[GoldenXtreme]

Return of Ultraman:
I'm famous for my stellar quality. A show excellent enough to be the best in the Showa era.
Kaiketsu Zubat:
I'm afraid you have it wrong. You are only the second best in the Showa era.
Return of Ultraman:
The second-best? What else could be better?!
Kaiketsu Zubat:


Lately I've been watching a lot of really questionable tokusatsu, so I thought I owed it to myself to pick out a show I was almost guaranteed to love. Kaiketsu Zubat delivered. Hiroshi Miyauchi as a suave vigilante private investigator cowboy superhero with a guitar? Check? Funny? Check. Dark? Check. I think if you condensed everything I love about the Showa era into a tokusatsu, you'd just get Zubat. I don't even really have any complaints. I mean, like any older show it has some dated writing in spots, but there isn't any point in complaining about the times. I guess they changed Hayakawa's outfit near the end to one with more white on it and it wasn't nearly as cool as his original one.

Hayakawa himself makes for quite the interesting hero. He's a merciless vigilante who is on a quest to avenge his dead friend, but he's nonetheless a hero who tries to help the people he encounters on his quest. He exemplified the lonely Shotaro Ishinomori hero to me, pushing onward through both physical injuries and mental strain. At the same time, he is a completely ridiculous character who is always the best at everything and saying completely surreal things. I think this split nature is reflected in many parts of the show. It effortlessly flips between stuff like Hayakawa defeating a golf assassin or an Uri Geller expy to stuff about human trafficking and a boy who contracts an extreme strain of rabies so his father nearly kills the kid with a shotgun. It's absolutely BUCK wild. The show is extremely formulaic, but I actually think it worked to the story's advantage most of the time because I got so excited every episode when it reached the point where the hired muscle of the villain of the week showed up, I just couldn't wait to see what nonsense was going to occur every time.

The setting is maybe my favorite part of the whole show though. A Neo-Western Japan overrun by organized crime, the people living in suffering and fear? Just fantastic, and super fresh for a tokusatsu show. Notably, none of the villains are monsters or aliens or even modified humans. Everyone is just... humans, even the worst villains. No blaming the vices of our species on some external force here! We regularly see corruption running through the police force and several other people that originally seem to be allies even. The setting really comes to life nicely, the action is very solid and the cinematography is quite stylish.

Great stuff, from the same head writer as Kikaider and Akumaizer. I really think this guy has vision, most of his shows are a cut above and very unique! I definitely want to try Akumaizer myself now...