NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Radiance Blu-ray (October 2026): Radiance have transferred Takashi Miike's Visitor Q ("Bijitâ Q") to Blu-ray. The new transfer is from the original master beta tape, and the feature gets a very high bitrate. Expectations need adjusting, though. The film was shot on consumer digital video and finished on tape, so this is a 1080i presentation of standard-definition material, framed at 1.33:1 and pillarboxed in the HD frame. There is no film-style detail to uncover. Faces and textures stay soft, and the darker interiors show the slight smearing and blooming of upconverted SD tape, with murky shadows in the night and low-light scenes. Within those limits the generous encode does everything it can. Colors are surprisingly rich, with warm skin tones, strong reds, and the yellow-green tungsten and fluorescent casts of the Yamazaki house all intact. The daylight exteriors are clean and stable, and we didn’t notice any heavy-handed sharpening or other attempts to disguise the source. This is about as good as Visitor Q can look. It’s a faithful presentation of a tape-originated film rather than an upgrade in the usual Blu-ray sense.

NOTE: We have added 40 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Radiance use a linear PCM mono track (24-bit) in the original Japanese language. It’s a modest mix, as it should be: largely direct production sound with room ambience and occasionally rough dialogue, and Koji Endō’s sparse score comes through cleanly. Nothing is pushed or artificially widened, and the track serves the film’s flat, deadpan register without any issues. Radiance offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Radiance Blu-ray extras begin with a new audio commentary by Miike biographer Tom Mes (Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike.) Few people know Miike’s career as thoroughly as Mes, and he places Visitor Q within the Love Cinema project and the director’s remarkably prolific output of the period. Radiance has also filmed three new interviews. Takashi Miike, in an interview of over 20 minutes, talks candidly about the improbable circumstances that led to the film being made. Kenichi Endo, in almost 20 minutes, recalls the challenging but joyous shoot and discusses his long-time artistic partnership with Miike. Showko Nakahara, in about 20 minutes, talks about the unique experience of making the film and the impact it had on her life and career. Mother’s Milk: Visitor Q and the Feminine Principle is a new visual essay of about 1/4 hour in which Kat Ellinger interprets the film through masculine failure and feminine reawakening. There is also the 2001 theatrical trailer, made by Kazushi Watanabe, who plays Q and is a director himself. The limited edition of 5,000 copies comes in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, a reversible sleeve with designs based on the original posters, and a booklet with new writing by Ana Došen.

Takashi Miike's Visitor Q is one of the more distasteful films we have covered recently. It is a parade of incest, necrophilia, dismemberment and lactation gags, each designed to top the last, with its supposed satire of the Japanese home drama serving mostly as an alibi. It has its defenders, and a small, devoted cult, but very few viewers will find any reward on the other side of it. Kenichi Endo, seen in The Happiness of the Katakuris, Agitator, Nobody Knows, Demon Pond, Sakuran, Violent Cop, plays the pathetic father without winking, and Shungiku Uchida, from Gemini, gives the mother's transformation more conviction than the material deserves. Composer Koji Endō, who scored Agitator, Rainy Dog, Ley Lines, Audition, 13 Assassins, Gozu, The Bird People in China, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Three... Extremes, Sukiyaki Western Django, The City of Lost Souls, uses his music sparingly here, and cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto, who shot Graveyard of Honor, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Audition, The Bird People in China, Fireworks, works within the flat, harsh limits of consumer digital video. The Radiance Blu-ray, transferred from the original master beta tape with a very high bitrate, is surely the best this source can look, and it comes with a Tom Mes commentary, new interviews with Miike, Endo and Showko Nakahara, a Kat Ellinger visual essay, and handsome limited-edition packaging. For Miike completists and devotees of transgressive cinema, this is the definitive edition. For everyone else, the film itself is very difficult to recommend.

Gary Tooze