Kankuro Kudo Master Ranking
the title is pretty self explanatory here, i think
Listen. In 2025 I watched a show called Ikebukuro West Gate Park. Much like when I watched Gozu by Takashi Miike (I’ll rank him later maybe, idk), I watched this show and immediately went, “Oh, well, I have to see everything this guy’s written.” Turns out this guy is pretty prolific and has written a lot but that didn’t deter me and now I’ve watched well over 50 hours of his stuff (if we include rewatches I’m probably pushing 100) and I have to do something with all that. So here’s my ranking of what I’ve seen.
Oh also I’ve included screenshots of my Letterboxd reviews of all these for funsies.
16 - Punk Samurai Slash Down
Punk Samurai Slash Down is maybe the only one on this entire list that I simply do not like. What I wrote in the Letterboxd review pretty much says all I feel about it: It’s really fun for the first 45 minutes and then it just keeps going, keeps getting bigger, keeps getting more absurd, and just completely loses track of anything going on.
This one is sort of a bummer, too, because it’s directed by Gakuryu Ishii, the director of some genuinely fantastic movies (including punk movie legend Burst City), so I was actually looking forward to it. The other reviews on Letterboxd seem to really like this, but I just don’t see it. It’s complete nonsense, super ugly, and quite boring. Really the only thing this movie has going for it is that its lead actor was some minor character in Sion Sono’s 4-hour magnum opus Love Exposure, so I found out about that movie through this movie, which I can at least appreciate.
15 - Too Young to Die!
Similar to Punk Samurai, I ultimately did not enjoy this movie very much, but overall it’s a much better, more stable, clearer movie, and it has Tomoya Nagase, all of which are points that make it definitively better than the previous one. Too Young to Die! is about a high school student who dies in a bus crash right as he’s about to confess his love to his classmate. Also, he’s the only one of his classmates who goes to hell instead of heaven, so he befriends a demon rock band (fronted by the incredible Tomoya Nagase) that helps him repeatedly get reincarnated as various animals so he can try to confess his love before his soul passes on or something.
To be quite honest, the concept of the movie is significantly more fun than the actual movie, and you’ll probably have a better time just imagining what you think the movie might be like than you would actually watching it, but it definitely has its moments. The real core issue, as mentioned in my review, is that this movie should simply not have been longer than 90 minutes, but somehow it’s 125 minutes, which just feels insane. I could not even tell you what they do to fill all that time out because I don’t remember, but let’s just say it’s way too long.
Also, this one is written and directed by Kankuro Kudo, which is not particularly relevant, but he does direct every now and then and I like to point it out because I think it’s fun.
14 - Shinjuku Field Hospital
This is the first TV series on the list, and as you’ll see, TV is probably what he is more known for than movies anyways.
I mostly watched Shinjuku Field Hospital because it is one of Kudo’s most recent projects and I was sick, so it seemed like a fun opportunity to see what he’s up to nowadays. Before watching this, the most recent Kudo project I had seen was Punk Samurai, so my expectations were not particularly high.
So imagine my delight when it was actually quite fun.
I don’t really have much to say about this one, because it’s a pretty standard TV show, but I was really happy to see that it retains a lot of the tone and comedy that makes his early shows so good and, in particular, it is constantly tackling and exploring current, real issues in the same way that IWGP does, which is really cool to see. We’ll cover it more when we get to IWGP, but Kudo has a particular way of exploring social issues in his shows that I find incredibly fun, smart, and inspiring, so I enjoyed seeing it again.
I can’t imagine why you would watch this unless you’re like me and just like to see all of someone’s work, but it’s worth watching if you want to.
13 - Story of My Family!!
This is another 2020s Kankuro Kudo TV show, so it bears a lot of similarities to Shinjuku Field Hospital, but it also is almost an exact rip-off of Tiger and Dragon, an earlier Kankuro Kudo show (and the next one on this list).
