Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988) on Netflix
NR19882h 15mFantasyHorrorThriller
The oni Yasunori Kato, a former Imperial Army lieutenant, hunts the psychic Yukari Tatsumiya to wake the spirit of Taira no Masakado. Baron Eiichi Shibusawa and Yasumasa Hirai oppose him.
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- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.0/10566 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
The industrialist Eiichi Shibusawa heads the Tokyo Improvement Project, an enterprise meant to make the capital the strongest city in East Asia. In 1912 the onmyoji Yasumasa Hirai warns him not to disturb the spirit of the ancient villain Taira no Masakado, which is powerful enough to destroy the city, and Shibusawa lets the Tsuchimikado sect advise him on making Tokyo a blessed place. The oni Yasunori Kato, once a lieutenant in the Imperial Army, works against them, wanting to rouse Masakado and bring the city down. He wants to abduct Yukari Tatsumiya, a psychic of Masakado's line, and reach the spirit through her. Koda Rohan tells the Tsuchimikado of the plan, and they lock her inside their temple and hold the monoimi rite to defend her.
Cast
- Ai Yasunagaas Azusa Nishimura
- Jian Xiuas Red Priest
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Casting the villain proved hard: the actor Kobayashi was chosen for the part, but his agency declined the role after he met director Akio Jissoji at the ANA Hotel in Tokyo, where Jissoji answered his questions about Kato by saying the character "was like Godzilla" and had no spiritual background.
- Kyūsaku Shimada had left stage acting and gone back to his original job as a gardener when producer Ichise recruited him for the role; he asked to speak with his boss first, and the boss advised him to pursue acting instead, so he formally accepted the offer.
- The shoot was hot and dangerous — Kyūsaku Shimada called it "an out of control festival" — and at one point a pillar of fire erupted from the ground, catching Shimada and burning both his wrists, which required an urgent trip to the hospital.
- Swiss artist H. R. Giger, in Japan while a Seibu Department Store held an exhibition of his work, agreed when producer Ichise asked him to design the film's creatures; his schedule kept him off set, but his main contribution was the conceptual art for the gohō dōji.
- Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis was the first Japanese motion picture to use Sony HDVS equipment, making it the country's first full-scale high definition VFX film, and about six minutes of the finished movie was shot with that technology.
- For the film, an open set was built as a 150-metre life-sized facsimile of the early Showa era Ginza district at a cost of around 300 million yen by itself, featuring electric cable cars and 3,000 fully costumed extras.
- Kyūsaku Shimada's Yasunori Kato was so popular that author Hiroshi Aramata rewrote the character's physical descriptions in later editions of the novel to match him, and the performance was homaged in characters such as Washizaki in Riki-Oh and M. Bison of the Street Fighter games.
