2021’s been quite a year for franchise anniversaries! We kicked it off with some retrospective trivia for the 50th anniversary of Spectreman, had galleries for the 50th anniversaries of Kamen Rider and Godzilla vs Hedorah, and did a panel for the 60th anniversary of Gorgo. Those are certainly milestones, but it seems like one of the bigger achievements to celebrate in Japan is the 30th anniversary; for example, Godzilla rang in three decades with the Return of Godzilla reboot, Gamera with Guardian of the Universe, Ultraman with Tiga, even Toho itself with King Kong vs Godzilla. This being 30 years since 1991, we have some strong contenders to look back at:
But it’s December, so naturally that means time to look at the big winter special effects movie release of the year. You know, the sci-fi monster flick with cyborgs and spaceships and lasers and whatnot. The one that Toho was able to sell around the world.
…uh, the one *without* a hit piece on Entertainment Tonight about it.
That’s right, we’re talking about Keita Amemiya’s tokusatsu tour-de-force, Zeiram, originally released December 21, 1991, so let’s celebrate the 30th anniversary with 30 fun factoids related to one of the most iconic monsters in Japanese cinematic history and the badass alien bounty hunter that’s after her. This likely won’t be of much interest to those not already converted to Zeiram appreciation, but I strongly encourage anyone to check these awesome little effects extravaganzas out. They’re, simply put, the best, products of a brief period where ambitious science fiction filmmaking could channel huge imagination with reckless abandon, and weird, cool monsters could really sell a project.
So, if you haven’t seen them, I implore you to do so, and if you have, let’s get started!
1) Kicking things off on the most basic level, the title is actually inconsistently Romanized.
The Japanese ゼイラム is technically transliterated as “Zeiramu”, so the usual, most accepted rendering is Zeiram. However, the original 1994 Streamline dub and 1995 US release via Image Entertainment laserdisc and VHS (and later DVD) simply spelled it “Zeram”, like the character in the Book of Mormon. Many versions, however, gives the both the movies and the spinoff anime vanity umlaut treatment to seem more alien, using Cyrillic lettering: ZËIЯAM. While this looks cool, it would not be pronounced the same way (Я is actually closer to the “y” sound, so it would sound like “ziyam”) and could prove difficult to render in English, and sometimes you also see the compromised form ZËIRAM used as well.
(Iria also gets rendered as I・Я・I・A in a similar situation, with a unique three-dot umlaut over the “a” that does not exist in any typeface I know of).
2) We have video games to thank for the franchise.
Keita Amemiya always had some interest in directing, but his career started off more as an illustrator and character designer. In 1986, he did designs for Namco’s game Genpei Toumaden (AKA Samurai Ghost) and got to make his pro directorial debut on a nine-minute live-action short promoting the piece. Evidently the company was impressed, because not only did Amemiya return for further designs on Namco’s 1988 game Mirai Ninja, but he was also allowed to adapt it into a feature film, marking not just Amemiya’s feature debut, but the first ever full movie based on a video game. Cyber Ninja (as Streamline renamed the movie) made enough of an impression that plans began for a sequel, but unable to secure the budget for setpieces on the required scale, the movie morphed into what became Zeiram.
Also of note is that the eventual film franchise retained many of Cyber Ninja’s staff, including actor Kunihiko Ida, suit actor Mizuho Yoshida, music by Koichi Ota, designs by Katsuya Terada, and modeling by Takayuki Takeya.
3) The video game connection actually got stronger later on.
The original title for the movie was HP9999 (which is pretty gamey), and it involved a boy getting pulled into a video game created by aliens – he had to beat the game in one night or he’d die for real. There was the idea that he’d be saved at the end by a female alien warrior, and eventually Amemiya decided to make her the protagonist, at which point the game theme was dropped, though the “trapped in a virtual space” theme remained via the Zone.
4) Much like Cyber Ninja, the Zeiram franchise blends classical Japan into its sci-fi imagery.
