Viva Chiba

Sonny Chiba. The man. The legend. The fuckin' man. I'm a huge fan of his movies and admire the heck out of him -- he's a consummate entertainer. He can act, he can fight, he can sing -- he's at home in chop-socky exploitation movies, war dramas, yakuza melodramas, serious samurai epics or sweeping genre movies. He can do it all, and has. He always brings his best, expects others to bring their best, but also is loose enough to know when to not take things seriously -- in Street Fighter, I find his character Takuma Tsurugi to be extremely despicable for most of the movie. But then Chiba can turn around and be lighthearted and goof around in something like Yakuza Deka or The Executioner. He's just good at what he does, is dedicated, and a total pro.

Chiba was contracted with Toei, so when he started the Japan Action Club in the early '70s, Toei's productions benefited from it. With a hell of a knack for scouting talent, Chiba wanted to create action stars like him -- people who were physically talented and could do action, yes, but people who could ACT and ENTERTAIN, as well. It's Chiba's ethos that made the Japan Action Club what it is; even before I got into Chiba's movies, I was a big fan of the Japan Action Club through what I saw of their work in tokusatsu alone. You not only had talented performers like Kenji Ohba, Jun'ichi Haruta, Risa Komaki, Mitchi Love, Hiroshi Watari, Sumiko Tanaka, Mai Ooishi, Naomi Morinaga, Hikaru Kurosaki, Akito Oosuga, Yuki Yajima, Koji Unoki, Toshimichi Takahashi, Satoshi Kurihara, Yoshinori Okamoto, Makoto Sumikawa and so on wowing you with their acrobatic action each week, but a whole list of performers who would wow you with their costumed acting each week. (Chiba should also get credit for recognizing women can kick ass and be action stars, too -- shout out to action star Etsuko Shihomi here. Well before Michelle Yeoh won acclaim for doing so, Shihomi was headlining her own ass-kicking adventures.) Not to mention, discovering and putting Hiroyuki Sanada onto the path of superstardom.

The Japan Action Club's always been the best tokusatsu stunt group to me because of the way they're actually performers. They're not just stunt guys who have the suit thrown on; as per Chiba's goal, they're trained to be all around entertainers, actors, performers. When so many people mock the suit-actors in tokusatsu -- dismissing them as "dudes in spandex or rubber" or whatever -- I've always appreciated the talented ones. (I've always been a Suit-Actor-head. There was a time when I'd talk about them and get a "Who cares who's behind the mask" reply. I'd get called names for trying to guess who was behind the new heroes' mask each year. The same thing once happened when it came to toku writers, directors and singers.) What they do is not unlike traditional mask acting. The Japan Action Club raised suit-acting to an art form. Take a look at a lot of the pre-JAC suit acting, or a lot of non-JAC suit actors: you have martial-artists who are barely able to move in costume or, at best, are more interested in looking cool in their pose. Martial-artists who don't know how to act, so they'll just point and nod their head to every word they say. The JAC's giving you a full performance, a realized character grasped by an actor of equal importance to the one portraying the character out of suit. You ever see a crazy action scene in a tokusatsu and wonder about it -- hey, why can these characters, without their powers, just jump from location to location, or flip-around, or jump into trees? That's the dynamic action the JAC brought to toku, a bit of a ninja element.

The JAC changed Toei's tokusatsu shows, made them better, made them something more. And it can all be traced back to Shinichi "Sonny" Chiba. Besides being an impressive talent in his own right and putting out entertaining movies and shows, he changed the landscape of this little corner of TV, the niche of henshin heroes with his inspiration and dedication. He's not only a hero of the screen, an action hero, but a hero of entertainment.

So, I've long wanted an action figure to honor Chiba. In the early '00s, some company came out with a couple of 1/6 figures of two of his characters -- the ninja Hattori Hanzo and the samurai Yagyu Jubei -- but not only are they super expensive, but they look like nutsack. After seeing this dude create a custom figure of Chiba's Street Fighter character out of G.I. Joes, I was inspired to make my own 3.75 inch figure. I prefer that size of figure because of the retro flavor -- if they had made figures of any of Chiba's movies in his heyday, chances are they would be like these classic Kenner style of toy.

I thought it would be cool to make a figure of Sonny Chiba, but not have it tied down to any particular movie or show. I basically just wanted it to evoke Chiba, the action star. Two of my favorite movies of his are The Executioner and The Killing Machine, so I had those in mind, but they're not meant to be either character from that movie. Just...Sonny Chiba, Japan Action Hero. Funko's ReAction line of retro figures offered two of the perfect body types, but the perfect head was a little tricky. Funko didn't have a whole big selection of Asian heads to use -- pretty much only Sulu from Star Trek could have been usable, but he's got a real dopey expression and stupid haircut. Taking inspiration from that Street Fighter custom, I went with a non-Asian head, but one I thought fit, and had an appropriately pissed off expression.

While Chiba had to leave the JAC behind in the early '90s, the spirit and dedication (mostly) still live on. While I fear the state of tokusatsu will eventually snuff out all of the talents the suit-actors can bring (toku heroes now play with toys instead of fight with them, so action scenes have lessened), the Osamu Kaneda-led Japan Action Enterprise, for now, maintains a high quality in suit-acting and stunts. While other action groups have caught on to what makes the JAC/JAE so special and caused them to up their game, the JAC/JAE are often imitated, but never matched. I still think the JAC/JAE are the best of the action groups used in toku. And it's all thanks to Chiba.

Viva Chiba!