Straight-to-video films, locally called "V Cinema," launched the careers of some of the most important directors of the New Wave of the 1990s, including Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Rokuro Mochizuki.
They were limited to genre pics — yakuza, horror and erotic thrillers being among the most popular — but they were also allowed to subvert or explode genre conventions.
By now, however, the first-generation of V Cinema maestros have moved on — Miike to make mannered, over-stuffed entertainment for the multiplexes, while their replacements are largely journeymen like Daigo Udagawa, the director of the new teen comedy "Sundome (Stop It, You!)."