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| The Red Spectacles | |
|---|---|
 20-year anniversary movie poster | |
| Directed by | Mamoru Oshii |
| Written by | Kazunori Itō Mamoru Oshii |
| Based on | Characters created by Mamoru Oshii |
| Produced by | Shigeharu Shiba Daisuke Hayashi |
| Starring | Shigeru Chiba Machiko Washio Hideyuki Tanaka |
| Cinematography | Yosuke Mamiya |
| Edited by | Seiji Morita |
| Music by | Kenji Kawai |
| Distributed by | Omnibus Promotion |
Release date |
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Running time | 116 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
The Red Spectacles (紅い眼鏡, Akai Megane) is a 1987 Japanese surrealist science fiction neo-noir film directed by Mamoru Oshii, co-written with Kazunori Ito, and starring Shigeru Chiba and Mako Hyōdō. The first film in Oshii's Kerberos Saga, but the second installment overall after its radio drama companion piece While Waiting for the Red Spectacles (which aired a month prior), the film follows Kōichi Todome, a former police detective who, after fleeing Japan following a failed rebellion by his dissolved unit, returns several years later per a promise to his colleagues, only to find Tokyo completely unrecognizable and increasingly strange and surreal.
The Red Spectacles was released on February 7, 1987. It would be followed by several works intended to explain and expand the film's universe, the most notable of them being Kerberos Panzer Cop. The film was followed by two prequels—StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops in 1991, and Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade in 1999—that adapted the established stories and settings from Kerberos Panzer Cop.