In Iké Boys, which is set just before New Year's Eve 1999," protagonists Shawn Gunderson (Quinn Lord) and Vik Kapoor (Ronak Gandhi) are living in a small Oklahoma town, where their affinity for Japanese culture and anime are looked down upon. However, Vik's family takes in a foreign exchange student -- Miki Shimizu (Christina Higa) -- and all of their lives are forever changed by a long-lost anime film that gives them incredible abilities. At its core s a love letter to tokusatsu -- the Japanese genre of film and television that encompasses such franchises as Godzilla, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.

CBR talked with co-writer and director Eric McEver, as well as actors Quinn Lord, Ronak Gandhi and Christina Higa about the film. In the interview, we chatted about tokusatsu, their experiences making the film and the importance of Iké Boys' animated sequences.

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CBR: The spirit of tokusatsu is really at the heart of Iké Boys. What were your experiences like with that particular genre before you made the film?

McEver: I probably have the biggest answer here, which is that the cute little facetious version of my life story, which is also completely true, is that I was a little boy who loved dinosaurs. And then that led to loving Godzilla. And then that led to a decision around the age of 12 that I was going to make a Godzilla film one day, and I needed to do all the necessary things to make that happen. Basically, my intellectual and emotional development stopped at age 12, and I've just kept going with that.

Now, there's a little bit more to the story than that, in that I think -- I'm gonna get metaphysical for a minute -- there are forces at work in the world that are bigger than us and that draw us towards things for reasons that are bigger than we understand. I think Godzilla and tokusatsu and anime were a force that was drawing me towards a place I needed to go and towards people I needed to meet. I can say that it's because of that passion that I've met my best friends and made my biggest and best contributions to the world. So I think it's an avatar for something deeper going on spiritually.

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Gandhi: So, I didn't really have any experience with any of that before, obviously, I met Eric. He made us watch a couple anime, which is really cool. My extent was like Dragon Ball Z and then Avatar: The Last Airbender. So that was the extent of my foray into anime.

McEver: Ronak is more than a little bit into Avatar, I'll have you know. So he comes by it honestly.

Higa: So I grew up in Tokyo, but I went to an international school there. And so I was really in a mix of different cultures. But I grew up mostly watching American TV and film. I never really got into anime and manga and all of that until recently. Honestly, Iké Boys was definitely my big introduction to people like Eric who really love it.

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For me, I started watching anime in the last couple of years and really falling in love with just the storytelling in it. I think it's cool that it's becoming huge all over the world, because when I started watching it, I'm like, "I can see why everyone's so into it," because the storytelling so cool. Like every episode, there's just such a cool narrative. But yeah, for me, this is all new. But it's definitely really deep into my roots and culture. So it's cool to be exploring it now. And it's like this whole full circle thing for me to be playing in films that are very Japanese rooted.

Lord: My dad grew up in the '80s, and my first introduction to any sort of anime/cartoon was the Americanized version of the "Macross Saga," which turns out to be Robotech. So I really liked Robotech, and I really like Transformers. Now, I think I watched a tiny bit of Pokémon, not too much. But that was it for the longest time, until just recently. A friend of mine was like, "Hey, watch this anime." It ended up being One-Punch Man. Then I ended up meeting Eric, who is, you know, sort of getting me to watch more anime. So I haven't quite gotten around watching more full blown series of anime yet, but looking forward to the future.

McEver: Quinn, I have told you there's a Rick Hunter reference in Iké Boys, haven't I?

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Lord: Yep.

McEver: Did I tell you what it was?

Lord: Yeah, I helped you put it in there. [Everyone laughs]

McEver: It's been a long year.

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CBR: So because this is a movie set right at the end of the '90s, did you have to explain that time to [the younger actors], Eric? Like, what were the cultural touchstones you were trying to get them to know?

McEver: Honestly, the '90s isn't that long ago, so there wasn't that much explaining to do. And we're closer culturally than you might think. So I did do a list of anime that Shawn and Vik would have watched. I think we just talked about it in general. I don't know. Like, I kind of think the '90s sucked. There is a vein of '90s nostalgia in the film, but I think maybe the bigger thing that we'd discussed trying to get out was just this is kind of a really dumb time in history. And the characters in it are trying to escape into a bigger, brighter, grander world. Did we talk about the '90s, team?

Gandhi: Not that much. I think we kind of knew. We've had a lot of cultural connections to the '90s, so I don't think it was too far of a stretch for any of us. It was a pretty seamless transition.

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McEver: I think the bigger thing, more than the '90s, specifically is Y2K. The sort of constant sense that the world was on the verge of ending, which it kind of feels like it is now and it was important to me to show hope in an apocalyptic scenario, but in a fun way. Because I think that is pretty darn relevant to the world we're living in 20 years later.

CBR: With the film set in 1999, let's jump forward to 2021. What do you guys think your characters would be doing so many years later?

Lord: If I were to speak for Shawn, I think he would be trying to develop a script and make a movie based off of what happened. [Everyone laughs]. Oh, and then of course living in Japan part time.

Gandhi: I would say it's pretty boring for Vik. He probably went the finance route, something very cliche, banal and not all that enticing as these two guys over here.

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CBR: When he drinks, though, does it come out he was a kaiju at one point in his life and no one believes him

Gandhi: No, you know. It was probably one of those fun party trick stories, like "This one happened to me in Y2K," but everyone kind of looked at him weird, like, "Okay, you're that guy at the party."

Higa: I guess I would be traveling the world and meeting all kinds of people and speaking, like, three language. And what would I really be doing? Art. I feel like I'd become some sort of an illustrator, painter, storyteller traveling the world.

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CBR: What were your favorite scenes to do?

Lord: I love the turkey scene. That was so much fun to film. Like, all the random unscripted banter back and forth, and then "Boom. What happened to the turkey," and then they go and investigate.

Gandhi: Mainly between Ben [Browder]. Ben had a lot of unscripted banter with Christina. But I would say my favorite scenes to film were when the entire cast was there. Mainly, like, Quinn and Christina. But all the school scenes. All the scenes at the Kapoor mansion. Everybody was there. Those were the most fun for me.

Lord: That mansion was good.

Higa: Yeah! I also really liked the Christmas scene. That was super fun. It was just like super cozy in the house. It felt like we were actually at this American Oklahoma Christmas time. And yeah, it was a lot of, like, improv, just banter, which was really fun. That was the first time we all met Ben. And it was a really cool way to meet him on set.

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McEver: I'd second all of these. And I kind of hate to -- I don't want to play favorites. I'm going with what pops into my head. And I will say, there is, during the Christmas dinner scene, a very funny dialogue exchange between Ben's character and Christina's character. There is about five times more than that -- that I hope will end up on a Blu-ray somewhere -- where they go on this extended riff about... [Impersonating Browder's Wayne Gunderson] "That weird stuff that my boy's into, and the one with the tentacles." It is funny, funny stuff. So that was just a beauty to behold. Just to watch that come out.

I'll also say the scene where Miki is tied to the stake and Reiko [Grafstrom] is circling her with the flaming scythe. So that was actually in the middle of the night in the Oklahoma winter, freezing cold out --

Higa: Freeeeezing.

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McEver: A lot of cool things happened over the course of those three nights. But when Yumiko [Shaku] was delivering her monologue, a pack of coyote started howling. And it was just, I mean, it was blood curdling in the coolest possible way.

Higa: That was crazy.

McEver: I've got lots of other stories. Lots and lots of other stories.

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CBR: I didn't realize how much of the film was improv-ed. What was it like doing that improv? Do you guys have any experience in improv, or was it kind of like a new, weird thing you tried out?

Gandhi: I was totally fine. I think, at the end of the day, it's about Eric making the most comfortable setting for all the actors, and I think we were, so it was very easy to slip into the characters. It was very easy to, you know, kind of go off the cuff if we needed to. So I wouldn't say it was an uncomfortable experience. It was a time where we were able to just kind of spread our wings and do what we wanted to do within the characters, and that was probably the most liberating time.

Lord: It's always a good time when you have an unscripted moment and whatever you've understood and learned about the character up until that point, you just let it loose then see what happens. It's always a bit of a, you know, discovery, or just some fun playtime actually.

Higa: Yeah, I think definitely how Eric has, like, directed us throughout the whole time you're shooting, I definitely felt super dropped into my character. And so the whole improv part was just -- it was like a high kind of. You're just like, "Wow. We're just going." And it's just, I'm Miki. And yeah, it was cool. It was really fun.

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McEver: It's interesting even to be talking about it in these terms, and I'm pleased and flattered to be talking about it this way. Because I don't think I ever consciously thought in terms of wanting to create an environment conducive to improv. I mean, from my perspective, it was more -- I think the script was really locked in, and the actors were really locked in. And then if you create a safe enough environment where everyone -- if all the preparation is done, then there is room to play and for those exciting discoveries and accidents to happen. I guess the thing I would add on top of that is the improv and the playfulness and the spur of the moment things are the result of a whole lot of preparation by everyone on this call and a lot of other people.

CBR: Eric, I wanted to talk to you quickly about the animation sequences, because there's a lot of them and they're fun. You have a background in animation and that was something that you seem passionate about. Tell me about the process of doing that animation in Iké Boys and why it was so important for the film.

McEver: It's important for the film, because obviously anime and Japanese culture are baked into the story. It's the aesthetic of the experience. I just love the craft of animation, because it's the director's craft turned up to 11. You know, you have to prepare and plan everything. And so, you know, every detail is a decision to make.

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So in this case, there were two animation teams. One was based out of Taiwan, and one was based out of France. The thinking with that was it was friends of mine who I've known from the the animation community, but they are of my generation and had the same sort of nostalgia for the same era of sort of '80s through '90s Japanese animation. So the whole conceit is this magical cursed anime was ahead of its time, and it was this unique magical work. And so I thought, "Okay, well, if I get people who are actually not Japanese, but have a lot of respect for that period, but will bring their own flair and take to it, you know, then you'll get something that feels anime, and it feels of the time, but it is unique, and it has its own spirit. "

And honestly, I mean, 2020 was a stinky year for a lot of reasons. But all of those video meetings with the animators, and all of the little details that go by in less than a second, is just such a joyful process to figure out, Okay, how does the kaiju transform? How do his wings rip out of his suit? And then, how does he fly towards the camera?" There are so many micro decisions that add up. And that sort of stuff is catnip for me. I can't get enough animation.

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CBR: Does anyone else have anything they'd like to add before we wrap up?

McEver: Go watch Iké Boys. It's the best movie ever made.

Lord: Go watch it.

Iké Boys premieres at Fantastic Fest on Sept. 26.

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