ZEBRAMAN (2004)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Though I've seen a lot of comments calling Takashi Miike's ZEBRAMAN a comedy, I think it conforms more to the literary mythos called "irony." Comedies are generally very straightforward about exploiting human discomforts to engender laughs. But Miike, who directed from a script by one Kankuro Kudo, seems to be constantly stressing situations that undermine the viewer's certainties of what to take seriously-- or even, what not to take seriously.

(EDIT: Kankuro Kudo is the scriptwriter of record for the movie, but apparently both he and one Yamada Reiji co-created an earlier ZEBRAMAN manga, which the movie partly adapts, and which I have not read.)

Although some costumed crusaders like Zorro and Superman fake weakness to conceal their true strengths, there's no shortage of heroes, especially from the Golden Age of Comics, who start off as meek and mild, and only toughen up after being suffering humiliation or adversities. Miike clearly wants the viewer of ZEBRAMAN to see the movie's protagonist as a "real Clark Kent." Teacher Shinichi Ishikawa (Sho Aikawa) not only gets zero respect from the grade-school students he deals with, he also rates zero with his family. His son Kazuki, who attends said school, is tormented by other kids who think Shinichi is totally uncool, while the teacher's wife appears to be carrying on an affair and his teenaged daughter Midori is dating older men, possibly to express her contempt for her real father. (I say "possibly" because none of Shinichi's unlikable family members get a lot of screen time.) The teacher's only escape from dire reality is being a fan of a short-lived tokusatsu TV show from his childhood. This show concerns a fantastic, alien-fighting costumed hero, Zebraman. Shinichi even creates his own Zebraman costume as an escape from reality.

But is reality all that certain? It's the year 2010-- just six years from the time of the film's actual release-- and 2010 is also the future-year in which the TV show was set. Current news broadcasts carry stories about the strange behavior of animals and maniacs on the loose in Yokohama. Covertly, Japan's defense agency studies the mysterious appearances of mutated creatures, apparently the result of extraterrestrial tampering. 

At school Shinichi meets a transfer student, Shinpei, and Shinpei's mother Mrs. Asano. Shinpei has his own debilitating backstory, having lost the ability to walk after finding the corpse of his suicidal father. By chance Shinichi learns that Shinpei also has an enthusiasm for the Zebraman show, even though the boy only saw the program through the Internet. Shinichi develops an affection for this family, so much more appealing than his own. He decides to show off his costume to the wheelchair-bound boy-- but while skulking through the streets in costume, he comes across a crime: a woman just slain by a maniac in a crab-mask. Shinichi contends with the crazy man, and to his surprise learns that he suddenly possesses fantastic athletic prowess. Further, when slain the crab-man proves to be an alien mutation, as well as (perhaps not coincidentally) one of those older men that Shinichi's daughter is shown having dallied with.

There's an explanation of sorts, though Miike isn't interested in all the fine points. Some decades ago, a UFO crashed near Yokohama, and unbeknownst to humans, one alien survived and masqueraded as a human. The same school where Shinichi works is constructed on the site of the UFO crash-site, and the alien somehow becomes the school's principal. Further, the principal, knowing that his people plan to invade Earth in 2010, manages to launch the TV show ZEBRAMAN as a surreptitious warning of the coming invasion. I guess the show, which was canceled after seven episodes, had the desired effect, because it reached just one ardent fan, who was capable of taking on the powers of a superhero. How Shinichi gets transformed is one of those vague points; he merely talks about the power of belief, symbolized by the phrase "anything goes." So when, late in the movie, Zebraman needs to manifest the ability to fly, he's able to do so by a major effort of the imagination, much like Peter Pan asking children to believe in fairies.

Shinichi eventually triumphs over the alien invaders and wins approval from both his real kids and his substitute family (though the script stops short of letting the protagonist hook up with Mrs. Asano). Yet Miike and Kudo throw in a lot of weird scenes to keep ZEBRAMAN from seeming like a straightforward adventure-story. After learning that Mrs. Asano is a nurse by profession, he has a vivid dream in which he (as Zebraman) loses an arm in combat but grows it back when given medical attention by a costumed doppelganger of the widow, "Zebranurse" (complete with a gigantic syringe). And it certainly has a comical effect when the hero does the "zebra back kick" of the TV program and leaves a hoof print in a mutant's forehead. So even though Miike champions the power of belief, he clearly also favors the power of absurdity as well.