Ishii Gakuryu’s Electric Dragon 80000V (2001) is a short, sharp, high-speed injection of Japanese punk. It is low on sense, high on energy, and thrown at the viewer with the momentum of a freight train. It represents power, and violence, and rage, and noise. At 55 minutes it is only a short feature, but you would not want it to be any longer. This is muscular, gloriously pretentious, pure cinema.

Released back when Ishii was credited as Ishii Sogo, Electric Dragon harks back to his anarchic early features including Crazy Thunder Road (1980) and Burst City (1982). The film is presented in stark black-and-white with a pounding industrial noise soundtrack by Ishii’s own band MACH-1.67. Fast editing and dramatic camera angles accentuate its energy and pace.

Asano Tadanobu, who also had a hand in the writing and design of the film, plays Dragon Eye Morrison. Given electro-shock therapy as a child, Morrison lives as a reptile-focused pet detective and amateur electric guitarist. He also boats impressive electrical powers. Once he learns of the existence of a vigilante with the same power set – the mysterious Thunderbolt Buddha (Nagase Masatoshi) – their confrontation becomes inevitable.

One cannot consider Japanese cyberpunk cinema without acknowledging Ishii as its effective originator. The monochrome, harshly visualised aesthetic of Tsukamoto Shinya’s Tetsuo (1989) reflects Ishii’s earlier films, and they are a likely influence over colleague Fukui Shozin (964 Pinocchio, 1991) as well. With Electric Dragon the presumptive father returns, even while Tsukamoto was stretching into different styles and genres.

The popular saying ‘you can’t go home again’ always comes to mind when an artist revisits old territory. In this case that concern seems unfounded. Ishii has lost none of his style in the intervening two decades, and if anything his broader experience in between helps create a much glossier, visually attractive picture. The shorter duration gives a world of help as well, preventing any opportunity for Morrison’s adventures to outstay their welcome or become boring.

At the same time Ishii directed this frantic mini-feature, he also directed the much longer and more extensively budgeted fantasy Gojoe (2000). Both films, while stylistically poles apart, share the same two lead actors. Electric Dragon therefore seems a side piece to the larger film, a small and personal venture shot as Gojoe was completed. Upon release both film floundered commercially, causing the closure of production house SunCent Cinemaworks.

Thankfully Electric Dragon 80000V has been remastered and released on bluray by UK distributor Third Window Films. It offers international audiences a valuable opportunity to see Ishii’s work in the best condition it’s likely ever been in. Crank up the sound and go with the flow.