Who Is Noriyoshi Ohrai?
You’ve probably never heard of Noriyoshi Ohrai because they shelved all his promotional illustrations on this side of the Pacific.
All this feels like a personal attack; a grave injustice and a crime against art. Look at this shit:
The story goes that George Lucas saw Noriyoshi Ohrai’s homage to the first Star Wars film in a science fiction magazine and reached out to Ohrai-san personally to ask if he would illustrate the poster for the international release of 1980’s ‘The Empire Strikes Back’.
This is regarded as Noriyoshi Ohri’s ‘big break’, but if you ask me, he never really got one.
After ‘The Empire Strikes Back‘, Ohrai earned only two more official commissions for American films. This is significant because America was the dominant force in international cinema at that time.
In both cases, Ohrai-san’s commissions were used a promotional material in international markets.
Here in the United States, we hardly caught a glimpse of his work.
I’ll admit that the posters we ended up with were often more appropriate to the films they decorated.
They all look dated.
Meanwhile Ohrai-san’s renaissance-level illustrations feel timeless. Under the heat and pressure of his intense focus, the master illustrator compels his crude source material to shimmer like caverns full of perfect crystals.
I want to call his style ‘Neon-Classical’.
The products he advertised for could hardly match the expectations generated by his promotional efforts.
Star Wars (1980)
This is the international promotional poster for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) which Noriyoshi Ohrai produced at the behest of George Lucas.
I haven’t had any success in tracking down the name of the publication where Ohrai’s Star Wars illustrations first appeared. The entry for Noriyoshi Ohrai on the Star Wars wiki says this much:
‘
'He made several posters for the Japanese versions of the three first Star Wars films.
He also made covers for the Japanese editions of the Star Wars mangas in 1997,[and] a gatefold cover for a Japanese magazine in 1999 for the start of the prequel trilogy.'
This is one of the theatrical posters for ‘The Empire Strikes Back‘ used to market the film in the United States. Not that it isn’t good, but you must admit… it isn’t as good.
Beastmaster (1983)
Ohrai’s rendering of The Beastmaster sets a pretty high bar. One the film walks right under.
Like a Frank Franzetta illustration helming an old Conan book, this is a bold testament to what sword and sorcery could be.
I feel this shit in my soul.
Looking at this reminds me of the way it felt to watch ‘The Beastmaster‘ as a four-year-old.
In 1991, people were still talking about this film. I guess they still are, but it isn’t like it was before. This was a cultural moment, one whose reverberations Universal Studios would ride until 1993, when they released the last Beastmaster film,
‘Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxas‘.
Don’t take this as an endorsement. The film was terrible, just like the second installment of the franchise. The point is, there was money in it.
I mean, it’s not bad but… are they even in the same league? Are they even playing the same game?
We are definitely playing the same game. This is advertising, and I would go see this movie, so I guess both posters win.
The Goonies (1985)
‘The Goonies‘. We used to watch this one in Spanish class.
Do people still watch it?
I’m not sure how well it would go over today.
There is some ableism, and more fat jokes than fat kids should be expected to endure with grace.
The asian kid is a real badass. He was always my favorite. But there are definitely some played-up and played-out racial tropes distilled into his characterization, and the whole plot revolves around the theme of child abduction.
In retrospect, this film is kind of toxic.
Like with The Beastmaster, I dont know how to convey what a big deal this film was for us. For kids growing up between 1985 and 1995, this was our ‘Stranger Things‘.
In any given decade since the whole film circus began, a lot of films get made, but only a few of those really ‘make it’.
This one was still going strong in the 90’s.
Genius is difficult to quantify or commodify. Fortunately for Hollywood, genius is a hardly necessary component of profitable cinema, unless you mean the genius of a proven formula.
Fortunately for us, whatever ‘genius’ is, ‘The Goonies’ had it.
Remarkably, there was no sequel. The executive arm knew to leave well enough alone, in this instance.
Caverns and lost pirate treasure, scheming and danger, and going on adventures with the other neighborhood kids.
We all loved this one. I still love this one. It’s fun for kids and teenagers and parents without being weird about it.
Do the neighborhood kids even go on adventures anymore?
I’m ok with it if they don’t. It’s safer inside.
But when did this become an essay about ‘The Goonies’?
We are here to discuss Noriyoshi Ohrai.
This is just how film promotions looked in the United States in that era. Again, not bad but also… hopelessly outclassed.
A lot of what was produced back then looked old even while it was young.
Maybe it’s because everything was designed to interface the burnt raisin aroma of cigarette smoke.
This poster feels like it was meant to hang in rooms where people smoke a lot of cigarettes.
‘The Goonies’ feels like a film made for kids who would grow up to sneak off -campus to smoke cigarettes during lunch hour. I know the kids are still doing that shit, but it’s an aspect of the American Experience the culture used to celebrate.