It’s at this point that it’s perhaps good to contextualize who Tomoya Nagase is. Primarily, Tomoya Nagase is a musician who has been in a handful of rock bands, but he has also acted quite a bit. Only, he has almost exclusively acted in Kankuro Kudo projects. He’s been in other stuff, too, of course, but if you look at his IMDb, it’s almost half Kudo projects. These two guys just love each other, and it makes sense. Tomoya Nagase nails every role that Kudo throws at him, and this show is no exception.
From what I understand from reading online, Nagase actually retired as an actor sometime in the mid-to-late 2010s, and came out of retirement to be in Story of My Family!!. It’s his only acting credit since 2018’s Recall, so this seems to be accurate. Also, this show was also one of Toshiyuki Nishida’s last roles, so there’s a certain beauty in watching them on screen together. They co-starred in a handful of Kudo projects, including Tiger and Dragon in 2005, and the two of them together in this show are exceptional. This is probably the single best acting performance I’ve ever seen Tomoya Nagase give.
While watching this show, I also remembered back in 2020, how there was a pretty noteworthy discussion in film and TV circles about whether or not projects should be shot with actors wearing masks, out of fear that such projects would become dated as soon as people stopped wearing them. I always thought it was a little dumb, but this show really demonstrates that. This show doesn’t just have characters wearing masks, it actually uses them, and the entire context of COVID, to add to the story. It uses themes of isolation and fear of disease to expand on the character’s struggles. Even in small ways, there are instances where characters will get so worked up about something that their mask starts falling off, and the person they’re arguing with will tell them to put their mask back on as a way of deflecting them.
We’ll get to it more later, but something that makes Kudo’s projects so great is their strong sense of place and time. They’re not afraid to be about people in a specific place at a specific time and examine what that means. This show really makes you realize that discussions about masks “dating” a project only apply if you’re a hack who has no idea what your story’s even about. If you know what story you’re telling, all the little details add up to create something rich and interesting.
12 - Zebraman
Zebraman is the first collaboration between Kudo and famous Japanese V-Cinema director Takashi Miike. It’s an homage to tokusatsu shows, following a man (played by the inimitable Show Aikawa) who is obsessed with an old tokusatsu show called “Zebraman” and one day, while dressed up as Zebraman for fun, discovers that he actually has Zebraman’s powers in the real world.
To be completely honest, the movie is extremely boring. Like with a lot of Miike movies (we do not have time to get into him here), the concept is cool and the movie so extremely well-made, but it never feels like it really goes anywhere particularly interesting. Despite the great acting, gorgeous cinematography, and lovingly-made tokusatsu scenes, there just isn’t a whole lot of meat on the bones of this one. Definitely worth watching if you also are trying to watch as much Kudo and Miike as you possibly can, but it’s not going to blow you away.
11 - Go
One of Kankuro Kudo’s first projects, Go is also one of his most famous. In fact, on Letterboxd, this movie is listed as his most popular project, over even IWGP and Zebraman. Despite how famous and beloved this movie apparently is, it’s shockingly hard to find. It took me almost a full year to find a place I could watch this and now that I finally have, it’s, uh, fine.
Unlike a lot of Kudo projects, which are all over the place, extremely high energy and often quite abstract, Go is just like a normal good movie. And it’s definitely a good movie. As you can see by its placement on this list, it’s tough competition out here, but Go has some of the early Kudo edge that you see with IWGP packaged with an excellent performance from Yosuke Kubozuka and magnificent direction from Isao Yukisada. Sort of similar to Zebraman, I don’t think Go quite manages to stay interesting throughout, but the characters are so lush and interesting that I still had a great time watching it.
10 - Ping Pong
Ping Pong is easily one of the more mainstream Kudo projects and also one of his earliest. It stars Yosuke Kubozuka (of IWGP) and follows him and his friend/ping pong rival as they grow as high school ping pong players competing against each other and other local high school ping pong legends.
The movie is based on a manga and follows a pretty standard sports manga plot structure as such. It has the two rivals on the same team, a mysterious newcomer to the scene, and a brutal antagonist school where all the players have the exact same look. Most reviews for this one on Letterboxd are from people who have previously seen the much more popular anime and are comparing it to that. It seems to be a real hit with the sports anime fujoshi if that means anything to you.
