Zebraman

Late afternoon on a Saturday, unless at the cinema, always feels a slightly wrong time to watch a film. I know I’ll have to come and go while I do some cooking, so it feels unfair to the film. It also means I probably want something lighter, so I turned, finally, to Takashi Miike’s 2004 but only recently released on Blu Ray Zebraman. courtesy of by 88 FIlms.

A quiet, gloomy teacher, Ichikawa (Show Aikawa) is disliked by his students to the point where they bully his son because of the father. Ichikawa escapes by reminiscing about the long-lost TV series of his childhood, Zebraman, which only ever ran for seven episodes. He shares this curious passion with a new wheelchair-bound pupil, Shinpei (Naoki Yasukochi). Is it lucky then that there may secretly be aliens invading his home city? And could Ichikawa’s homemade Zebraman costume cause him to become his own, real-life superhero? 

I think you can guess the answer. I’m not a connoisseur of tokusatsu but the film is steeped in a love for it and a love for genre films. A middle-aged family man dreaming of being a hero and becoming one is certainly classic tokusatsu fare, and Miike makes of it a tremendously entertaining film. It’s not a short one, either, nearly touching two-hours but Miike paces the film beautifully, building up Ichikawa’s character towards the moment where he puts on the suit and finds his powers. 

But let us not forget the aliens, unknown to us earthlings except a few in the Defence Agency, especially the testy, Oikawa (Atsuro Watabe), who is sent with his partner, Segawa (Koen Kondo) to understand if these aliens exist. And exist they do, in classic almost absurdist fashion, using humans as hosts and then, as you do, often wear creature masks to attack humans. The story often weaves this nicely into Ichikawa’s homelife at the same time embracing the fun of the concept. Ichikawa’s recently sexually-aware daughter goes off to meet a man she’s met on the internet, at what you assume is a love hotel. A man who just happens to be older than her father and also the alien-crab-murderer. This allows her to be in peril but also to explain Ichikawa’s homelife: daughter who ignores him, wife who is having an affair, a son who seems disinterested in him. 

What becomes intriguing then is how, if anything, he forms more of a family with young Shinpei, and his single mother (and nurse), Kana (Kyoka Suzuki). You'd  imagine, given the opportunity, despite his family at the end appreciating his superhero-ness, he’d much rather run off with Kana and be a father to Shinpei. It creates a dynamic that you don’t often see  and as Ichikawa's seen as a bit of a loser, you’d expect the focus to be on his own family and not with the mother and son he meets. You notice this when, in a sequence that may or may not be real, as Zebraman he loses an arm but enter Zebranurse, all dressed in some rather plunge-top tight plastic, and it’s Kana not his own wife that appears in the role. Yes, Kana is a nurse in the story but the sexual edge to her dress and Zebraman’s response to her suggests more of an attraction to her than his wife. Also, their scenes together are often some of the most effective and quieter moments in the narrative. It’s noticeable just how Miike manages not just the tokusatsu action, but the build-up and those times in-between when Ichikawa is just himself and not Zebraman. It’s worth highlighting because a lesser filmmaker could have created a dull film punctuated by moments of action, humour and excitement. But no, all aspects of the film, serious, humorous (such as Ichikawa’s hair suddenly turning zebra style to warn of approaching baddies) or the full-on CGI action against giant green aliens, everything has equal weight and attention.

There are some nice references to other films, too: Sadako from Ring is seen in flashback as an enemy in an old episode of the Zebraman series; children taking over the schoolbus, with their penetrating green eyes echoes Village of the Damned, and the children’s sudden violent destruction of a man’s stall and shop echo Robocop 2’s crimewave; even the car packed with gear that Oikawa drives with his partner is clearly based on Back To The Future's Delorian. I’m sure there were a ton of other references I missed but no matter. 

The key thing is that Zebraman is a tremendous piece of entertainment. Aikawa, the V-Cinema star who I was a bit on the fence about in some of the recent Arrow boxsets, is excellent because he knows when to underplay his part as Ichikawa and when to go full-on tokusatsu hero; equally, Atsuro Watabe’s defence force agent, Oikawa, is suitably irritable and grubby (complaining early on he’s picked up a STD from visiting a cheap brothel!) 

The final analysis is that Zebraman could have been the classic case of also-ran of cinema, sort of fun and occasionally entertaining, but Miike and the cast really elevate it; it never drags, there's real love for tokusatsu, the characterisations are nicely balanced; where necessary the film is a bit dirty, this adds a sense of odd realness amongst the absurdity. The effects, too, though obviously so, are constructed with humour and though a little aged that doesn’t matter - if anything it adds to the overall package. It doesn’t try and be too slick. So yes, Zebraman is great fun and far more engaging on so many other levels than I was expecting. 

I'm definitely looking forward to Zebraman 2.

 
Lose an arm? Fear not! Zebranurse to the rescue!