There's a pervasive urban legend online that William Gibson went to see Blade Runner when he was working on his seminal Japanophile cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer. And Gibson ran out of the theater a few minutes into the movie (or in some versions, just walked out) because he was so shocked by the similarites between that movie's vision of the future and the one depicted in his novel. (In some versions, Gibson is scared that Ridley Scott and co. are actually in his head.)

Gibson is quoted as saying:

Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns - all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information - said, ‘You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town.' And it was. It so evidently was.

Back in the early 1980s, Japan's ascendance seemed assured — there were a host of business books claiming that Japan had lost World War II, but won the peace through superior economic policies. Books like The Enigma Of Japanese Power by Karel Van Wolferen became unlikely bestsellers. Meanwhile, Japanese politicians like Ishihara Shintaro started flexing their muscles — Ishihara made waves with a book called No To Ieru Nihon, or The Japan That Can Say No (to the United States.)

But also, Japanese technology was clearly better, and Japanese pop culture looked cool. In the early 1980s, U.S. television started being flooded with anime programs like Robotech and Star Blazers0, and U.S. comics fans started discovering Manga. But the one-two punch of Blade Runner and Neuromancer was what settled it: for the next decade or so, Japan was how we viewed the future.

And given that the 1980s was a very neon-happy time in general, and the U.S. viewed Japanese cities as being splashy and full of neon lights, it made sense that Japanese influences crept into everything. Total Recall, for example, features Arnold Schwarzenegger running around a neon-drenched future cityscape, especially once he goes to Mars. It's not specifically Japanese, but it feels Japan-influenced.

In Back To The Future 2, Future Biff works for a mysterious Japanese businessman known as Mr. Fujitsu, and it's hinted that by 2015, Japan dominates the world's economy. (The film-makers pretty much come out and say this on the DVD commentary.)

In the Max Headroom TV series, the world is dominated by the ZikZak Corporation, which despite its non-Japanese-sounding name, is actually a Japanese company. And the dystopian cityscape (around a minute in) looks very Blade Runner inspired:

In the early 1990s, Marvel launched its futuristic "2099" titles, with Rampage 2099 and Spider-Man 2099 among others. And one of the things that was futuristic and different about the world of 2099 was the fact that Tony Stark's company, Stark Industries, had turned Japanese, and was now known as Stark-Fujikawa.

And the U.S. got its own home-grown anime program with 1991's Aeon Flux, airing on MTV:


Around that same time, we started to see a lot more Asian influences in animation, including shows like Batman: The Animated Series.

To some extent, any movie with "virtual reality" or "cyberpunk" influences kept bringing back a Japanophile vibe, like 1995's Virtuosity, which had one of its crucial scenes between Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe's virtual killer take place in a sushi bar:

And the politically correct, scrubbed San Angeles of 1995's Demolition Man was a blend of L.A. and Tokyo, in both its buildings and its fashions:

Famously, the cyberpunk trainwreck Johnny Mnemonic featured a whole slew of scenes and subplots that took place in Japan, revolving around the character of Mr. Takahashi, played by popular actor Takeshi Kitano. These scenes are still only available on the Japanese DVD:

Sadly, Japan's economic hegemony ran out of juice in the early 1990s, when their real-estate bubble burst (sound familiar?) and the country spent an entire "lost decade" mired in stagnation. The vision of Japan as future economic uberpower was replaced by a creeping irrelevance — but Japanese pop culture remained as influential as ever, maybe even more than during the powerhouse days.

And because nothing in science fiction ever really goes away, there are still plenty of examples of Japanophile influences in recent SF. Take Steven Spielberg's A.I., whose future city looks a lot like Tokyo. (Skip to 4:45 in this video):

The shiny metropolis of Coruscant has a very Neo Tokyo vibe, in Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones (go to around 2:40 in this video):

When we visit a future Batman, who's trained by an aging Bruce Wayne to wear a Bat-exoskeleton, in Batman Beyond, the future Gotham is covered with Japanese kanji:

Joss Whedon made waves with his show Firefly and the sequel movie Serenity, which take place in a sort of vaguely pan-Asian future where everybody peppers his/her speech with a kind of pidgin Chinese. (Although there are no actual Asian people around.) And this Fruity Oaty Bars commercial has a pronounced anime vibe:

And of course, Aeon Flux got its own live-action movie a few years ago:

Top image: Amazing Neon vista from Osaka, by PFC on Flickr.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Actually, there's a pretty movie-centric feel to most of this week's new launches or noteworthy titles; even the non-obvious ones (Detective Comics #853 is finally released, only two months late, finishing up the Neil Gaiman two-part storyline "Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?") have some kind of cross-media connection (It's Batman).

Admittedly, you may have to squint to see that connection with Marvel's new series Skrull Kill Krew, but come on; alien invaders and biker gangs. That's got to have been a movie at some time, right?

Marvel's also launching Fantastic Force, a spin-off from Fantastic Four written by Doctor Who director Joe Aherne. And Marvel is making up for Gambit Classic Volume 1 - I swear, that title is taunting me by including the word "Classic" - by also releasing collections of Warren Ellis' short Wolverine run as Wolverine: Not Dead Yet and the first volume of the enjoyable-if-blindingly-colored Spider-Man 2099, which introduces you to the Spider-Man of the future. And if you're rich, there's a hardcover omnibus of the first 31 issues of the original X-Men run, for "just" $99.99.

