The film marked the directorial debut of Takashige Ichise, a Japanese film producer best known in the west for financing such J-Horror classics as Ringu, The Grudge, and Dark Water as well as their respective Hollywood remakes.
The film's prequel, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (Teito Monogatari, 1988) was the first Japanese motion picture to showcase then-obscure occult concepts such as onmyodo (yin yang) and feng shui magic. Despite the movie's box office success, the producers feared that the esoteric occult mythology was still too alienating to mainstream audience. Thus, the plot of the sequel was streamlined into a more conventional horror movie relying more on generic and immediately recognizable concepts like ESP and psychic powers. The villain Kato is never directly associated with onmyodo magic despite still having pentacles (a common symbol in onmyodo mythology) on the back of his gloves.