Seems like the people that brought us Atomic Blonde (2017) teamed up with some other folks and dipped their hands into buckets of Netflix cash to give us – KATE.

A one word title for a simple story that could be wrapped up in just one word –
“No-nonsense”. Yes, technically that’s two words but, you get the point.

• “Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan and written by Umair Aleem. The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead
  (Death Proof, Scott Pilgrim, Fargo: the series) , Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson (Venom 2, NBK), Tadanobu Asano, Michiel Huisman, Miyavi and Jun Kunimura (The Wailing, Shin Godzilla). The film follows Kate (Winstead), an assassin, whose mentor and handler (Harrelson) assigns her to kill a high-ranking Yakuza boss. During Kate’s final mission, she finds out that she has been poisoned and only has 24 hours to live, so she uses her last hours to get revenge and find out who set her up.”
• Wikipedia.org

This is a no-nonsense, hyper stylized, female revenge film set in Japan. No, not KILL BILL. No; not HAYWIRE. Kate is more obviously inspired by anime and video games. 

It’s more anime than you’d expect and more video game than John Wick. The injections she takes to extend her life-bar that reminded me of Metal Gear Solid 4 (Every time she was on the verge of dying I called out, “snake?” “Snake?”, “ Snaaaaaaake?”). Another nod to video-game/anime culture being the car chase that sounds like the opening credits to some new racing themed Shonen  anime similar to Initial –D, and don’t forget the tons and tons of Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner inspired scenery.  Yes, this movie is CYBERPUNK as fuck.

More low life than Hi-Tech and cyberpunk from the prospective of a High-rolling mercenary caught in the middle of a Yakuza clan war in the nocturnal underbelly of Tokyo, Japan after being poisoned by radioactive material. Kate is determined to weave, stab and shoot her way through the back streets of Japan and eliminate any Yakuza responsible or in the way of her wrath. You can easily create a character based on Kate for your next table-top cyberpunk RED campaign in cooperation or in secrecy subverting your friends.  

Soundtrack is serviceable to the overall setting of the film piece. Band-maid, Okinawa Electric Girl Saya, OOIOO, Sakurako Ohara, MoNa a.k.a. Sad Girl, and one of my favorite j-pop groups Aural Vampire.

Kate was released on Sept 10^th, 2021 and received mixed to not so flattering reviews and reactions from audiences. Some film critics were dismissive of Kate. In my opinion, this is a better film than Gunpowder Milkshake. Gunpowder with all this style and flash and star power failed to engage me with its action set-pieces. Action scenes need to have emotional content. If the film doesn’t keep your interest with its story (regardless of its originality or lack of) and the fight scenes aren’t edited or filmed well then, you might as well watch a televised ballet; it doesn’t matter if they are choreographed superbly. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times may disagree with me since he enjoyed Gunpowder’s flashy fantastical acrylic gloss dripping all over its shallow exterior. Kate to me is what a live-action retro cyberpunk OVA would look like (OEDO 808 (1990), ANGEL COP (1989)). Like I said, this whole piece feels like a gumbo of video-game and anime. I enjoyed it. It was simple and at its core the story although unoriginal was acted well-enough for me to be engaged. The visuals alone is worthy of a blu-ray or 4K purchase. I liked it and can’t wait to own it.

Stay sleek, stay free, stay safe, stay healthy and always keep your finger on that REWIND Button. 

Somewhere there is someplace

One million eyes can’t see

And somewhere there is someone

Who can see what I can see.

Simple Minds

Long time no write. That’s right. I’ve been… outside for a while, somewhere else. Where elsewhere tempts. Yet, to quote Michael Jordan, AD 1995 – I’m back. I feel an unspecified necessity to be again… You name an ending the ellipsis should turn into. Period. Enough confessions.

The God of Literature has been alarmingly generous towards me in the last two years. Among many of his/her/its blessings was Iain Reid’s debut novel – I’m Thinking of Ending Things. You might have watched its film adaptation or at least mehed at it while picking another Netflix show to binge on. That’s all right. The movie is a separate unassuming masterclass of its own. We are going to leave it alone, though. After all, firing reviews akimbo results in many words that miss or even missing word holes, doesn’t it?

