Nov 082011
 
Play

The streets of Tokyo run red with gallons and gallons of stage blood! Hot girls fart shuriken at their enemies, wield arm-stump-mounted machine guns, and deal with psychological trauma by slicing themselves with razor blades! Engineers, robotic geishas, and disgusting alien parasites — not to mention ruthless yakuza lords — have taken over! If this sounds like something you can stomach, then come along with the Rag-NERD-rok crew as we delve into the gore-streaked depths of Japanese spatter films such as Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, RoboGeisha and Meatball Machine. Afterwards, we’ll sit down with our friend Will for another hilarious interview, and find out exactly how much Alex will put up with when he presents a new RPG campaign to Meyer and Erik. This episode will be a real blast, so much so that someone is sure to lose a limb in a shower of pressurized blood.

(Show notes after the break.)

I. Cold Opening – Aftermath (00:00:00)

Alex, Ryan, Meyer and Erik unwind after a marathon of Japanese spatter films. But what more does the genre have in store for our heroes, and what is Erik’s secret connection to it?

II. Introduction (00:00:49)

Alex introduces this week’s topic, and we discuss Ed’s terrifying relapse into being two women. We then reluctantly move on to the episode’s main topic.

III. Japanese Gore Porn (00:02:09)

Just what is Japanese gore porn, and what themes does it allow filmmakers to explore? We do our best to answer these questions without losing our lunches. The four films we chose to base our discussion around are:

Meatball Machine (2005)

Plot Synopsis: A race of alien parasites uses its human hosts as living battle mechs in a series of hyper-violent duels to the death. Typically, they take control of their host’s nervous system, overwhelming the subject’s will, but what happens when an unassuming factory worker manages to overcome the alien’s control? Can he rescue the girl he admires from her own parasite, or will she become nothing more than a soulless killing machine?

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Plot Synopsis: Tokyo has been overrun by outlaw Engineers, a group of mutants who have the power to manifest lethal weapons from any injuries they sustain. Ruka, the privatized Tokyo PD’s leading Engineer hunter, is out to discover how these people came by their horrible powers, and destroy them. But when she finally meets Keyman, the first Engineer, and he reveals the secret of their shared past, things get a bit…complicated.

The Machine Girl (2008)

Plot Synopsis: When the son of a brutal Yakuza lord and his gang kill her brother, Ami sets out on a bloody mission of revenge. Unfortunately, she lacks the proper equipment to get the job done — at least until the Yakuza lord cuts off her arm and she replaces it with a machine gun.

RoboGeisha (2009)

Plot Synopsis: Yoshie is the daughter of a famous geisha, but she lacks the beauty and grace to follow in her mother’s footsteps, as her sister has done. But all that changes when she meets Hikaru Kegano, wealthy steel mogul, who sees her potential and recruits her to his robotic geisha army. Now, outfitted with a plethora of new cybernetic enhancements, Yoshie serves Kegano as his lead assassin. But just who are her targets, and what is Kegano’s ultimate aim?

IV. Will Interview #3 (00:39:00)

1. What would you do if you discovered that your best friend was Chicken Boo?

He would feel like the biggest idiot on the planet, especially since he’s known his best friend for more than 20 years.

2. What would you like to be reincarnated into?

Preferably a lion, but he’d settle for an overweight house cat named Lion.

3. What would you do if you woke up one morning tied to a stake in the T-Rex pen at Jurassic Park?

He would shit himself, then stand as still as possible for as long as he could. He would try to untie himself if he could.

4. If you could live in any universe from any movie/TV show/book/video game, what would it be?

He would be a Jedi with a green lightsaber during the Knights of the Old Republic era of the Star Wars universe. He would not try to make out with Master Yoda.

5. If you could eat any person in the world from any point in history to gain their powers, who would you eat?

He would eat Albert Einstein, so that he could look cool while sticking out his tongue and be much smarter than he is now.

6. Marry/Kill/Fuck: Mothra/Godzilla/King Ghidora?

Fuck Mothra, marry Godzilla, have Godzilla kill King Ghidora.

V. Sketch: Game Master’s Burden – Characterization (00:55:22)

Alex pitches a new tabletop role-playing campaign to his friends, but he’s less than enthusiastic about their ideas for characters.

VI. Outro (00:59:00)

If you ever go to Japan, be sure to avoid sharp objects, carry an umbrella and hide your breasts from spatter filmmakers.

To get in touch with us, you can send us an email, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or leave us a review on iTunes.

You can also leave us a voicemail by calling (516) 362 – NERD [6373]. If you are the first person to do so, we’ll play your message on the air and send you a free comic book!

Featured Music / SFX:

First Interlude: Need More Blood (Waylon Thornton) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Second Interlude: 8:15 Kargosu (Hayvanlar Alemi) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Sketch: Pine Apple Rag (1908, piano roll) (Scott Joplin) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
SFX courtesy of milton,, jobro and sirplus of Freesound.org.

Copyright:

Creative Commons License
Rag-NERD-rok Podcast by Alex Costello, Edward Cress, Erik Dickash, Ryan Mannix and Billy Meyer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by contacting info@ragnerdrok.com.

%d bloggers like this: