A Night of Tokusatsu!

Hironobu Hagimae and Takashi Naganuma. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Tonight (Sunday, March 19), I attended another tokusatsu event headlined by two familiar faces: Toho SFX crew member Takashi Naganuma and motorcycle stuntman Hironobu Hagimae.

Takashi Naganuma. Photo by Brett Homenick.

I spent most of the evening with Naganuma-san, who told me he enjoys seeing my reactions to his jokes and wordplay. Well, his jokes are always full of surprises, so I'm sure my reactions are as interesting as he says. Once again, there was very little tokusatsu talk; it was mostly about other things, especially about language (both Japanese and English).

Tonight was one of the few times I accompanied Naganuma-san outside for his smoke break (along with another attendee). After the show, the three of us walked back to the station together. They asked me if I wanted to join them for coffee, but I elected to go home instead. It was fun, but I was pretty exhausted.

Hironobu Hagimae. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Stuntman Hironobu Hagimae was also on hand. I overheard his answer to someone else's question about retakes of motorcycle stunts with explosions. He said that there usually would be and that there could be as many as four takes sometimes. So it wasn't always just a one and done. 

I didn't have much of a chance to talk to Hagimae-san this time. But I did learn that he had some involvement with the motorcycle stunts in The Last Days of Planet Earth (a.k.a. Prophecies of Nostradamus, 1974). Gotta find out more about that someday!

It was another fun, informal event, and I look forward to doing it again soon!