Bringing Edo-era jidai-geki aesthetics into a science fiction setting isn’t exactly new (the movie that inspired Amemiya to become a director was Star Wars, after all), but Zeiram remixes it in a way that feels fresh and lived in, along with other unusual worldbuilding quirks. For the anime, Amemiya also took elements of Chinese and Vietnamese culture into the mix.
5) There’re modern influences, too.
Aside from the traditional Japanese stuff, the movies tread on imagery similar to the likes of Hollywood action flicks like Star Wars, Alien, and Terminator. Amemiya had previously worked on Metal Heroes shows for Toei, and elements of that also show through in the designs, as well as the Zone feeling similar to the alternate spaces that heroes often battle monsters in for those programs. Iria’s tough-girl, armor-clad persona often gets compared to Samus from Metroid as well.
6) The movie kicked off a long line of collaborations between Amemiya and Yukijiro Hotaru.
Actor Hotaru has gone so far to say he’s now the head of an Amemiya Appreciation Group, having appeared in Hakaider, Mikazuki, Garo, Moon Over Tao, Rokuroku, and Cutie Honey the Live.
7) Zeiram’s suit actor Mizuho Yoshida and Iria’s stuntman Akira Ohashi just keep fighting one another.
Yoshida was Legion in Gamera 2 against Ohashi’s Gamera, while in Giant Monsters All-out Attack, Yoshida’s Godzilla fought Ohashi’s Ghidorah.
8) Lilliput has a rare monster suit actress.
While Yumi Kameyama is usually cited as the first stuntwoman to don a kaiju suit for her role as Gyaos in Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, and some fans will recall Jennie Kaplan for her role as Pigmon in Ultraman Powered, Mayumi Aguni has both beat by a few years for her role as the monster Lilliput in the original Zeiram. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like she was able to make much more of a career out of it, as her only other appearance that I’ve found was as additional cast in a Japanese rendition of My Fair Lady.
Oh, and as long as we’re being feminist, please remember that the monster Zeiram is female; remind people to stop misgendering Zeiram.
9) Zeiram’s face is *not* portrayed by an actress, but a giant puppet.
The pale feminine face’s creepy and expressive enough that a lot of people watching the movie assume that’s an actress, but it’s not. Still, one has to wonder if it freaked people out on set. (Amemiya commented that one shooting session lasted 37 hours without sleep, at which point pretty much everyone would have been pretty loopy, right?)
10) Takeshi Koike once drew Zeiram for Animage.
Long before he was famous, the future Redline director leveraged his experience as an animator by taking gigs rendering current live-action movies in anime style for the pages of Animage. While his rendition of Terminator 2 is probably more famous, I have to wonder if his Zeiram illustration sewed any seeds for the eventual Iria OVA.
11) A weird renga ran in Gekkan Afternoon that made Zeiram 2 look quite different.
The piece showed off and described a “Zeiram Queen”, making it appear as the antagonist of the film, when no such creature appeared in the movie; either tantalizing worldbuilding extra backstory or a total misdirect, depending on your point of view.
12) The mercenaries in Zeiram 2 were literally crowdsourced.
For the scene at the beginning of the film where Iria is confronted by a huge group of mercenaries, it would have certainly stressed the designers and costume department to come up with hundreds of original background designs. So, instead, they placed an ad in the modeling magazine B-Club asking cosplayers to audition their original characters for a chance to cameo in the movie. It was quite successful, yielding the great, varied assortment of alien bad guys.
13) Masakazu Katsura is somehow involved in all three major parts of the Zeiram saga.
If you read the Masakazu Katsura retrospective, this is old news, but it bears repeating that Keita Amemiya and manga author Masakazu Katsura are old friends. So naturally Katsura made a cameo as a passerby during the Akihabara scene of the first movie.
Three years later he did some promotional artwork, which wound up being used on the Zeiram 2 laserdisc:
What’s interesting about this is that it renders Iria in his own art style, yet still looks completely different from how he rendered her for the Iria anime around the same time:
I guess she’s younger in the anime, but why the change in hair color?
