There’s probably a million ways to connect these dots.

Watching Tokyo Gore Police the other day got me to thinking about that sort of schlocky sci-fi horror (see also: Tetsuo: The Iron Man and The Machine Girl) and how it serves as the ultimate evolution of tokusatsu like Kamen Rider and Ultraman. They frequently have many of the same attributes: Kamen Rider episodes begin with a brief explanation of his origin: “Kamen Rider, Takeshi Hongo, is an modified human. He was altered by Shocker, an evil secret society with aspirations for world domination. Kamen Rider fights against Shocker for the sake of human freedom,” while Tokyo Gore Police‘s protagonist Ruka is captured by the biotechnological freak she’s been hunting and becomes one of the monstrous “engineers” that she’s been trained to fight against for decades. It’s interesting how Japanese gore films act as thematic commentary about kid-friendly entertainment even as they find new ways to shock, disgust and entertain their audience by using familiar tropes to quickly hook the audience and then subverting them for dramatic effect.

Meanwhile, American adults who liked to watch Green Lantern fly around in space with a magic wishing ring as part of the cast of Super Friends can just go read Blackest Night to get the same effect.

Sean Witzke found some more of those dots the other day in a blog post I’d bookmarked but not read yet. I am the worst plagiarist ever.