As someone who has not seen the anime or read the manga and who only watched this because I liked the writer, in the grand scheme of Kankuro Kudo projects, this is by far his most normal, which also means it’s one of the most bland, in my opinion.
See, Kankuro Kudo is not a master of dialogue or structure or technique, but is a master of ideas. This guy is at his absolute best when he is just blasting you with ideas left and right, nonstop. As far as ideas go, Ping Pong is pretty light, largely restricted to what I imagine is pulled from the manga. The overall filmmaking is really solid, with great acting and exceptional action sequences, but it’s also nothing you won’t find in any other sports movie. (I haven’t seen Marty Supreme so don’t ask me to compare it to that.)
This will be one of his most palatable movies, without a doubt, but I’m a sicko. Palatable is plainly uninteresting to me.
9 - Tiger and Dragon
As hinted at before, Tiger and Dragon’s plot is almost the same as Story of my Family!!’s, even with the same two lead actors. However, Tiger and Dragon is just so much more fun. This show also stars Jun’ichi Okada, from Kisarazu Cat’s Eye, and let me tell you, Tomoya Nagase and Jun’ichi Okada on screen together is something else. Both of these actors manage to be so funny, have such large movements and physical expressions, and be so serious all at the same time.
In my brain, this show exists as a trilogy with IWGP and Kisarazu Cat’s Eye, because they’re all from roughly the same time period with mostly the same casts and cover mostly the same ideas with the same style. This is definitely the worst of the three of those shows, but that’s a pretty high bar. Tiger and Dragon is still more fun and more interesting than the majority of shows you’ll find.
It’s not really relevant to most people, but I do want to highlight what I mentioned in my review, which is that the Yakuza series is a pretty shameless rip-off of IWGP, only set in Kabukicho, and Tiger and Dragon came out the same year as the first Yakuza game, is also set in Kabukicho, and Tomoya Nagase plays a character almost identical to Kiryu Kazuma. It’s just incredible. Also it’s incredibly upsetting that Tomoya Nagase never played Kiryu because he’s roughly the same age as Kiryu and has the most Kiryu-like mannerisms of any human being I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like I’m watching a Yakuza TV show when I watch this.
8 - Ikebukuro West Gate Park SP
I was sort of debating whether or not to just include the IWGP SP in with the Ikebukuro West Gate Park entry, because it’s more of an extra episode than it is a standalone thing, but because I’ve split the Kisarazu Cat’s Eye movies out separately, I figured I would split out the IWGP special as well.
I won’t explain IWGP here because that will happen later, but what I outline in my review is a pretty solid window into the show’s world.
7 - Yaji and Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims
(In my original write-up I had this ranked 9th, but I rewatched it in the middle of writing this and have come to the conclusion that this movie is incredible and I was wrong the first time.)
Yaji and Kita is about, well, to quote Yaji, men who “love men more than three square meals. Two homos madly in love.” It stars, again, Tomoya Nagase and follows a sort of loosely Wizard of Oz-esque plot as Yaji (Tomoya Nagase) tries to take his boyfriend, Kita, away from their dark lives in Edo so Yaji can leave his wife for Kita and Kita and can try to get his drug addiction under control.
This one is written and directed by Kudo and is a beautiful example of his style. He mixes real, serious character struggles with whimsy and beauty to create a story that is simultaneously outrageously dumb and beautifully serious.
The plot of this movie is incredible and all the characters are really good, but I cannot understate how much of a superstar Tomoya Nagase is in this movie. This is an absolute masterclass by him and every frame he is on screen is infinitely exciting and endlessly funny. I can’t even describe how good he is in this movie, you just need to watch it. Tomoya Nagase is Kankuro Kudo’s muse and this movie is built from the ground up for him to star in.
6 - Brass Knuckle Boys
Not since Punk Samurai and Too Young to Die! have we gotten a good look at Kankuro Kudo’s punk tendencies (although Nihon Series obviously prominently features Kishidan), so enter Brass Knuckle Boys to remind us that this guy is all about that punk spirit.
