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.
This is a grave injustice, 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 the second installment in the Star Wars trilogy, 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back.
Commentators regard this as Noriyoshi Ohrai’s ‘big break’, but if you ask me, he never really got one.
After ‘The Empire Strikes Back‘, Noriyoshi Ohrai only accepted two more commissions doing illustrations for American films— significant because America via Hollywood was the dominant force in international cinema at that time.
Here in the United States, we hardly caught a glimpse of his work. 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 have an air of timelessness.
Under the heat and pressure of his intense focus, the master illustrator compels his crude source material to shimmer. I want to call his style ‘Neon-Classical’.
The products he advertised for could hardly match the expectations generated by his promotional efforts, and maybe that was the beef American distributors had with his work—
Ohrai smoked too tough.
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)
Like a Frank Franzetta illustration helming an old Conan book, Ohrai’s visual copy for The Beastmaster was a bold testament to what sword and sorcery could be. His rendering set a high bar— one the film walked right under.
Looking at this poster reminds me of what it felt like to watch ‘The Beastmaster‘ as a four-year-old (hint: it was fucking awesome).
In 1991, people were still talking about The Beastmaster. I guess they still are, but not like before.
It might be hard to understand at this distance, but this film was a cultural moment. It generated a wave 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; it was a terrible film. The point is, there was enough money in the franchise that it could be milked for an entire decade
Here’s what the American theater-going audience saw:
I mean, it’s not bad but… are these posters even in the same league? Are they even playing the same game?
Of course they are. This is advertising, and I would go see both movies
… so I guess they both 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 a lot of ableism, and more fat jokes than fat kids should have ever been expected to endure.
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 character. Oh, and the whole film revolves around themes of child abuse and child abduction.
In retrospect, this film is extremely toxic.
(UPDATE: I found a copy at the thrift store and it’s so much worse than I remembered.)
Like with The Beastmaster, I dont know how to convey what a big deal this film was.
For kids growing up between 1985 and 1995, this was our ‘Stranger Things‘— a gentle way of saying ‘the world has come a long way since then’. For all it’s flaws, though, this one was still going strong a decade later— just like The Beastmaster.
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.
Whatever qualifies as ‘genius’ in Hollywood, ‘The Goonies’ had it in spades. It’s shocking that there was never a sequel. A rare instance of the executive arm knowing to leave well enough alone?
Caverns and lost pirate treasure, going on adventures with the other neighborhood kids into a labyrinth of scheming and danger? We all loved this one. It was fun for kids and teenagers and parents without being weird about it.
(UPDATE: It was extremely fucking weird about it. The way the word ‘goon’ is used in 2025 is in line with the subtext of this film. Brought to you by the twimsted mind of Steven Speilberg…)
Do the neighborhood kids even go on adventures anymore? It’s ok if they dont. As the action of The Goonies suggests, it’s much 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, it’s not bad, but it’s also hopelessly outclassed by Noriyoshi Ohrai’s visual copy. A lot of what was produced back then was like the people— it looked old even while young.
Maybe it’s because everything was designed to interface the burnt raisin aroma of cigarette smoke. This poster definitely feels like it was meant to hang in rooms where people smoke a lot of cigarettes. I wonder if you could still smoke cigarettes inside the theater in 1985.
The Goonies was a film made for kids who would grow up to sneak off -campus to smoke cigarettes during lunch hour— which we did. 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: The Road Warrior‘ here. It was an Australian film by an Australian director, but it made a huge splash stateside— and world-wide.
The first and second Mad Max films both did extremely well in international markets.1979’s ‘Mad Max‘ held the title of ‘most profitable film ever produced’ in the Guinness Book of World Records for twenty years after it’s release. It was only superseded in 1999 by the famously low-budget ‘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 the Shonen manga series 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.
Debuting in 1983, Fist of the North Star followed close on the heels of the second ‘Mad Max’ film chronologically, visually, and thematically. Both are violent post-apocalyptic adventure stories where lone-wolf warriors fight against lunatic bandits and cultists against a backdrop of raw desparation and decaying machinery.
Tetsuo Hara, writer and illustrator of Fist of the North Star, created a promotional piece for Mad Max creator and director George Miller’s 2024 film ‘Furiosa’, after which 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.
Above is Tetsuo Hara pictured during a remote interview with Mad Max creator George Miller. Miller is holding an autographed copy of Hara’s promotional illustration for the release of Mad Max: Furiosa (2024).
Below is the poster they used in American theaters to promote Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.
… and that’s it. Those are the American Films that Noriyoshi Ohrai produced illustrations for. That doesn’t mean he stopped producing illustrations; the master illustrator worked until he died in 2015 at the age of 79.
Instead of catering to the utterly baffling tastes of the American public, Ohrai appears to have shifted his focus to distinctly Japanese franchises after 1985—
Around this time, Ohrai’s skills were also pressed into the service of a burgeoning video game industry. With few exceptions, he seems to have exercised a strong preference for titles relating to Japanese military history:
Between the international poster for 1985’s The Goonies and the artists death in 2015, the only franchise he produced illustrations for that would be immediately recognizable to the average American consumer was video game series Metal Gear Solid:
Was Ohrai merely disillusioned with the wiles of the international market, or had he abandoned it as a staunch Japanese Nationalist?
After all, how many blue-eyed, auburn-haired anime protagonists could one Japanese man be expected to stomach before toleration turned to outrage at the insidious colonial tactics visited upon a once-proud nation by an occupying force?
We advance the question while having little to put toward answering it. There are no English language interviews with the artist available for us to consult.
There aren’t any interviews at all, from the looks of it— so we decided to cast his horoscope.
…Check out Noriyoshi Ohrai’s Natal Horoscope?
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