Ikeda became involved in filmmaking while still a university student, working as an assistant director for a small independent production company.

[2] At both companies, he began working as an assistant director, whose duties could include anything from cleaning floors to shaving actresses at a time when it was illegal to show even the slightest hint of pubic hair in Japanese media.

[3][4] Ikeda continued as an assistant director at Nikkatsu throughout the 1970s in such films as Flower and Snake (1974), Wife to be Sacrificed (1974) and Noble Lady: Bound Vase (1977), all directed by Masaru Konuma.

[4] Ikeda made his debut as a director at Nikkatsu with the 1980 film, Sukeban Mafia which the Weissers call "satirical, rousing, sexy and character-driven.

[5] For "penance", Nikkatsu sent him to Okinawa and told him to include some romance for his next film, Blue Lagoon: A Summer Experience, which had a standard boy-girl plot.

A drama with exploitation premises, based on a manga by Takashi Ishii, in which a fisherman looks for revenge, developing the intense anti-nuclear sentiment that Japan was experiencing at the time.

[9] A year later, Ikeda made Scent of a Spell, also for the Director's Company, a mystery about a newspaperman who saves a girl from suicide but discovers that she may not be as innocent as she seems.

[11] Ishii also penned the script for Ikeda's 1988 Evil Dead Trap, called Japan's first "splatter movie",[12] and credited with being the first Japanese modern horror film.

Ikeda returned to direct Evil Dead Trap 3: Broken Love Killer (1993), again written by Ishii, but only made a sequel in name outside of Japan.