Ichikawa is basically the family man version of Dae-ho from Foul King. He works at a new teacher position for students who hardly respect him. His son never talks to him because he’s a victim of bullying due to his dad’s position. Ichikawa’s daughter ignores his authority and hates him. And his wife feels the same way, even showing signs of disloyalty. With no one to care for him, he independently completes a costume of a 70’s childhood Tokusatsu hero named Zebraman. He puts it on, and despite the constant rips and tears, he persists to enjoy himself, until he meets a criminal that strangely resembles a Zebraman villain.
But just as the fictitious ‘Zebraman’ television show had been stopped before its prime and cancelled within seven episodes, Takashi Miike’s film itself has the same fate: it never follows through to reach its full potential. Instead, we are granted sporadic patches of hilarious moments, or touching, underdog scenes of drama, but never does any overwhelming feeling of either carry us through the end of the film.
Miike does get plenty of laughs from pushing the Tokusatsu genre to absurd lengths, as the film begins with our protag, Ichikawa, watching one such show where the hero materializes a gun out of thin air and destroys a long-haired villain who happens to contain the hero’s mother’s bloody face in his torso. Sound strange and borderline incomprehensible? It should. This surreal humor coupled with the dark comedy of Ichikawa’s attempts to defy reality and become Zebraman is where the comedy comes in. Miike often relies on sporadic absurdities and choice visuals gags, but the laughs are too few and far in between to qualify the film as a full-blown comedy.
On the dramatic side is a similar problem. Miike crafts a pathetic, heartache character in Ichikawa, as our everyday man who sees Zebraman not only as a superhero, but as a dream. He bears remarkable similarity to Dae-ho in these respects, as they both dramatically break out of their pathetic ruts of lives to achieve their childhood dreams. Sure, this is definitely an inspirational and easy-to-relate-to tale and when he first finds his powers, it is easy to muster up excitement for him. But this doesn’t carry the viewer on for a two hour story. Foul King goes beyond Dae-ho simply kicking his boss around and relishing his newfound skills, and it is precisely here that the pic disappoints.
It feels a bit odd calling Zebraman a film devoid of an identity. With a catchy blaring rock soundtrack and campy special effects, watching Zebraman fly at a giant alien blob does show some imagination and uniqueness. The problem is simply the film’s inability to make us feel something. It can provide some laughs, or a few scenes of “black and white ecstasy,” but nothing truly defines the film by taking the plot to a satisfying place in the last act.
Reviewed by Tarun
