Review: Takashi Miike's Zebraman.

Zebraman is a 2004 tokusatsu superhero film directed by prolific director Takashi Miike and stars Show Aikawa as Shinichi Ichikawa, a depressed and failing 3rd grade teacher who dresses up as his childhood superhero, Zebraman and discovers the show was not far from reality. This film is really personal to me on a level beyond what the world of film could give to me. 

I am a huge tokusatsu hero fan, I have a soft spot for those kind of heroes because they've sort of been a light in my rather bleak life. That, added with one of my favorite directors and a personal favorite v-cinema actor of mine, leads to this film making me cry. 

I rarely cry to film regardless of how tragic or sweet it is.

I wouldn't call this film really a parody of the Japanese Hero genre, it's too serious compared to the likes of an actual parody like Ultraman Zearth but is light-hearted enough to be a comedy.

If I were to liken this film to another in Miike's ever expanding catalogue, I would liken to it the first film by him I watched, The Great Yokai War. Albeit a little bit more mature

Is it a film I would show a young single digit age kid? No, as this film covers a multitude of adult topics in the first 5 minutes, and near the halfway point the film also gets a little dark (literally and figuratively) and I can very well see a 4 year old getting scared.

The overall vibe of the film, from the action to the music and the costumes, are about as accurate as you get for a semi-parody of the genre. You got your very on-the-nose naming convention, the up-beat theme song, the extremely over the top action with a bunch of front flips and jumps, and even the bad CGI works as it's a staple of shows like Super Sentai or Kamen Rider.

If you're familiar with Showa and Heisei era toku then you'll understand my next point, but the film to me kinda shows the evolution of shows of this era. The Zebraman portions of the film in the beginning are rather silly and only for laughs, it's very light-hearted and isn't too serious and is much more kid oriented. 

But nearing the end of the film it becomes darker, the stakes are higher, they drop the comedy entirely. And I'm not saying all Heisei era shows are like this, they are still very much full of comedy as the target demographic are young teens, but they have definitely gotten darker over the years and as fans grew up and time changed. While it's a poor example due to the show being made for adults, I would like to highlight Ultraseven X, as the tone of the film near the end of it reminds me a lot of the vibe of that show for all the above points.

I would also like to highlight Show Aikawa's performance, as for a primarily Yakuza and J-Horror actor at the time, he is actually really good at playing the rather meek and awkward teacher that is Ichikawa.

Unfortunately this film never really gets a chance to shine properly, it doesn't really have that moment present in a lot of superhero films, and it sucks. It fails hard at balancing all that goes on, Ichikawa's poor family relations, his bond with Shinpei, Ichikawa being bullied by his students, the government tracking down aliens, Zebraman himself, and going into the full Miike insanity experience like the end of all of his films.

This film, is essentially a poorly fused 2 in 1 combo. One half's on being a failing family man bonding with a new transfer student, the other is being a cheesy superhero who will save the world.

Which while I do think it's impressive how Miike could do both, as he is very talented, fusing these two as he did just fell flat at multiple points and didn't give much time for either part to breathe after the first third of the film wrapped up.

As much as I do like this film and have defended it, it's not something I would recommend to the regular film watcher who isn't too big on superheroes.

If you love the camp of old superheroes or even just Japanese heroes like me, I'm sure you'll love this film and I recommend it for fans like myself. But, if you're a regular fan of superheroes, I wouldn't be so sure but I would still recommend giving this film a shot.

I really loved this film and it had me rooting for Zebraman near the end, if you do watch it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Even if you're not a nerd like me.

That's all this time, Love and Peace!