu" (special effects) for the first time! And it was my gateway to tokusatsu fandom, after trying to find out more about my favorite Japanese sci-fi stuff for many years!

 Here are the two main human characters from Rekira the Super-Monster reenacting Markalite's influence on my life. Raitaro Hayama reflecting my teenage self from the time, and Verena Freston looking on with curiosity (because tokusatsu, at the time, was considered so weird and not worthy of mainstream attention). Drawn on tablet in FireAlpaca (in a pencil style).

Happy New Year 2026!

 Tomorrow (January 2nd), Tsuburaya's Ultra Series franchise turns 60 (when Ultra Q premiered in 1966)! (And Spectreman turns 55; five years apart!) So my original kaiju, Rekira, gets his own silhouette in the style of the original 1966 Ultraman show! Drawn on tablet in FireAlpaca.

 I picked a fine time to get into both the Ultra Series and tokusatsu fandom; January 6, 1991 (on the franchise's 25th Anniversary), 35 years ago this month, when I went to NYC Creation-Con and bought some stuff that changed my life... but that's another story. ;)

 Happy New Year!

Farewell to 2023

 In this fairly quick sketch, my last work for 2023, Rekira the Super-Monster joins Shin Ultraman, Shin Kamen Rider, and an uncharacteristically friendly Minus One Godzilla in bidding farewell to a remarkable year for tokusatsu in America!

Done on tablet in FireAlpaca.

 

 

Japan's Avengers - English Version

Using the same resources as last time, I have just assembled (pun intended) an English-language version of my very popular Japan's Avengers poster (originally in Japanese)!  Done in the style of international posters.  I had to do a lot of last-minute changes to make sure there weren't any typos or such!  I hope you will enjoy this one, too (though the Japanese poster is my favorite).  :)

Japan's Avengers - Assemble!

I saw The Avengers in theaters twice in May, and it has become one of my favorite superhero movies ever!  So I was imagining my own version of the film, where Japan's famous superheroes are assembled the same way Nick Fury assembled Marvel Superheroes!  After pondering and pondering over it for about a month or two, I finally decided to realize it!  Using various pics from the Internet (mostly toy pics from the manufacturers' websites, or from online stores like Hobby Search), I put them together into this fake poster.

In Japan's Avengers (Nippon no Abenjaazu), Godzilla, Ultraman, Masked Rider, Mazinger Z, Ultraman Zero, and Sailor Moon (and Tuxedo Mask, though he's off-poster) are assembled to fight legions of monsters and aliens led by Ultraman Belial!  And yes, that is Times Square in the background.  :)

The tagline is: "Earth's Mightiest Heroes Unite!  Defeat Ultraman Belial!"

The "Japan's Avengers" logo is completely original, done in Flash in about an hour.  The source poster was assembled from various photos in Photoshop, and titles were added in Flash.

Imaginary cast/crew credits on the poster are as follows:

CAST:

Susumu Kurobe (Shin Hayata/Ultraman)
Hiroshi Fujioka (Takeshi Hongou/Masked Rider)
Hiroshi Abe (Jirou Gou, Godzilla's human form/disguise)
GACKT (Kouji Kabuto, pilot of Mazinger Z)
Mamoru Miyano (Human form/voice of Ultraman Zero)
Miyuu Sawai (Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon)
Jouji Shibue (Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask)
Sonny Chiba (the Nick Fury character)
Hiroyuki Watanabe (the Agent Coulson character)
Yumiko Shaku (the Maria Hill character)
Shirou Sano (the Dr. Selvig character)
Hiroyuki Miyasako (Voice of Ultraman Belial)

STAFF

Director: Takeshi Yagi
Special Effects Director: Shinji Higuchi
Screenplay: JP Cassidy (obviously), Kei'ichi Hasegawa
(Based upon the Avengers screenplay by Joss Whedon and Zak Penn)
Executive Producers: Shougo Tomiyama (Toho), Tsugumi Kitaura (Tsuburaya), Hideaki Tsukada & Kazuhiro Takahashi (Toei), Dynamic Planning
Based on characters created by Toho Company, Ltd., Tsuburaya Productions, Shoutarou Ishinomori, Gou Nagai, and Naoko Takeuchi
Music by Alan Silvestri
Produced by the Avenger Production Committee
-Toho Eiga
-Tsuburaya Productions
-Toei
-Dynamic Planning
Jointly Distributed by Toho, Shouchiku, and Toei

I know that a movie like this will never be made, but the imagination is up to fans like myself.  :)

ADDENDUM: To justify my position on the two Ultramen (three if you count Belial!), I had both of them in mind.  (I thought of Ultra Seven, but I wanted to give his son Zero a chance to shine!)  Zero's inclusion aside, I wanted to pick out the characters most iconic and recognizable to the Japanese public, rather than just the fans.  Also, Zero plays an important part in Ultraman's surviving for more than three minutes in Earth's atmosphere.  :)

I also wanted Zero, because he parallels to Thor, as Belial does Loki.  As far as other Avengers parallels, Ultraman and Masked Rider share Captain America's role (although Ultraman is the team leader of the above depicted characters), as they're the pioneer archetype heroes of Japan.  Sailor Moon is sort of like Black Widow, Tuxedo Mask is like Hawkeye, Mazinger Z/Kouji is Iron Man, and you can guess Godzilla's role...  :)

I even got comments about not including Super Sentai!  LOL  Actually, I'd love to include them, but they're already a team!  The fun of this team is that they're a team of individual heroes, the kind you wanted to see together.

Merry Christmas 2010!

Here, it is Christmas Eve, and I did the following drawing as an early Christmas present to all my readers, family, and friends.

Thinking of the traditional Christmas song "We Three Kings," I decided to draw the three greatest archetype figures of Japanese fantasy, especially in the tokusatsu (Japanese special effects) art form! Depicted are Godzilla (center), Ultraman (left), and Kamen (Masked) Rider, gathered together to bring peace and goodwill to everyone.

Drawn this past afternoon, I colored it this morning on Photoshop with my Bamboo Fun Tablet.

Merry Christmas from Ryusei Works!