Caper In The Castro Is A Legendary Video Game, Not Because Legions Of Die-hard Fans Continue To Play

The Golden Bat is Here (紙芝居昭和史 黄金バットがやって来る) [Lost 1972 Film] : Toho Studios : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A 1972 Toho “comedy” film, long considered lost, that depicts the rise and fall of the kamishibai (paper theatre) storytellers that were popular throughout Japan.  Unfortunately, kamishibai was done in by the advent of television, although a few practitioners still keep the art form alive to this day.

The story of Golden Bat, arguably kamishibai’s biggest star, is interwoven amongst the tale of the men who wandered the streets entertaining children.

This film was previously considered lost, in that no copies seemed to exist outside of Toho’s vaults.  For whatever reason, the film has never been released on home video.

Luckily, last month (February, 2025) Maxwell Breese released a copy he found on the Lost Media Wiki site, and now we can all watch it ourselves.

It helps if you’re fluent in Japanese, though, as the film is not dubbed or subtitled.

Here’s a quick snippet featuring my man, Golden Bat, as he originally appeared, battling his arch nemesis Nazo:

https://youtu.be/mPhpdQGy36E?si=w4BR774WgPhLJcAf

LOOK, IT’S LITERALLY EVERYONE

I’ve already posted a few of these designs, but just for simplicity’s sake: HERE ARE ALL OF THE REDESIGNS for Golden Bat: Reimagined!

You might notice an extra character you don’t recognize: Priestess Amelia is a cult leader character created by @babblingbrookebutler for the sake of fleshing out the story some, and, well…

…she kinda ties directly into Mr. Dark Bat up there.  If he looks like Golden Bat, gone Berserk Mode… good.

And yes, even Penny got a redesign.  *mutters something about Penny only showing up in 2 episodes and is really just a minor character at best*

Anyhoot, this character design livestream was an absolute delight, and I can’t thank everybody who came out to it enough for all of your wonderful and helpful input!  It’s been a blast, everyone, and I hope y’all enjoy the designs!

just learned about golden bat, and my dad and i watched the 1966 movie recently. super excited to find your blog and see it’s active!!

glad you enjoyed the movie! it's a fun goofy time. I try to be as active as I can but with the series being more well known in Japan all I can do is keep an eye out for fanart to reblog, keep an eye on the fan sub being worked on for a new episode, see if there's any new news that's made it to the US, or come up with my own ideas. there's a lot I'd like to do in the future but it's things I don't think would happen for a long while. but perhaps some day.

the real challenge of adulthood that no one tells you about in advance is how many goddamn pieces of paper you have to keep up with that are never important until they are suddenly VERY important

gothic literature

Hackers...

Hi, been a hot minute, but

its more of an instagram fiasco, however it wouldn’t hurt to post it here too.

All of this, for bitcoin and money. Greed is truly a horrid thing. Below are screenshots of this guys cashapp and the fake post he made on my friends account. I may be too hopeful, but I’m hoping they get caught and are also charged with identity theft. Pretending to be my friend to hack others he knows and those who follow him… I’m heated.

Be safe, guys.

Another thing, please just block the account if you have an instagram. My bud is in the process of getting it back, but all we can do to stop this guy in their tracks is block the account anywhere it goes.

I love that Tolkien took a paragraph aside in Bree, after all the horses were run off, just to let us know that A) Merry’s ponies were going to be fine and B) Mr. Butterbur would not, in the long run, suffer financially by the incident. He understood what was really important.