But for the most part, the releases you'll want to look out for are all tied into nostalgia and TV or movies; Dark Horse's wonderful Star Wars: Dark Times series returns, with the first part of Blue Harvest (I'll allow you a moment to get over the geeky perfection of the title), while Boom! Studios has Farscape Script Book, letting fans see Rockne S. O'Bannon's original script and plans for the comic continuation of the beloved TV show.

IDW go for the gold with two collections - GI Joe: The Best of Larry Hama (celebrating the comic writer who shaped the franchise so much during the '80s) and Terminator Salvation: The Movie Prequel, letting you see just what made Christian Bale's John Connor so screwed up (Clue: Everything in his life up until that point).

Dynamite Entertainment, meanwhile, are putting out a collection of the unlikely Army of Darkness/Xena Warrior Princess crossover series, as well as their Battlestar Galactica: Adama flashback book (And, finally, the Final Five comic that was supposed to come out last week), but that's only a distraction from the true prize of the week - Their 25-cent preview of the new Buck Rogers series launching this summer. At that price, how can you resist?

So, come tomorrow - Thursday if you're in the UK (And potentially the rest of Europe?) - strap on that jetpack and fly down to your local comic book store to demand your cheap future. And, if that doesn't do it for you, you can always check out the complete shipping list of what's making it to stores this week and find something else to spend your money on, instead. Just remember to turn that jetpack pack off before entering the store. Comics are flammable, after all.

Here are all the works of science fiction (so far) which have featured a drug named Rapture:

Odyssey 5

In the episode "Rapture," a scuzzy teenager named Justin Deckard manages to get a formula for a super-drug from the alien Sentients, who live on the Internet (sort of.) The drug links everyone who uses it telepathically, into a sort of gestalt, and gives you psionic powers that let you give other people nosebleeds and eyebleeds. Justin wants to use it to turn all his "friends" into a "hard drive" to give his own brain extra processing power. But it ends up making weird veins splotch out on his face, and then he has a druggy freakout and drives off a cliff. See clip above for how awesome a Rapture rave can be.

Spider-Man 2099:

Miguel O'Hara wants to quit his job at Alchemax, the evil company in the year 2099. But his boss (and secretly his dad) Tyler Stone doesn't want him to quit — so at Miguel's farewell dinner, Tyler spikes his drink with Rapture, a drug that bonds with your DNA to make you addicted for life. I forget exactly what the high from Rapture looks like, but it didn't seem that fun when I read this comic a decade ago — just sort of trippy. In any case, Alchemax is the only supplier of Rapture, so Miguel has to stay working for them or suffer horrible, unending withdrawal pains. Miguel instead decides to restore his DNA from a stored version, but his DNA gets mixed with spider DNA — turning him into Spider-Man.

Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster:

In the not-too-distant future, Sagramanda is an Indian city of 100 million people — and it's plagued by a serial killer named Jena Chalmette, who is high on the drug Rapture-4. Writes Foster: "It sharply enhanced her emotions and heightened her perceptions. She believed it also altered the reality around her." It's also referred to as "Full-on Shakti," and Foster mentions that it causes visions.

City of Heroes

This happy MMORPG was terrorized by a new designer drug named Rapture that made its users "moody" and even more violent than usual. The drug also gives users greater strength and endurance and changes their body chemistry for some unknown, yet sinister, purpose. MAGI Investigators finally tracked down a drug lab in Skyway City, where it turned out "renegade Trolls" had been manufacturing the drug. The drug is a derivative of another substance known as Rapture X. Dood!

Violent New Breed (1996)

This is sort of a horror/fantasy movie, except that it's set in a dystopian future, and the demons in the film are dabbling in pharmacology. Says IMBD:

Demons have invaded the streets with a drug called Rapture (the ultimate high) that has half the human population hooked. I found this social commentary very refreshing and honest, as opposed to other films about addiction where we are asked over and over again to feel sorry for the addict. The drug is used to cloud their minds so the demons can use them as slaves and can use the women as vessels to impregnate and carry more demons, only these are half-breeds - demon and human mixed. Thus creating a "new breed" to control the planet.

"Into The Black" by Ally Blue

A gritty slash fic story set in a dystopian space colony. A gangster's mistress has been cheated of ten grams of the awesome drug Rapture, and there will be hell to pay. So what does the drug do? Not sure. Here's the description: "Rapture was horribly addictive and expensive, but was nevertheless wildly popular on the space stations orbiting the Outer Planets, where the air reeked of tight-packed humanity and despair and everyone wanted an escape, however temporary."

The real-life drug

And finally, there's a dietary supplement known as Piperazine — but the street name is Rapture. It causes psychotic episodes in some people who are unlucky enough to try it. It's a stimulant, but even when it works properly it's not that great, according to one guy who tried it:

I chose Rapture, which promised me "an intense mind and body sensory experience". Starting with one pill (just in case my head imploded, or a giant ringworm shot out of my stomach), I began a merry game of Circle Of Death. After about an hour I was still yawning and didn't feel much like going out. So I had another pill. One whole hour later there was still no effect, so I took the last of my recommended dose... At first I thought the pills were utter crap, as I yawned my way into the Outback (I'd had a long drive that day), but after a backdraft and some cheap chocolate mudshakes I realized that I was actually getting drunk backwards. I know that makes no sense.

Basically, instead of the whole world spinning and everything becoming a blur, with me feeling like the only one standing straight, the world sat perfectly still and clear - a little too clear - and I felt myself moving.

Greatest drug in the universe.... or kind of a crappy high? That seems to be the one thing all of these versions have in common. Oh, and there's also this wacky satirical piece about British priests selling a drug called Rapture to convert new believers to their dwindling flocks.