Ichi | The Killer Internet Archive

This is the Ichi the Killer Digital Remains Vault .

You are watching yourself watch him.

The camera turns a corner.

But the archivist, a cynical 54-year-old named Mara Yuen, has a secret. She’s the only person alive who has watched . The Lost Reel: “Ichi: First Blood” (1998) Before the 2001 Takashi Miike film, before the manga’s English localization, a small Tokyo-based indie studio called Gekkō Productions shot a 72-minute direct-to-VHS adaptation. Only three copies were ever made. One was destroyed in a studio fire. Another was allegedly used as evidence in the unsolved 1999 “Shinjuku Splatter Case” — a yakuza enforcer was found suspended from meat hooks, his face stretched into a rictus grin, a VHS tape stuffed in his mouth. The third copy… ended up in Mara’s hands in 2009, when a junk dealer sold her a box of “damaged Japanese tapes” for $20. ichi the killer internet archive