Woven into a straightforward braid of sentences, ornamented with occasional barrettes of enchanting dictionary diamonds like cruciverbalist as well as amusing expressions such as compressed Uma Thurman, the novel saunters on at a slow pace. Its form? A well-balanced blend of highly introspective soliloquy and a regular ‘still-getting-to-know-each-other’ dialog between two self-aware individuals who have recently begun going out together. The above mixture gets interposed by short narrative intrusions which imply some unknown tragedy. What is the couple up to? Meeting his parents who live on a somewhat middle-of-nowhere-ish farm. What happens next? When Jake and his new girlfriend reach their destination, a bizarre, eldritch, suspenseful creepiness kicks in. And? And as it steadily grows, like an untreated cancerous excrescence, we are doomed to succumb to its shattering, malevolent rupture at the very end.

Feeling-wise, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is like a sarcophagus. Stupefying and overbearing, it entombs you in the enthralling entirety of execrable emotions sprouting from existential anguish and regret. With its extremely innate exclusiveness, only true Steppenwolves of the 21st century are chosen to experience its thunderously devastating charm and charring aftereffects. Those who had stared into Nietzschean abyss for so long it became their mirror which does not cast reflections, nor does it stare back any more – it devours alive instead. Those who had been literally thinking of ending things so many times they were forced to reject the very idea itself because, metaphysically, it turned out to be the same in-world event as everything else and there would be no escape whatsoever. Those who eat Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground for breakfast, Shlomo Venezia’s Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz for lunch and call it a day having a rare steak of Camus’ The Fall and Vaslav Nijinsky’s diary as sides for dinner. Those who dance on a razor’s edge of derangement, a full-blown derailment, complete and thorough detachment from common sense. Those who play ontological hooky. Those who fall uncomfortably silent when Marlon Brando delivers his famous ‘I coulda been a contender’ lament on the back seat of a cab in the movie On the Waterfront. Those who long for inability to reminisce and strive for forgetfulness but do not resort to banal resolutions like drugs or alcohol. Those and only those can see… Hmm, the list of ‘thoses’ grew suspiciously long. Perhaps old Amonne was wrong and the book is inconspicuously inclusive, after all. And we are all howling in our own private unforgiving taigas like there’s no tomorrow, having thoughts that cannot be faked, being stuck in places one million eyes can’t see…

Countless sheets of paper have been printed about an idea of singularity of things. The oneness, undeniably tempting as a phenomenon since time immemorial, may be the only known approximation of eternity immobilized or shall I say immortalized in a ‘snapshot’ of metaphysical unrepeatability which our limited human perception is able to grasp. Temporal and spatial infinity captured, squeezed into a finite ‘package’, tangible enough to be perceived. Sounds pretty neat, doesn’t it? Well, the reverse is even better. Imagine something incredulously infinite, stemming from something totally manageable, within reach of our senses, something we encounter everyday, a common, ordinary thing. A saucepan, a flowerbed, sleeping pills, stuff like that. Reid’s debut is a perfect example of a novel which embodies the very idea. From the lame, almost trite motif he extracts a gateway to immeasurableness which does not lose its palpable dimensions, does not disperse into obtuse abstract lack of referentiality WITHIN the reader. This passage clings on to you, mercilessly. The more have you been tormented by things from the list I mentioned in the paragraph above, the stronger their grip. And the said unrepeatability is one of the most soul-wrenching irreversibilities I have ever come across in literature. Surely, you may find loads of other examples, just go grab the nearest crime fiction you can lay your hands on. You cannot reread it in a way you read it the first time – you know who the killer is. Frankly, all books fall under this category. However, the irreversible nature of I’m Thinking of Ending Things seems to harmonize with a particular resonance of human ability to feel emotions. Not the obvious ones like gratitude, worry or shame but those which would give you hard time putting your finger on them, i.e., almost solipsistic case of loneliness, a prolonged bile which morphs into utter desolation, a state of being metaphysically hounded by wasted opportunities, etc. This is the place where Reid’s novel takes us to. New, unnameable emotions begotten by simple ordinary words. Hats off, Mr. Reid, hats off! You have found eternal ally not only in every Steppenwolf, but also in their far more elusive, almost phantom-like cousins – Desert wolf and Arctic wolf – who are chained into the confines of this barren reality as thoroughly as their HESSEtantly two-faced peer. You have certainly made their night howls a little less haunting, a little less self-annihilating. Maybe even a little less wolfish…

Amonne Purity

 It must be an exciting time to be a subscriber to Netflix, right? After working all night and to be able to finally relax on my sofa and watch a movie should be the easiest, most relaxing, part of my nocturnal work week. Well, it was. It was relaxing- however, I barely remember the movie.

