Gutbrain Records

Saturday, 18 November 2006

There's a lot of hype about this new James Bond movie. Some of it is just wrong. I was flipping channels today and heard some guy say that the James Bond series is the longest running film series of all time, with 20 movies in 44 years. Immediately I thought of Godzilla movies: 28 movies in the last 52 years. Then there's the Zatoichi series: 26 films in 27 years all starring Shintaro Katsu as Zatoichi. Throw in Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi and you get 27 films in 41 years. Then there are the Tora-san movies, 48 of them in 26 years! The Guinness Book of World Records acknowledges that the Tora-san series has more movies in it than any other series does.

Godzilla has Bond beat in number of movies and in years — tied in years if you count the 1954 episode of Climax! which adapted Casino Royale, but there's no reason to count that. It's not a movie. There were Zatoichi and Godzilla television series also, so they still win. Zatoichi and Tora-san have the Bond series beat in number of movies but not in years. There are more than twice as many Tora-san movies as Bond movies, which ought to count for something.