After plumbing the depths of most rare major movie release on VHS in Japan, I've developed a sick habit in my quest to rip and present rare movies. You could say I'm doomed to chase the dragon. And what a Dragon I found now, nestled in the internet on Koreans-only message boards: Dragon Ball, straight from Korea's VHS market (well, after a stop in a Japanese video market).
The Korean movie market of the late 80's to mid 90's was chocked full of hilarious and bizarre rip offs. Batman, Ninja Turtles, Robocop, Yu Yu Hakusho - if it was popular in the world or Japan, Korea was mimicking it with kung-fu murder fest films.
They are all the kind of thing 5 year old you would have been mad to have presented to you, like the time my friend's mom rented GORGO instead of Godzilla on sleepover night. I screamed bloody murder in the video store to no effect. Imagine trying to explain why Godzilla was actually really cool to your friend after that. I swear he's cool!!!
Now? These movies are absolutely charming. Too obscure to be devestated by bad memes, they stand as rare, hilarious portals into the treasured past!
The list of Korean movies I have is long and I'm scared to find out how far it goes, so I settled on something pure. Something that couldn't be any more warped than the tons of porn I've seen of it: Dragon Ball.
Wow! It's actually not bad. I mean, it's awful, don't get me wrong, but I loved this tape. Peep the intro with the South Korean VHS rental propaganda: if you watch unofficial tapes, you're going to die like a baby being snatched by a tiger. Wow, OK!
Then it's some weird anime clipshow with a dancing dog in a bow tie. Is this Dragon Ball yet? NO! Keep going.
And here it is, Dragon Ball. It walks a pretty straight line on the first 12 episodes of the show, until the end when it abandons the budget for Oozaru antics and shows us instead Goku murdering a guy in Saiyan armor, a Gundam or Power Rangers rip off, Mai(!), and even other heroes from beloved Korean movies.
Your video tape's authenticity is deathly important, but preserving the rare, almost actually original character like Spark Man from becoming a cheap villain just a few years after his premiere? Not gonna happen. The moral dissonance present here is palpable!
It's while I am in this state of moral confusion that I must find my way to you on the path of honesty and admit: they split the movie into two tapes. I only have the second tape. It's presented as a full movie, but just like the search for Dragon Balls, the hunt for the first tape goes on.
Rest assured this movie has been preserved as well as I could try, and that it finds you now with the best subtitles this movie has ever had, written by a Korean speaker with a professional business (and also a history of loving Dragon Ball)!
In a strange twist of fate, I made a very good Korean national friend in my professional life around the time I got the tape, and he has reviewed the subtitles and said "What is this movie? Why is this movie?" which I think means the subtitles were so good they really conveyed the problem that is Korean Dragon Ball.
Enjoy!
Tomorrow @ Noon! Grab your balls! VIDEOS!
Halfway done with the latest video. Shooting for a Friday release. I keep stopping it to rewatch it. It's my favorite thing so far.
I spent today reviewing the movie part of the latest project. A good time for sure and I feel the review is gonna be a solid thing with which to throw at people.
I started upscaling the old footage I found from my home and it's wild how much gold I caught back then. I dunno, maybe it'd be pase to people these days but it's crazy to me still how I have an afternoon of playing with people in my neighborhood on tape. It still feels like the lottery was won.
I even found clips in the tape of my best friend's family - his dad currently has dementia, his brother died years ago in a car wreck. They were too poor to have a camera, but I found footage of both his dad and brother here. It's fleeting but my god, it will be special to him.
My latest project has gotten more and more personal and more and more involved, thus it is taking longer than expected. This is how I have seen all my projects go, so it's a draw on expectations vs. reality. The smoking sum at the end of the battle of the two is that the project will be better than how the initial idea was pictured.
In a confluence of events, a move in my life has matched up with a project I am making. Like in some strange way the past is gifting me a treasured item to make my present even more powerful. I feel like I'm in a Stephen King novel and a giant turtle just told me it's time to fuck up some vampires with blue flames.
I am moving my parents out of my childhood home to somewhere closer to me. As lucky as I am to have them and to be able to do this, it's incredibly hard to dismantle the house I grew up in, overstayed my welcome in, but assumed I'd one day live in.
However, life has taken me to better places and it's worth more to have my parents nearby than to wonder if one day if I will move back home. Even if I did, I would only do it if it would be 1998 again, my two dogs are alive, my friends are coming over to play Mortal Kombat, and my mom can walk and talk again.
That can never be.
I have to cherish the memory, but I can only go forward. I will try to live a happier life, making sure my life now is good so I have less regret. There is no other choice. I will get old and I want to look back on good things, but also look forward to better things.
Why am I telling you this? Well, in moving I found the old family video camera. And in the video camera case was all of these tapes of my youth... And in those tapes was material that directly illustrates things I am going to be bringing up in my next project.
As I was writing the project's material, I had a feeling these events I wrote about were at least partially filmed, and I had a hunch they were on a certain tape... So when I found the camera, I said I *must* check the tape out... I have, and yeah, it's all there. I didn't fucking lose a single thing.
So it works for my video, it works for my anxious terror over losing my past, and it works for reminding me of what is important.
This is going to be a great project for me because it's going to have retrospective footage in it, something I have not yet done in a video, but my favorite creators have done. I always want to try new things in my videos, and this will do that.
And I think it'll be the special weapon in my next video. If the other special things I have it it aren't equally as cool. What an amazingly lucky person I am. I am so lucky. I am happy.
As I indicated before, I am in the middle of a move, so I will be slower than I am in making stuff... I see this coming out in June. It's going to be great, I'm excited. Just have patience. There's a rare movie on the side if you don't give a shit about the 90's, too! Oh, fuck, wait, it's from the 90's, too... Oh shit - I need to go review that...
Cease your wondering, I come before you with the confidence of a man who started the artwork of the next project, a collab with a local friend that should be a fun experiment; a man who finished a rough draft of subtitles for a RARE movie that has never been subbed, coming SOON! And a man who just discovered a software was causing a lag in ripping rare movies, a software that got kicked in the digital nuts! EAT IT, SATAN. This is art!
Noon tomorrow, an early Earth Day present! The internet barely knows about this one... Let's change that!
Do any of you all have strong memories of Dragon Ball Z? I am in need of fan participation for a project. Please shoot me an email at thatsonyoulol@gmail.com for details on what I need. I'm looking for voice recordings!
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Do any of you all have strong memories of Dragon Ball Z? I am in need of fan participation for a project. Please comment here and I'll leave my email to be contacted at for further instructions.
Manga dubs that traumatize kids; movie reviews that antagonize nerds. That's On Youtube!