Army of the Dead is an easy to digest schlocky buffet of shit that drags itself across the carpet for two and a half hours. Two and a half hours. Why does Zack Snyder insist on filming these overblown behemoths? Does anyone know a competent editor he can hire? It is one thing to have a long movie with a well-drawn out story with character development and arcs sprinkled in-between well staged action sequences and build-up to a climax. But, when your film is just a patch work of different characters played by an ensemble of actors with camera work that resembles a Showtime series instead of a film by a polarized Hollywood director – You get my frustrations with Army of the Dead.

It was a film that took all the clichés that people dislike about Snyder’s films and threw them together into a gumbo of pop culture – cheese.

Dave Bautista is a good actor. I think he’s a damn good actor with a lot of range and charisma. I’ve seen him in a lot of roles that showcase his range. However, part of his appeal is his eagerness to have fun with new characters and projects without any celebrity pretentions and with lots of humbleness. This film doesn’t make me a fan of his because; I was already a fan.

What’s the film about?: A group of mercenaries are hired by a wealthy man to enter into a quarantined Las Vegas after a zombie outbreak. The whole city is walled in by Storage containers. The wealthy man wants this ragtag band of misfits to break into a Vegas casino before the U.S. government drops a bomb on the whole city.

Does the gang get the money and fortune & glory? Fuck No. Everything goes to shit.

Questions:
How do zombies actually conceive a child?
Is this like a miracle baby? Or did the Alpha zombie force himself onto a woman before she was transformed into a zombie?
Does a zombie even get hard?
Does a zombie even defecate?
If there are evolved zombie or intelligent zombies – How come they haven’t figured out how to break out of the city?
Can you survive inside a Vegas vault while a nuclear bomb goes off? I don’t know.. …
Why does this film feel like I’m watching James Cameron’s ALIENS?
Will I watch another Zack Snyder film? Probably, yes.

I was given more questions than answers and I could’ve been in bed. Watchmen is still his best film followed by Dawn of the Dead (written by James Gunn), 300, Man of Steel, Legend of the Guardians.

Basically, I can’t rate this cuz, I barely remember it; or do I?
Army of the Dead gets a vague Rating of 2 out 5.

Keep your cool, and keep your finger on that REWIND button.

And don’t forget NATURAL CITY is still available at SamHaiNe.bandcamp.com

Netflix – love it or hate it, has given us some pretty good content the past few years, from original content like the Haunting of Hill House, Castlevania and the Dark Crystal but, Netflix is also notorious for padding their selection with dogshit as well as prematurely cancelling titles such as the before mentioned Dark Crystal.
However, one of the underrated aspects of Netflix is their international films section and my personal preference – South Korean cinema. Yes, it’s no mystery that South Korea has been and still is producing top quality and world renowned films including Parasite the recent Oscar winning film praised by critics and audiences.

Space Sweepers is a 2021 South Korean space Western film directed by Jo Sung-hee (A Werewolf Boy 2012, Phantom Detective 2015), starring Song Joong-ki, Kim Tae-ri, Jin Seon-kyu and Yoo Hae-jin Regarded as the first Korean space blockbuster, it was released on Netflix on February 5, 2021.
Now imagine a film that is the best Cowboy Bebop influenced live action movie that wasn’t Bebop and  then imagine that same film having cleaner effects than Battlestar Galactica and Guardians of the Galaxy (yes I said it). This movie is gorgeous to look at and takes its time to build a world that is believable and lived-in. Space Sweepers is awesome.

Basically, the story is set in the distant future where earth is devastated by pollution and climate change. Much of humanity still lives on Terra while the rest of humanity, mostly the wealthy, have gone off world to colonize the solar system on orbiting colonies and floating commercial districts. The documented citizens live much like we do in social castes and undocumented individuals have to scrap just to get by. Take into consideration the physics of space and the dangers of floating debris and decommissioned satellites floating around with the potential of destroying hubs of civilizations, colonies and even the earth itself. That is where the Space Sweepers come in; a bunch of freelance scrappers that compete to rescue runaway debris before they can become a danger. They compete with each other to salvage and scrap all the junk at orbital junkyards for cash.
This dangerous competition is our introduction to the main cast of hooligans, who after a heated back-n-forth with other sweepers discover that they have saved more than what they bargained for and become entangled in a conspiracy that will determine the future of humanity. It’s so friggin’ anime.

