Few names in contemporary Japanese cinema carry as loaded a reputation as Takashi Miike. A rare cinema centurion with over 100 productions to his name, Miike has polarised global audiences with everything from brutal psychological horror classics (Audition) and Lynchian gangster parables (Gozu) to big-budget samurai epics (13 Assassins). But in the mid-90s and early 00s, amidst the first murmurings of his international notoriety, Miike was still churning out violent and neurotic crime thrillers in Japan’s legendary straight-to-video market, often at a rate of six or seven features a year. So dominant was his presence in the gaudy field of this ‘V-Cinema’ that a Belgian documentary crowned him the ‘V-Emperor’ in 2024.

Now, Radiance Films has packaged a lesser-seen trio of highlights from Miike’s gruesome, video-focused early career for their first-ever HD editions in the West. This includes his unhinged 1996 high school gangster drama Fudoh: The New Generation, a film that transformed Miike’s career trajectory after it was unexpectedly screened in cinemas and at film festivals, as well as two video-rooted works from one of the director’s most celebrated years: 2002’s gangster epic Agitator and Deadly Outlaw: Rekka.

“I’m delighted that the spotlight is being shone on these works,” Miike tells Dazed during downtime on an unnamed new production. “They are like treasures to me.” With the director fresh from completing work on a thriller that nods back to those heady, low-budget days – Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, a loose sequel to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 gritty neo-noir, hits cinemas later this year – it feels a fitting moment to revisit his heyday in the trenches. Miike looks back on it all with tantalising enthusiasm.

“The freedom gained in exchange for working with a low budget is something irreplaceable to me,” says Miike, pointing to the halcyon days of V-Cinema when he was churning out full features in two or three weeks for the same cost as a TV drama. “Even if the films didn’t reach wide audiences, being able to feel first-hand how I was able to bring shock and joy to the hearts of unconventional film fans has been a great asset.” Few films embody that sentiment as much as Fudoh: The New Generation, a wildly entertaining, violent 1996 manga adaptation that remains one of the director’s personal favourite works.

Fudoh follows a motley crew of school-aged delinquents who juggle homework with the management of a major yakuza operation, and it opens with one of the most OTT gangland killing montages ever put to film. Shotgun pellets plough through toilet cubicle doors. Pre-pubescent kids commit parking lot whackings. A severed head turns up in a box of dry ice. And a mob lord is reduced to a geyser of blood after being poisoned with a chalice of instant coffee. The protagonists include a giant, musclebound exchange student with a “huge eggplant dick”, and a hermaphrodite stripper who conceals a dartgun between her legs. And the cast features an ex-rock star and two champion kickboxers, among others. “It was anything goes,” the director told Radiance Films in a new interview for the release. “There were no limits. And no sense of wondering if something was OK or not.”

You might question the sanity of a filmmaker who shoots scenes of literal children playing football with a decapitated head, but if it hadn’t been for such balls-to-the-wall absurdity, Fudoh might have never escaped the video market it was originally destined for. “These films were made for men living outside Tokyo who would pick something from a video store rental shelf,” Miike told New Wave Video in 2026. (The Australian label release 2001 chamber drama Visitor Q in 2026; further Miike titles are expected to follow.) “But when we assembled the first cut, the producer said ‘this should be in theatres’.” 

“The freedom gained in exchange for working with a low budget is something irreplaceable to me”

Toronto [Film Festival’s] programmers discovered the film thereafter and invited the director over for what was one of his first-ever international festival appearances. “I had almost no promotional materials. I had to go alone. And I couldn’t speak the language,” he continued. “But when the film played in a huge theatre with the volume blasted, the audience erupted. And that experience meant a lot to me.” In subsequent years, Miike productions of a similar ilk would reach the big screen with increasing frequency. 

Like Fudoh, 2002’s Deadly Outlaw: Rekka also received a small cinema release in Japan, and screened at Rotterdam International Film Festival in Europe. The movie announces itself with the image of a man struggling to remove a pair of severed hands from his neck, and builds towards a finale involving a giant rocket launcher, with almost the entire journey set to the Black Sabbath-esque guitar riffs of legendary Japanese heavy rock group Flower Travellin’ Band. At its centre is an excess of heavy sneering and grimacing from the cartoonishly enjoyable Riki Takeuchi, a man widely considered “the king of V-Cinema” at the time, returning after his mullet-haired appearance in Fudoh and in Miike’s extroverted Dead or Alive trilogy.

“When the young Riki Takeuchi first aspired to become an actor, he was discovered by a major talent agency [and given] his debut in a romantic television drama,” Miike recalls of the maverick performer. “His role was that of a handsome and wealthy young man who played the violin. But as soon as the drama ended, he left the agency, declaring, ‘I didn’t come all the way to Tokyo to play some flashy guy messing with a fiddle!’”

He set up his own agency and produced straight-to-video yakuza films thereafter, declaring, ‘I want to be a real man’s man!’, says Miike. Since then, Takeuchi has almost exclusively taken roles portraying violent outlaws of “indomitable spirit”. He isn’t merely acting, the director concludes. “This is a way of life for Riki Takeuchi.”

The writer of Deadly Outlaw: Rekka is similarly fascinating. According to a new Miike interview on the Radiance Films disc, Shigenori Takechi was a real-life former yakuza boss who wrote the script while jailed and in solitary confinement. “He was a scary guy,” Miike says. “[But] he was full of energy and passion.” The director worked with him on films like the time-travelling vampire samurai movie Izo in 2004, as well as Agitator, Miike’s answer to Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honour and Humanity series. 

Agitator depicts a turbulent world of cigars, double-breasted suits and stretch limos, where gang leaders sip wine and smoke cigars in fancy cars before a peroxide-haired loose cannon (played by Miike himself) kicks off a chain of events that leads to all-out war. “It was basically all shot guerrilla style. The police didn’t give [us] permission for any of it,” he tells Radiance Films. “If we wrecked a car, we’d just rent another one. But if the actor got arrested, we couldn’t shoot the next day.” 

“I knew I was pushing my luck,” Miike concludes. “But it was fun filming while looking over my shoulder.”

As sure as VHS has given way to DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming apps, times have changed in Japanese filmmaking, too. Today, the industry cares more about compliance and working conditions than it did during the wild west of 90s video-making. But when Miike steps onto a new set, he still channels the same essence: “Whether I’m making a low-budget film or an international production,” he tells Dazed, “my attitude and approach remain the same. And [because of that,] I can enjoy making film in my own way without fear of failure.”

V-Cinema’s influence is put to good use in Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, Miike confirms, remaining tight-lipped about both this latest thriller and an upcoming Charli xcx-produced slasher starring Charli, Milly Alcock and Norman Reedus. “But if I do fail, I can return to the world of low-budget filmmaking and gain even greater freedom,” he concludes. “It might make me seem like a risky director, but don’t worry – I’m surprisingly flexible and understanding.”

Underworld Chronicles: Three Yakuza Fables by Takashi Miike is released via Radiance Films on March 23