14) Iria was briefly the face of anime, according to Central Park Media.
People who weren’t around in the mid-90s may not remember just how big a fish Iria was in the small pond that was the North American anime scene at the time. Not only did the OVA frequently run on the SciFi Channel, but CPM had posters made for video stores promoting anime as sort of its own brand, featuring Iria demanding, at gunpoint, that we ask the clerks there about their anime selection.
15) Moon Over Tao is kind of the third Zeiram movie.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: an alien bioweapon monster is loose on the Earth, and it’s up to two human dudes and a sexy alien warrior lady to stop it. Sure, in Moon Over Tao the monster is the red, blood-drinking Makaraga instead of Zeiram, and they never explicitly say that the alien women (all three played by Iria’s actress Yuko Moriyama) are from planet Myce, but it’s easy enough to pretend that Amemiya’s 1997 samurai flick is a prequel, and that Avira could be some sort of ancestor to Iria. Of course, the DVD set released in Japan puts both Zeirams, Moon Over Tao, and Cyber Ninja together in the same package, while even Media Blasters’ “Keita Amemiya Collection” bundled Moon Over Tao with Zeiram 2 at least.
16) The cast of Zeiram cameos in Mikazuki, in bottlecap form.
Further bindingthe Zeiram films to Moon Over Tao was Crowd Toys’ super-limited run of bottlecap figures. Keen-eyed viewers can spot them in a scene in episode 4 of Mikazuki!
17) The Zeiram manga tells an original story.
Often unfairly overlooked, Takashi Shimizu (not that one)’s 1996 Zeiram manga is a cool sequel because it features Iria returning to Earth and fighting Zeiram-based human hybrids that the Earthling government has been developing from the debris she’d left behind three years prior. Iria has a new kid sidekick this time around named Lute, who’s basically the same character that Kei was in the anime. Also, bionic armor.
18) The franchise goes almost full-Metroid with Hyper Iria.
While the influence of the Metroid games on the Zeiram movies, even given their video game origins, is debatable, the 1995 SNES Hyper Iria is a platformer that leans heavily into the so-called “Metroidvania” genre. It’s not a bad game, to boot, and fortunately has a fan translation, though the plot isn’t exactly complicated.
19) Zeiram Zone features all sorts of new monster designs.
Allegedly the final game developed by Megaman creator Akira Kitamura (I can’t find a primary source on that, though), the 1996 PlayStation action game Zeiram Zone features and original story along with a whole host of interesting new enemies for Iria to battle against….of course, they’re kind of blocky polygons, so you might have a better time just appreciating the concept art than looking at them in the gameplay.
20) There was a stage play version in 2007.
The Capsule Corps theater troupe, who have adapted works such as DNA2 and Karakuri Circus for the stage, performed Zeiram the Live seven times in July of 2007. The next year they followed it up with a stage version of Moon Over Tao.
21) There’re numerous options for video releases.
In the US alone, there have been seven releases of Zeiram, six of Zeiram 2, and six of Iria, across various formats. So, which ones should you get? Well, the original Zeiram is getting a 30th anniversary Blu-ray next week from Media Blasters, so, barring disaster, that should be the best version for that film. Their Blu-ray for Zeiram 2 easily tops the quality and features on their previous DVD releases. For Iria it gets more complicated: the in-print release is the Master Collection from Discotek, which has the best picture quality and updated subtitles, but the older 3-disc edition from Media Blasters has concept art and interviews with the voice actors not present on the Discotek release. (Iria is also pretty widely-available streaming, via Midnight Pulp, Tubi, Amazon Prime, etc. Zeiram 2 is also on Midnight Pulp, and I would not be surprised to see the original on there soon.)
22) Some of Iria’s figures are a little different.
Crowd had big plans for their 1997 Zeiram figure line, which only launched with the second film’s Iria and Zeiram 2, but the packaging promised “look for these upcoming characters in the Zeiram line” with pictures of the original movie’s Iria and Zeiram (both of them with and without their capes), Kamiya and Teppei, Fujikuro, and Lilliput. None of those came to be, but we did get clear variant figures, as well as the strangely named Kilyco, described as “Iria’s doppelganger”, who doesn’t appear in any movie.
