Wow, the Asian Horror forum hasn't had any activity in quite awhile!

Anyhow, I've found myself recently interested in checking out some movies by Takashi Miike lately (the only one of his I've seen is Audition) and after signing up for Netflix not too long ago, I've finally had the chance.

I started with Ichi the Killer and just watched it a couple of nights ago. I personally loved it, it was more or less what I was expecting, but that's a good thing. Tons of violence, gore, dark comedy...good stuff! It's one of those movies where something is just so over the top or fucked up that you can't help but laugh.

And I LOVED Tadanobu Asano as Kakihara. That character was fucking insane and Asano played it perfectly. And it's funny, I've watched a couple of interviews with him on YouTube and he seems like a really normal guy, even saying he found some of the scenes in the movie hard to watch...he sure pulled off the violent psycho part well. I also noticed some similarities between the Kakihara character and Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight (right down to the scars extending from their mouths). I wonder if there was any influence there.