What the story may be lacking is well compensated with character development and inter-personal relationships. No one is two dimensional or made out of papier-mâché. These are working class stiffs and not the plot-armored super protagonists of today’s cinema. They are a close crew of outsiders that each have motivations and flaws and express unexpected moments of family and humanity that is endearing. Loved it.

ICE PIRATES +Cowboy Bebop+ Outlaw Star and Red Dwarf is the Best way to put this film in its right place. Well worth the viewing time.
Runtime : 136 minutes.

Also starring Richard Armitage (The Hobbit, Hannibal).

The film debuted at No. 1 on Netflix in at least 16 countries including France, Malaysia, Croatia, South Korea and the Philippines. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 72% based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10.  On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on reviews from 4 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.

Still available for streaming on NETFLIX..

Go Check it out, space cowboys. Stay cool, stay safe and always keep your finger on that blasted REWIND button.

July 4th will never be the same again!

How pumped are you for this?!

2018 is proving to be the start of a new resurgence in anime here in the states. Dragonball Super is already nearing its epic climax. A new live action adaptation of an anime classic is premiering in theaters this summer (Battle Angel). This is a good time to be riding the pop culture wave.

Netflix last year was definitely hit or miss when it came to anime. The Castlevania mini-series written by Warren Ellis was actually pretty good and moody. Ajin: Demi Human is still in my opinion so crazy and wickedly outstanding that I can’t help but click on it when I’m in someone’s house with Netflix access. Then there’s the Death Note live action film that was well… it was bad. Not because I don’t want creators and producers taking liberties with I.P. I mean look at the Full Metal Alchemist movie – that’s pure fan service and it stinks. But the Netflix Death Note movie was pretty bad.

Netflix is coming around and they have already announced that they will be premiering more Netflix exclusive anime to it subscribers. Now when you see that Netflix logo next to the anime title, it doesn’t mean Netflix is actually creating new anime. No. What they are doing is buying the rights to stream these anime from the studio houses that actually make them. But, we’re all smart so that should be understood already. Yes, they giving us anime that isn’t limited by the constraints of television. You’re getting whatever they want to give you.

I’ve been very unmoved by a lot of anime the past few years. I loved the original Death Note anime, the Gantz English dub, Terror in Resonance, Ajin, DBZsuper, Genocidal Organ, Attack on Titan to name the few. But this is not the case.

Devilman Crybaby – I’m happy to say that I love this anime. I love its pessimism, its lack of reprieve and total mindfuck. It is a dark tale of humanity and its thirst for self-destruction.

It was also amusing and interesting to see so many youtube anime reviewers reacting to the 10 episode series with no expectations having limited knowledge of the groundbreaking series and its controversial original manga. Like “Your entire room is plastered with anime posters, shelves decorated with figurines and volumes of manga littered about but, you never heard of Devilman before?”, the furtile earth of youth. The excitement on their faces when the action kicks in, the concentration on plot progression and nuances and finally total heartbreak and devastation.

Devilman is the tale of demons working behind the crimson curtain to usurp human beings and reclaim the earth from us lesser beings and wage a final war against God himself.

What I love about this new adaptation is the art design. I love animators and production companies having the courage to experiment with the medium. I’m a child of Liquid Television after all, so psychedelic insanity and crisp frenetic animation gets me going like a bloody knuckle during a fight in the yard.

This version is helmed by Masaaki Yuasa (Space Dandy, Ping Pong, and Adventure Time season 6, episode “Food Chain”). I loved Space Dandy by the way.

The original manga of Devilman was first written and illustrated by Go Nagai, which originally published by Kodansha from June 11, 1972 to June 24, 1973 in Shōnen Magazine.  The series has been published in tankōbon format several times, most of them by Kodansha. Starting with the 1987 publishing, most Kodansha editions include Shin Devilman, which originally was not meant to be included in the canon of the original series, as a part of the volumes.   Then as an anime adaptation of the concept of Nagai’s previous manga series, Demon Lord Dante. This 39-episode anime series was developed by Toei Animation in 1972, while Nagai began the Devilman as a manga in Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine, barely a month before the anime series started. The series has since spawned numerous OVAs, manga, novels, and films. The manga has sold over 50 million copies as of March 2017.

