Ask John: What’s the Story on Iria and Zeram?

Question:
I was wondering why you do not have a subtitled version of the Zeram which is attached to the series called Iria. Are there more then 3 tapes to the entire Iria series or is three the last tape? Or is the Zeram tape the last one? Can you please tell me a little bit about this series and where it might be going?

Answer:
Fox home entertainment never released a version of the live-action Zeram movie with its original Japanese audio track and English subtitles in the US. It’s a shame, as I’d love to get a subtitled version of this film myself, but the US VHS, LD and DVD versions of Zeram are all dub only. The Iria anime OAV series was only 6 episodes long. The series was released by CPM on three VHS tapes and on a single DVD. Currently the VHS version of Iria is out of production, although CPM has plans to re-issue many of their subtitled anime tapes for a short time this fall at a reduced price. Besides the live action film and OAV series, there is a second Zeram film titled, simply, Zeram 2, currently only available in Japan, as well as a Zeram Playstation game titled Zeram Zone. The second Zeram movie featured the original cast and crew of the first film, working with a bigger budget than the first film, which resulted in better special effects and more monsters, but Zeram 2 lost some of the wild originality of the first movie. The Playstation game was a 3D side-scrolling beat-um-up game based on the live-action movies. It went out of print in Japan very quickly for good reason (extremely poor control, boring level design and uninspired character models) and is now extremely rare. Given the amount of time that has passed since the release of the Iria OAV series and the Zeram 2 movie, it seems unlikely that we’ll see any new Zeram based films in the future. As a fan of the live-action film, you may want to check out some of director Keita Amemiya’s other live-action films, Mechanical Violator Hakaider and Moon Over Tao, which starred the live-action Iria, Yuko Moriyama and are both available subtitled from Media Blasters.