The alien bioweapon Zeiram is hiding out on Earth, where bounty hunters Iria (Yuko Moriyama) and Bob (Masakazu Handa) hope to apprehend it. They do so by rigging a device that will create a Zone – turning an area of a nondescript Japanese town into a deserted alternate reality devoid of people, where Zeiram can be safely pursued and contained. Their battle against Zeiram also includes stand-offs with subsidiary monsters that Zeiram generates by consuming biological material. It also drags in two innocent Earthling electricians, dispatched to find out who is leeching from the power grid in the suburbs, only to discover that it’s space bounty hunters hunting a monster.

Director Keita Amemiya was approached by a producer from Gaga Communications, a company originally formed in 1986 to distribute foreign films in Japan. As confidence rose in the company, it was suggested that they would really like to see something like Amemiya’s earlier film Future Ninja (1988), but preferably costing only 30 million yen [just under $207,000 USD at the time] to make. He came with a game idea, HP9999 (“Hit Point Four Nines”), suggesting a title in which the sole action on screen was two characters, a human protagonist running from an alien pursuer, which could only be killed if it was damaged just shy of ten thousand points.

As it transformed into a film project, Amemiya insisted on a couple of extra characters, each with game-style attributes and quirks, hoping that the differentiation between their personalities would drive dialogue beyond a straightforward fight-or flight narrative. Together, the cast would work to defeat their alien adversary, now called Zeiram, in a battle conceived to stretch over a single night. In search of a way to stage his film in an everyday Japanese location, he came up with the idea of the Zone, which would make it possible to shoot in the same derelict factory area where several rubber-monster TV shows had been produced.

Amemiya’s producers wouldn’t go ahead without a woman to add a bit of sex appeal, causing the writer-director to throw in the iconic heroine Iria as what was initially a reluctant afterthought. To cast the role, he badgered Yuko Moriyama, an actress who had previously been considered for Future Ninja. With a film story that became increasingly like a homage to Aliens as the movie went on, Moriyama was fated to end up in a tank-top inspired by Sigourney Weaver’s.

With money already on the table for Zeiram 2, Amemiya had to admit that it was Iria, not his carefully crafted monster, who was the true star. “The challenge was to shoot Iria as even more beautiful, strong, and cool than the first time,” he told Brett Homenick. “That was our goal. In Zeiram 2 the focus of the movie was on Iria.”

Zeiram 2 (1994) finds Iria back on Earth, in search of a McGuffin device, facing off against a group of bounty hunters – famously recruited by Amemiya through an advert in B-Club magazine, and arriving as untrained actors who brought their own costumes and props. Its relationship to the first film, and justification for the title, comes from the revelation that a tardily arriving combat robot turns out to have a control unit that has been built around another Zeiram bioweapon.

Amemiya had attended an obscure vocational school where he lucked into some high-level classmates… or perhaps, they lucked into him. Designer Katsuya Terada was such a frequent guest at his house that Amemiya eventually made him draw designs for Superhuman Machine Metalder as part of his “rent”. His friend Masakazu Katsura appeared as “Passer By” in Zeiram but at the time was already a famous manga artist, the creator of Video Girl Ai. When the time came to make an animated entry in the Zeiram universe, it was Katsura who snagged the character design job, adding a whole new level of quality to what would become Iria: Zeiram the Animation, featuring actress Aya Hisakawa, not the live-action original’s Moriyama, as the voice of the heroine.

Around the time of the release of Iria: Zeiram the Animation (1994) some bright spark at Newtype magazine thought it would be a nice idea to put the two leading ladies in a room together for one of their famous “cross-talks.” Unfortunately, it came across as a rather frosty exchange. One got the sense on both sides that they were faintly envious – Moriyama of a voice actress who didn’t have to get up before dawn to be fitted for a costume, Hisakawa of an actress who got to put her real face on camera.

The anime version really allowed the Zeiram universe to shine. No more derelict factory settings now – it soared into space for a prequel that showcased Iria’s homeworld in all its glory. Writer-director Tetsuro Amino let out his inner Terry Gilliam, designing fabulous sets and mecha that look like a mad collision between Honneamise and Baron Munchausen. Yoshihiro Yoshikawa’s music works wonders, with the discordant opening song reprised throughout in an orchestral variation.

The Iria animation was both popular and obscure. Representatives for one US anime company went on the record to say that it had proved so popular on pirate video, that they no longer thought there would be a market for it in the US. It took years before it limped out on US video, although these days it is freely available on Amazon Prime, and forms part of MediaOCD’s latest announced Discotek Deep Dive.

Jonathan Clements is the author of Anime: A History.

The various adventures of Iria are available from MediaOCD.