Now that you know that, here’s what I knew before viewing. I had in my possession for many years a bootleg copy of all three original OVA’s that I purchased from a nameless storefront in my neighborhood. While other kids were into DBZ, I was into Baki the grappler, Legend of the Overfiend and more mature content. Devilman stood out for its storyline and not just its violence. I was a catholic school delinquent so anything other than the good guy in the sky b.s. was always on my radar. The idea of a young man conquering the evil within himself and gaining the powers of hell to fight on the side of right was definitely hit the nail on the head. I won’t spoil anything that happens in the story if you haven’t read the original manga or seen any of the previous OVA’s including Devilman: Amon which is awesome and fits somewhere between the start of the final war and the story’s ultimate climax.

The new series takes everything minus the fat and projects it on screen in contemporary times. There are even new characters created solely for the series. And like I said the hyper animation style of this series really gives it that needed shot of crystal right in the vein of insanity. It will make you laugh, give you wood, make you squeamish (if that’s your thing), make you cry, become depressed and totally bummed out. But it’s worth it.

I give it a big RECOMMENDATION. I AM forcing you all to go and binge this series. It’s only ten episodes long. Oh! The soundtrack is totally KICKASS. Some reviewers have described the soundtrack as EDM or something like that.. No, this is straight up Acid House or Acid dance music much like what we loved back in the days when Lords of Acid, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult were marauding across the country in clubs making people dance and trip out in groovy groovy vibrations. It’s awesome. I’m downloading the damn thing right now..

DEVILMAN: CRYBABY – It’s worth your time and your tears. “Heart of a man but the powers of Hell” and be warned this is not an anime for kids unless your kids are awesome. If your kids are awesome then they can watch the hell out of this series and maybe learn something from it.

Be cool. Be groovy. And Keep your damn fingers on that Rewind Button.

• S. H…

GLOW is an upcoming Netflix original series about GLOW premiering on Friday, June 23.

So what is GLOW?

GLOW, or Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, was a televised women’s wrestling promotion that premiered in 1986. Despite the fact that some people (me) think that wrestling is utterly captivating as both a sincere form of low-brow entertainment and fascinating post-modern expression (it is), it can seem alienating or uninteresting to dive into a TV dramatization of one of the most overly dramatic entertainment mediums from the mid-80’s. If the trailer is an accurate portrayal, GLOW is a show that lives by its character work. To help with the rest, here are 10 Things You Should Know About GLOW. 

1.  The First Televised Women’s Promotion

While the late 70’s through the early 90’s were arguably the second best time for women’s wrestling not counting the past year or so, it didn’t have a TV presence,  and the various successful women’s wrestling company’s of that time period didn’t have the television exposure. GLOW was the first televised women’s wrestling program, and as such the women on the match cards would have matches that were just as long as matches by male performers in other promotions, a far cry from the doldrums of 2-minute evening gown pool matches that followed in the WWE just a decade later. 

2.  Trained by a Guererro

The head trainer of GLOW was Mando Guerrero. Does that name sound familiar? It should. Mando is from the Los Guerreros wrestling dynasty and older brother of Eddie Guerrero, one of the most beloved and respected wrestling talents of all time. If you have a promotion full of wrestling blank slates as Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling did, you can’t do better than having a Guerrero as a teacher. 

3. Sir Miles Headlock

GLOW was never really concerned with realism in its storytelling or presentation. This was perhaps at its zenith with commentator Miles Headlock (a play on Max Headroom). Sir Miles Headlock was played by Douglas Dunning and billed himself as the first computerized commentator in history. While Headlock was certainly unsettling, the most impressive part of Dunning’s performance is that it somehow fails to shatter the suspension of disbelief. 

4. That’s A Rap

It’ll be interesting to see how the upcoming show chooses to handle one of the most easily identifiable aspects of its source material; one which is at once hilariously endearing and cringe-inducing. Each of the performers had to perform a rap to the same backing beat. The results are… well… just watch. 

5. Fiction or Fictionalized? 

Alison Brie’s character, Ruth Wilder, is an out of work actress who happens upon GLOW. While this seems believable and is close to the truth of several of the women involved in the promotion, Ruth Wilder never existed. In fact, every character is not just a fictionalization, but completely fictional. In a way, this frees the writers to explore the story in any way they see fit. On the other hand, fans of the original program may be surprised to see that characters they remember fondly are being presented in a very copyright-friendly way. 

