“Six-String Samurai” (シックス・ストリング・サムライ), Very Rare Original Japanese First-Release Movie Poster 1999, Atsushi Kaneko Artwork, B2 Size (51 × 73 cm) S262

This is an original Japanese B2 theatrical poster produced for the first Japanese release of Lance Mungia’s cult film Six-String Samurai (シックス・ストリング・サムライ) in 1999, starring Jeffrey Falcon as Buddy and Justin McGuire as The Kid.

Produced in the United States in 1998, the film received its Japanese theatrical release on 26 March 1999, distributed by Pony Canyon. Jeffrey Falcon also co-wrote the screenplay and served as the film’s action director, while the soundtrack prominently features The Red Elvises.

This exceptionally distinctive Japanese campaign artwork was created by acclaimed manga artist and illustrator Atsushi Kaneko (カネコアツシ). Japanese contemporary material confirms Kaneko as one of the artists commissioned to create original illustrations for the Japanese release, and this particular design is specifically identified as his work.

Film background

Six-String Samurai is one of the most eccentric American independent films of the late 1990s—a delirious combination of post-apocalyptic science fiction, samurai cinema, kung-fu action, rockabilly, Western imagery and road movie.

Its alternate history begins in 1957, when the Soviet Union launches a nuclear attack on the United States. Decades later, much of America has become a wasteland and the last great refuge of freedom is Lost Vegas, ruled for forty years by the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, Elvis.

When the King dies, musicians and warriors from across the wasteland begin travelling toward Lost Vegas, each hoping to claim the throne.

Among them is Buddy, played by Jeffrey Falcon: a horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing guitarist and swordsman whose appearance deliberately evokes Buddy Holly, but whose fighting ability belongs to the world of martial-arts cinema.

During his journey he reluctantly becomes responsible for an orphaned child, The Kid, and the pair encounter an increasingly surreal collection of assassins, rival musicians, Soviet forces and wasteland gangs.

Meanwhile, the sinister guitarist Death, played by Stephane Gauger, is also making his way toward Lost Vegas.

The result is a film that gleefully collapses genre boundaries. A contemporary profile described it as a post-apocalyptic samurai-Western-kung-fu-rock ’n’ roll road movie, which remains a remarkably accurate summary.

Atsushi Kaneko artwork

The Japanese poster abandons the conventional photographic campaign almost entirely in favour of a wildly expressive original illustration by Atsushi Kaneko.

Kaneko’s drawing transforms the film into something resembling a collision between an underground comic, punk-rock gig poster and exploitation-movie one-sheet.

The background is an almost violently saturated blood-red field, against which every element appears to erupt toward the viewer.

At the centre is Buddy, rendered as a screaming, bespectacled rockabilly warrior in black tuxedo and bow tie.

His expression is deliberately exaggerated—eyes wide, mouth open, teeth bared—as he grips a huge samurai sword diagonally across the composition.

The image immediately communicates the film’s fundamental joke:

a rock ’n’ roll guitarist who behaves like a wandering samurai.

The Kid

Behind Buddy is a huge yellow portrait of The Kid, similarly distorted into an expression of panic or amazement.

Rather than rendering the characters with conventional realism, Kaneko amplifies their features into almost grotesque comic-book caricatures.

That visual language is perfectly suited to the film, which constantly shifts between sincerity, absurdity and highly stylised genre parody.

Death

At upper right looms the film’s principal adversary, Death.

His skull-like face emerges beneath an enormous black top hat, surrounded by curling pink flames.

The imagery turns the character into something closer to a heavy-metal album mascot than a conventional film villain.

Death’s position above Buddy also gives the composition a strong vertical hierarchy: Buddy and The Kid dominate the human foreground, while the supernatural threat of Death hangs above them.

Rock ’n’ roll and communism

One of the poster’s most inspired details appears near the top centre.

A large guitar neck rises upward through the image, intersected by a bright yellow hammer-and-sickle motif.

This single visual gag neatly condenses the film’s entire alternate-history mythology: Soviet occupation colliding with American rock ’n’ roll culture.

The poster does not attempt to explain the joke. Instead, Kaneko simply throws the symbols together with the same manic confidence as the film itself.

The wasteland

Across the lower half, the illustration becomes even denser.

A group of bald, uniformed figures carrying bags marches toward the foreground, while armed silhouettes and Soviet imagery appear behind them.

At lower right, Buddy’s battered automobile charges forward through a spectacular mass of yellow smoke, debris and mechanical wreckage.

The entire composition is surrounded by hot-pink flames, creating the feeling that the characters are moving through a world permanently on the verge of combustion.

Rather than separating individual narrative episodes, the poster compresses the entire mythology of the film into one explosive graphic field.

Typography

The title:

SIX-STRING SAMURAI

dominates the upper-left corner in huge, irregular pink lettering edged in black.

The letters have a deliberately hand-drawn, almost horror-comic quality, with drips and distortions that make the typography feel physically integrated into Kaneko’s illustration.

There is almost no conventional studio polish.

Instead, the design embraces the roughness and visual excess associated with alternative comics, punk graphics and cult exploitation cinema.

The lower yellow border carries the Japanese title:

「シックス・ストリング・サムライ」

along with the principal production information.

It identifies Lance Mungia’s feature directorial debut, Jeffrey Falcon’s roles in the screenplay, starring performance and action direction, and music by The Red Elvises. It also records the film as a 1998 American production, 35mm, colour, Vista format, 91 minutes, with Japanese distribution by Pony Canyon.

Japanese cult-film campaign

The Japanese release of Six-String Samurai received an unusually creative illustrated campaign.

Rather than simply reproducing American studio artwork, the Japanese promotion commissioned distinctive imagery from artists including Atsushi Kaneko, Kotobuki Shiriagari and Hideyasu Moto, giving the release a visual identity rooted directly in Japan’s alternative illustration and manga culture.

This Kaneko B2 is arguably the most immediately aggressive of those approaches.

It does not attempt to make the film look respectable or conventional.

Instead, it celebrates precisely what makes Six-String Samurai unusual: samurai swords, Buddy Holly styling, Soviet iconography, rockabilly, post-apocalyptic violence and underground-comic absurdity.

For collectors of Japanese alternative graphic design as well as cult cinema, that makes the poster considerably more interesting than a straightforward adaptation of the international campaign.

Condition

Excellent+ original condition overall.

Please review all photographs carefully; they show the exact poster for sale, front and reverse.

This is an original Japanese B2 theatrical poster from the film’s 1999 first-release campaign, featuring original Japanese artwork by Atsushi Kaneko.

It is not a reproduction or modern reprint.

It is approximately 27 years old.

Certificate of Authenticity included.

Code: S262