The film follows a young agent at a record label named Kanna, who discovers a new punk band online. Her boss quickly agrees to let her sign them (definitely not because he thinks they’re cute), and Kanna goes out in search of this thrilling new band, Brass Knuckle Boys. As soon as she finds the first member, though, she discovers that they are not a band of hot young boys but actually a scattered group of middle-aged men, and the video she saw online was an upload of an old recording of their last show, from the ’90s. The tour already booked, though, Kanna has to reunite this group and force them to go on a reunion tour, or else she’ll lose her job over the blunder.
Brass Knuckle Boys is definitely a more normal movie compared to the likes of Yaji and Kita and the KCE movies, but it’s still a pretty wild movie by most traditional standards.
What stands out to me about the movie, though, is how optimistic and excited it is, specifically about punk music. As a young person who likes punk, it’s impossible not to notice how many people in the scene are cranky old men who only ever complain about how punk is dead and the internet killed it. (Conveniently they seem to not notice that they all think punk died either when they turned 30 or when women and queer people started getting into it.) On the contrary, though, this movie embraces those very things. Kanna is a young woman in her 20s who sees a video online as old as she is. Her boss is a gay man who looks fondly on his punk roots. The band regains their popularity because of their online campaigns. It’s so refreshing to watch a newer movie about Punk! Rock that is so positive about the present and excited about all the things that old heads hate and I cannot get enough of it.
5 - Kisarazu Cat’s Eye: Nihon Series
I’m not going to explain Kisarazu Cat’s Eye to you here, just keep reading and we’ll cover it later.
4 - Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City
I pulled some trickery here with this one. In the original order of my list, I had Brass Knuckle Boys here in the 4 spot for a couple of reasons. For starters, the rest of the top-5 is all KCE and IWGP, so I wanted to add in a little variety and show that Kudo’s greatness extends beyond just two TV shows. Secondly, I really like Brass Knuckle Boys. I think it’s an excellent movie.
But when I wrote this list and added in Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City I had to make some hard decisions. Initially I had it behind Yaji and Kita, which I just couldn’t justify. Then, I moved it into the six-spot but the thought of leaving it out of the top-5 felt so painful to me. So I made the difficult decision to swap Zebraman 2 with Brass Knuckle Boys, as much as it pains me to do so.
All that to say that guys, THIS MOVIE FUCKING ROCKS. I can’t even begin to explain to you how incredible Zebraman 2 is. IT HAS ZEBRA QUEEN. The dialogue in this movie is almost complete and total nonsense. Every third sentence is someone talking about "striping evil” as if it makes any sense at all to anyone on Earth. ZEBRA QUEEN KILLS HER RIVAL AND THEN SINGS A LADY GAGA-ESQUE POP SONG AT HER FUNERAL.
Do not think for one second that this movie is going to be even a little bit like the first Zebraman. Zebraman, while fun, was held back by how oddly serious it was about its concept but there is none of that here in Zebraman 2. They just straight up do stuff in this movie. I cannot stress enough that Zebra Queen is in it. Have you ever seen a movie with Zebra Queen before? No? Then you haven’t seen greatness. Plain and simple. This movie is all the greatest aspects of Kankuro Kudo’s writing with all the greatest aspects of Takashi Miike’s direction. Exceptional movie.
3 - Kisarazu Cat’s Eye
Back in the J-drama world, Kisarazu Cats Eye is the third series written by Kudo (I haven’t seen Rocket Boy, sorry) and hello! WOW!
In terms of “plot”, KCE is about a guy, Bussan, in his early 20s, who is told that he has cancer and has six months to live. Despite this, Bussan chooses to live as he always has, playing baseball and drinking beer with his friends. Also they choose to form a thief group, inspired by the anime Cat’s Eye.
Now, let’s be honest: you don’t watch Kisarazu Cat’s Eye for the plot. You watch it because these five boys are your best friends in the whole world and you want nothing more than to spend time with them.