A decade later, Kaiyodo issued a relatively screen-accurate figure of Zeiram paired with a pale Iria clad in red, black, and bone armor. Described as the “ethnic version”, this take on Iria isn’t really elaborated on any further. Best guess is just that Takayuki Takeya thought she’d be cool that way.
23) Even without movies, new designs continue in model kit form.
The September 2021 issue of Hobby Japan featured a kit with a new design for “Female Zeiram”, which is funny, since as we’ve established, Zeiram has always been female.
24) The series’ props are among the most popular bits of merchandise.
Crowd made a model kit series specifically for replica props from the films. Entries included:
1) Iria’s handgun (first movie version)
2) Iria’s communicator
3) Iria’s save gun, lighter, and grenade
4) the Kamalite, card, and Kannon from Zeiram 2
5) Iria’s handgun (second movie version)
6) Iria’s submachinegun
25) Zeiram 2 won the 1995 Seiun Award.
Winning the award for Best Dramatic Presentation from the oldest SF awards ceremony in Japan is no mean feat… even the Godzilla franchise didn’t manage to pull that off until 2016! Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and Studio Ghibli similarly only have a single win a piece.
26) There are several parallels between Zeiram and Garo.
There was a time when Zeiram was definitively Amemiya’s magnum opus, but now the Garo franchise has eclipsed it by far. In fact, an average Garo episode has a budget roughly the same as the whole first Zeiram movie’s! That said, there are certainly echoes between the premises of the two: both revolve around a monster hunter who operates in secret from the main population of the Earth befriending a regular civilian and dragging them into their crazy hidden monster world. Both have a variety of gadgets, including a disembodied entity that lives on their hand and gives them advice, long flowing clothes as an outer garment, and armor that they can summon. Heck, both even have animated prequels of contested canonicity with character designs by Masakazu Katsura!
27) There’s a bit of a resemblance between Iria and Karin from DNA2.
Masakazu Katsura began working on the DNA2 manga in 1993, between the original Zeiram movie and the Iria OVAs. So, as much as Katsura may have gleaned from tokusatsu Iria for Karin’s look, he then put it forward when he designed Iria for the anime.
28) Amemiya also recycled Iria’s look a bit for Justy from Juskiss.
Released in 1996, the direct-to-video spoof Juskiss was an adaptation of a play about a female alien agent who comes to Earth pursuing a criminal. Naturally, for a character premise this close to Iria, you might as well get Keita Amemiya himself to do the heroine design, so as a result the parody element of this is intensified.
29) The movies may have even influenced the designs in Final Fantasy VII.
We all know that Keita Amemiya was involved in Final Fantasy XIV, which went so far as to have Garo armors available for their characters. But it’s also been suggested that some of the Zeiram designs may have been on the minds of Final Fantasy developers as far back as FFVII in 1997. It’s not as farfetched as it sounds, given that Zeiram 2 was a sizable hit in otaku communities and FFVII designer Tetsuya Nomura was apparently a fan of Takeyuki Takeya, who joined working on the franchise with the next entry, FFVIII.
By the way, for those skeptical souls that don’t think that the franchise could have had an impact on one of the most important video games of all time, please remember that Resident Evil 2’s final boss was originally planned to be named Zeiram.
30) It’s hard not to see parallels between Iria and Pacific Rim: the Black’s Mei as well.
Given that the Pacific Rim franchise is rife with tokusatsu homages, this has got to be one, though I haven’t seen any confirmation from the showrunners.
On that note, let’s kick back and enjoy the rest of Zeiram’s birthday. If you want to celebrate, remember the new Blu-ray release, as well as some new merch coming out of Japan… who knows, if they do numbers, maybe Amemiya will finally make good on his promise of Zeiram 3!
Maser Patrol 