Director Gakuryu Ishii, formerly known as Sogo Ishii, burst onto the scene in the 1980s with his string of hi-octane works injected with a heavy dose of punkrock spirit. Set in a future, dystopic Tokyo, Burst City features musical performances of Japanese punk bands including The Roosters, The Rockers, and The Stalin in between scenes of violent protest against the building of a nuclear plant and fights with the greedy yakuza. Many has compared this cult classic with Mad Max, but its diehard anarchistic attitude is pure Ishii and a proverbial kick in the shin to the garish mainstream culture in the midst of Japan’s bubble economy.

Gakuryū Ishii (b. 1957, Japan) is a director and writer and a pioneer of the cyberpunk movement in Japan. Growing up nearby American military bases, he was exposed to American rock music and was involved in the region’s punk rock movement as a teenager. He founded Kyōei-sha (Crazy Film Group) when he was a student at Nihon University and began making his own 8 mm and 16 mm short films with equipment borrowed from the school. Besides Electric Dragon 80.000V, Ishii is known for his works Burst City (1982), Angel Dust (1994), and Labyrinth of Dreams (1997).