This week on The Six Degrees of Kill Bill, we return to Japan to explore a film with deep roots in manga, samurai cinema, and grindhouse remix culture: SHOGUN ASSASSIN.

The film traces its origins back to Kazuo Koike—writer of LADY SNOWBLOOD and creator of his true magnum opus, Lone Wolf & Cub, a sprawling, violent manga epic that ran for six years and nearly 9,000 pages. That manga inspired a series of six Japanese films in the early 1970s, but it wasn’t until 1980 that American audiences truly caught on.

That year, a pair of producers took footage from the first two LONE WOLF & CUB films, dubbed it into English, added a moody synth soundtrack, and released it to U.S. grindhouses as SHOGUN ASSASSIN. The result was a cult hit—and a direct influence on Quentin Tarantino, who featured the film prominently in KILL BILL VOL. 2.

In this episode, we trace the full story: from Koike’s manga, to the original Japanese productions, to the recut cult phenomenon that became SHOGUN ASSASSIN.

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Coming Up:

KILL BILL VOL. 1 & VOL. 2 (2003/4)

Up Next: The Tragedy of Tobe Hooper

Theme Song: "There's Still a Little Bit of Time, If We Hurry and I Mean Hurry" by Slasher Film Festival Strategy.

This episode was written, produced and edited by Gary Horne, Justin Bishop, & Todd Davis.

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