This is freedom, I guess.
Mad Max 2 (1981)
It is misleading to include ‘Mad Max 2‘ here, as this was an Australian film.
The first and second Mad Max films did extremely well in international markets. For 20 years, 1979’s ‘Mad Max‘ held the title of ‘most profitable film ever produced’ in the Guinness Book of World Records. It was superseded in 1999 by ‘The Blair Witch Project‘.
Maybe I am jaded, a victim of the constant improvement of our society, but if you ask me, Ohrai-san’s poster is much better than either film.
Looking at it, I had to ask myself if there was a direct chain of influence leading from ‘Mad Max’ to Shonen manga ‘The First of The North Star’.
While ‘Mad Max’ was the highest-grossing Australian film of it’s day and is considered responsible for introducing Australian New Wave cinema to the global market, ‘Fist of The North Star’ is one of the best-selling mangas of all time. ‘Fist of The North Star’, debuting in 1983, follows close on the heels of the second ‘Mad Max’ film.
Both are violent post-apocalyptic adventure stories where lone-wolf warriors fight against lunatic bandits and cultists before a backdrop of raw desparation and decaying machinery
Tetsuo Hara, who illustrated Fist of the North Star, drew a promotional piece for Mad Max creator and director George Miller’s 2024 film ‘Furiosa’. Hara-san said in a heart-warming interview with Miller,
The series I drew, Fist of the North Star, took inspirations from your film, Mad Max 2. I never imagined that, 40 years later, I’d be able to meet you, and I am truly grateful to you. It is an honor to be able to meet you.
So, this is the poster they used in American theaters to promote ‘Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior’.
Again, this is pretty typical for it’s place and time. All I can say is…
..Why. Just, why. I’m telling you. The same people that gave us this shit are the same people making us pick between Joe Fucking Biden and Donald Fucking Trump.
Noriyoshi Ohrai's Horoscope
Noriyoshi Ohrai died of pneumonia on October 27, 2015 at the age of 79 .
For all his fifty-three productive years as a master illustrator, I cannot find a single interview.
From wikipedia on down, it’s the same half paragraph acting as the Master’s burial shroud.No word comes down to us as to what he thought about himself or the world, except perhaps what we can glean from the work he did as a commercial illustrator.
We know that he attended Tokyo University School of Art, but didn’t bother to graduate. We know that he didn’t really need to graduate. We know that he is survived by his son, Ohrai Taro, also an artist.
In the absense of humanizing or intimate details about his life and work, I decided to cast his natal chart. Noriyoshi Ohrai, born on November 17, 1936 in the Hyogo prefecture of Akashi, Japan:
(*Note that this is a hypothetical construct. I do not have access to his time of birth, and most hours on this day would have made him a Sagitarrius moon. Moon in Capricorn with a Cancer ascendent just feels right, somehow. Spoken like a true astrologer.)
If the games he illustrated covers for are any indication, he became fascinated by military history in the 90’s. Almost every title listed in his attributions for this category are games of strategic combat based on historical events, with few exceptions.
At glance, it looks as if the artist chose to focus his output on the demands of a Japanese audience.
I don’t recall any of these titles having much of an impact stateside. Nor do I recall any of the nine Godzilla films he did illustrations for in this period.
Did foreign film commisions stop coming to him, or had he lost interest?
Had Ohrai-san become a Japanese nationalist?
If he had, we’ll have to forgive him for it. How many Franko-Germanic auburn-haired and blue-eyed anime heroes would one Japanese man have to sit through before starting to feel like his people were being propagandized into adulating their conquerors?
Add Your Heading Text Here
Looking at the horoscope we drew up, if our birth-time is even accurate,
Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, and the North Node are all in Sagittarius. Well, the moon is one degree Capricorn, but…!
An underdiscussed feature of the Sagittarius is that it is the only sign holding a weapon.
At one time, a sound metric for a nations military strength would have been it’s horses.
Nobody talks about how Sagittarius is the military sign. The one. War and conquest were implicit in designing the centaurs ideogram.
The horse and the bow; these technologies were instrumental in shaping the ancient the ancient world.
Saturn in Pisces in the 9th house. I think Salvador Dali had that same aspect.
If you want your child to do photorealism and pop-psychadelia touched off with a light dusting of fascism, make sure it’s born when Saturn rides with Pisces. Bonus points if Saturn lands in the 9th house!
Another feature that stands out to me is the concentration of planets in the 6th house. Ruled by Mercury and Virgo, this house is poorly understood and relates to animals, animal husbandry, servants and slaves, the digestive tract, disintegration and assimilation. It is beneath the horizon line; it governs the invisible, things which people keep hidden because they are unpleasant or not enjoyable. I wonder if an artist with a heavy sixth house concentration is doomed to obscurity?