6. Kayfabe Is For Lovers

Okay, so kayfabe. Let me give you a quick ELI5. Kayfabe is the fiction that a wrestling promotion and the wrestlers present as the truth. Stone Cold Steve Austin assaulted his boss in kayfabe. CM Punk lost his UFC debut in real life. Does that make sense? Good! In the 80’s, kayfabe was in a much different place than it is in an age of Twitter. It wasn’t uncommon for wrestlers to fear for their life leaving a venue if they played the heel (bad guy) in an angle (storyline). As mentioned, GLOW never had the most serious fiction and was more than a little absurd. Like, did anyone thing Matilda the Hun was an actual Hun? Well, the performers had to stay in character 24/7. Faces (good guys) and heels (you should know this one) weren’t allowed to associate in public and breaking kayfabe would result in a $50 fine. 

7. Novelty

Women’s wrestling was popular before GLOW, but not really. When one of the larger American wrestling companies would put on a show that featured a women’s match on the card, it often sold tickets but as a novelty. Women’s wrestling had a very carny-sideshow feel to it. While several women’s wrestling promotions existed to dispel this perception, none had the wide reach that GLOW had. 

8. A Stallone Was Involved

Do you want to know who we can thank for GLOW? Sylvester Stallone’s mother. GLOW grew from Jaqueline Stallone’s women’s fitness gym, with Momma Rocky herself serving on the production team. Not content with a behind-the-camera only position, Stallone would go on to serve as the on-screen manager for the stable of the Good Girls. 

9. Season’s Greetings

It operated on a season by season basis, making it more like Lucha Underground than WWE. This allowed for an ever-evolving cast and the opportunity for more arc-based storytelling. It also meant that premiers and finales were going to feel more like substantial events than just another night of weekly wrestling. 

10. Watch The Pilot

The pilot is the most 80’s thing you have ever seen. I know we throw that sort of thing around a lot, but it really is. I honestly don’t know what to write about this to accurately convey the glory of the thing. Watch it, won’t you?

Synopsis for the series:

“The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance returns to the world of Thra with an all new adventure. When three Gelfling discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis’ power, they set out on an epic journey to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their world.”

Louis Leterrier, director of Now You See Me and The Incredible Hulk, will produce and direct the series. The Jim Henson Company will also produce the series.

[ Source: http://popculture.com/tv-shows/2017/05/18/netflix-the-dark-crystal-tv-show/ ]

Netflix Japan has just announced a new Devilman anime with an intriguing trailer and I cant wait.

After binging on episodes of Ajin: Demi-human, which I highly recommend, I’m officially interested in anime again.

With exception to the marvelous Terror in Resonance(2014), anime the past few years has been saturated with drek and fek and childish nonsense in cat ears. A sad state of affairs.

But Ajin, the upcoming BLAME! anime and now Devilman has me, hook, line and sinker. Toonami may not be what it use to be but Netflix is definitely picking up the slack and giving all of us another place to see exclusive titles when we aren’t are on crunchyroll. Other notable titles: Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul, Psycho Pass.

Netflix Japan has debuted a teaser trailer for the upcoming anime adaptation of “Devilman,” the classic manga series by Go Nagai. Directed by Masaaki Yuasa (“Mind Game,” “Ping Pong”), “Devilman Crybaby” will premiere worldwide in spring 2018.

Serialized from 1972 to 1973 in Kodansha’s “Weekly Shonen Magazine,” “Devilman” was adapted simultaneously by Toei as a 39-episode anime series. The manga and anime have inspired numerous spinoffs, adaptations and crossovers, including a 2004 live-action film. Devilman was a manga and anime series that combined superhero tropes with supernatural horror. It was made by the famous Japanese author Go Nagai in the 1970s. It became enormously popular and influential in Japan and was later adapted in the form of a OVA and a live action movie. There was a animated crossover movie in which Devilman met another of Nagai’s famous creations, Mazinger Z.

Summary: a boy named Akira, discovers the Earth is being invaded by demons. His friend Ryo convinces him that the only way to stop the demons is to have him merge with one of them.

“Devilman” will debut in 2018.