Sheimasu
Tentai was no Zenigata Heiji, that’s for sure. Supposedly, the ronin detective
was a champion of deductive reasoning, but it is hard to prove it from the
cheesy clips drawn from his short-lived early 1990s Japanese TV Show. Apparently,
it was subsequently suppressed, for murky, conspiratorial reasons, but enough
bootleg VHS tapes were circulated in Australia to earn it a small but loyal
cosplaying following. The short rise and long fall of Ronin Suirei Tentai is chronicled in Aaron McCann & Dominic
Pearce’s mockumentary, Top Knot Detective
(trailer
here), which
screens at this year’s Abertoir: The International Horror Festival of Wales.
When
the powerful Sutaffu Corporation decided to get into the television production
business, they were unable to sign their first choice of talent, so they
settled for Takashi Takamoto. His primary merit was the Ronin Suirei Tentai treatment he already had ready to go. It was
clumsy and campy, but it still became a minor hit anyway, because the early nineties
were apparently not a golden age of Japanese television.
Ronin Suirei really started to
comparatively take off when former j-pop idol Mia Matsumoto joined the show as Tentai’s
rival and love interest, Saku. Inevitably, Takamoto’s arrogance and hedonism
started to sabotage the show. Yet, it was his scandalous relationship with
Matsumoto that really hastened its demise. However, Takamoto and Tentai would mount
at least one highly unlikely comeback bid.
Although
Takamoto was the showrunner, producer, and star of RST, his absence from Top
Knot, aside from some faux archival interviews, is suspiciously
conspicuous. Indeed, McCann and Pearce slyly and subtly reveal his post-show
fate, implying some pretty sinister machinations went on behind the scenes. In
many ways, Top Knot directly compares
with the sardonic Director’s Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein, but it is not as shy when it comes to revealing its
scandalous secrets.
Too
many cult cinema spoofs think they can get away with building some cheap retro-looking
sequences around a goofy premise and call it a day (looking at you, VelociPastor). However, McCann and Pearce
create a richly detailed backstory for both the fictional show and its ill-fated
cast-members. As Takamoto/Tentai, Toshi Okuzaki truly thrives on ridiculous
situations and humiliating circumstances. Believe it or not, Mayu Iwasaki is
weirdly poignant as Matsumoto/Saku, the sensitive starlet done wrong by the
media and Sutaffu. However, Masa Yamaguchi ultimately steals the picture with
his droll attitude and finely turned pivots as Haruto Kioke and Kurosaki Itto,
Takamoto’s nemesis in real life and on the RST
show.
You
can’t fillet low-budget jidaigeki TV shows with such razor-sharp precision if
you don’t love the genre to begin with. McCann & Pearce earn a lot of
laughs because they really understand what they are spoofing. Yet, they constantly
unwrap more surprises throughout the course of the film. Highly recommended for
cult cinema fans, Top Knot Detective closes
the 2017 Abertoir this Sunday night (11/19), in Wales.
