If you're craving an alternative to the self-important bluster of Hollywood's never-ending superhero pageant, there's no need to wait until "Deadpool" opens in Japanese cinemas next month. For a quick fix of trashy comic-book irreverence, this homegrown product should do the trick nicely.
Keishu Ando's manga series "Kyukyoku!! Hentai Kamen" ("Ultimate!! Pervert Mask"), the tale of a schoolboy who transforms into a steroidal superhero by pulling a pair of women's panties over his head, gained instant cult status when it appeared in Shonen Jump in the early 1990s.
Japan's mainstream media has become considerably less indulgent of such kinkiness during the intervening decades, though, which made Ando's creation seem an unlikely candidate for the big-screen treatment. Commercial expectations for the first "Hentai Kamen" movie in 2013 (released overseas as "HK: Forbidden Super Hero") were so low that it initially opened in just a dozen cinemas nationwide, only to become a surprise sleeper hit.