I can’t even begin to sit here and describe to you the experience of Kisarazu Cat’s Eye. It is simply unlike anything else ever created. From a surface view, it probably looks like a pretty standard J-drama, if not a little messy and chaotic, but the characters in this show are all so compelling and so wonderful, there is nothing as magical as watching this show and its two movies.
For years now, I have been a fan of movies, shows, and games that largely center around hanging out and doing casual stuff. I’m a hardcore fan of the Persona games, the Yakuza games, and one of my favorite movies is Linda Linda Linda. I was never quite able to explain what I found so compelling about them, though, until I watched this show.
See, Kisarazu Cat’s Eye is about exactly that. Even though he has cancer, Bussan’s top priorities are winning his next baseball game and seeing the new Show Aikawa movie. He describes this as “living ordinarily” and often tells the characters around him of its importance. To him, the ordinary joys in his life are never more important than when faced with extreme distress and despair.
An undiscerning eye might look at Kisarazu Cat’s Eye and see an unserious show that uses a tragic event as set dressing for its characters to do increasingly stupid, absurd, stuff. In actuality, it is an extremely serious show that constantly, in every moment, treats its characters and topics with extreme care and compassion. The show isn’t about its characters doing stupid stuff, it’s about a bunch of stupid idiots dealing with their grief by sharing their lives with the people around them.
Ultimately, I’ll never be able to explain this concept as well as Kisarazu Cat’s Eye does, so just watch it.
2 - Kisarazu Cat’s Eye: World Series
The movies of Kisarazu Cat’s Eye are both less “movies” in the traditional sense, and more “Kisarazu Cat’s Eye experiences”. The movies don’t really follow any specific structure and plot threads are introduced wildly (though rarely dropped) up to the very end, but there’s not a single moment in either of the movies that doesn’t feel perfectly, exactly right for Kisarazu Cat’s Eye.
The second movie in particular, World Series, is a sublime experience. I am absolutely confident that no one will ever make anything like it ever again.
1 - Ikebukuro West Gate Park
After all the raving about Kisarazu Cat’s Eye, let Ikebukuro West Gate Park’s place ahead of it communicate how exceptional this show is.
IWGP is about a young man named Makoto Majima and his friends who all live and spend their time around the park near the Ikebukuro train station in Tokyo. To keep things brief, instead of explaining the plot, I think it’s easier to simply point out that this show is the obvious inspiration for the Yakuza video games, and each episode’s plotlines read exactly like Yakuza substories do. They cover the same topics in the same tones and the characters are functionally the exact same. If Tomoya Nagase in Tiger and Dragon is the spitting image of Kiryu Kazuma, Tomoya Nagase in IWGP is nothing short of the mold both of them were made from.
I’ve alluded to it earlier, but what stands out about IWGP (and Kudo’s writing in general) is how incredibly compassionate and honest it is. IWGP doesn’t speak in metaphor or euphemism. It represents people as they are and treats each and every one of them with the utmost compassion. Among the featured characters that Makoto helps through the plot are multiple sex workers, an undocumented Muslim immigrant, a trans man, a child with autism, and more. IN 2001!!!! All of these characters are not only infinitely compelling, but funny and at home in the show. Much like KCE, these stories don’t separate the serious from the comedic, they are fully serious and fully comedic at the same time. Every character is allowed to be unique and fun while still experiencing real issues that they can’t always find neat solutions to. The depth of character Kudo affords to them all is simply staggering.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not convinced that Kisarazu Cat’s Eye isn’t the greatest story ever told, with the greatest characters ever created, but I’ve put IWGP above it because while I love KCE with all my soul, IWGP is, in addition to everything I’ve already said, extremely accessible. I think genuinely just about anyone could put this show on and immediately fall in love with it. Kisarazu Cat’s Eye is absurd and wild in a way that probably needs a certain kind of person to appreciate, but IWGP is effortlessly charismatic and wonderful.
Also, IWGP is one of the earliest Kudo projects and a perfect introduction to his style. If I had to recommend a watching order, I would say IWGP, Kisarazu Cat’s Eye, then Tiger and Dragon, sprinkling in Brass Knuckle Boys and Yaji and Kita wherever you please.