Zebraman is almost typical of a Takashi Miike film with a gluttony of odd characters from freaks, to geeks, to hapless idiots. Professor Ichikawa is a school teacher at a junior school, who has a secret obsession with a cancelled TV show called Zebraman. Zebraman fights aliens from outer space, and it just so happens that aliens have landed on Earth and are slowly trying to rule it by taking over human bodies and minds.

Ichikawa accidently runs into one of the aliens when he decides to take a stroll in his Zebraman outfit to show his favourite student Asano, who also happens to be a fan of Zebraman. Getting lost on the way, he hears a woman scream and bumps into an alien who’s a known serial killer that dresses up in a crab outfit. Ichikawa suddenly finds Zebraman’s special powers within him and defeats the crab, and in the process starts to unravel the invasion.

This is a pretty slow film, with not a lot happening for about the first forty moniutes or so. Things pick eventually when Ichikawa finally inherits and displays Zebraman’s powers inexplicably. Much of the film seems to be drama-cum-dead pan comedy. When Ichikawa bounces around his room in his hand made Zebraman outfit, only to knock himself out by jumping to high it is a pricelss moment. As is his attempt to climb onto his roof to get to the corner shop, only to slip, buckle and tumble to an embarassing crash to the ground, barely able to move.

Of note is also the brilliantly strange parody of a Power Ranger type figure called Aleki Thunder and a kung-fu kicking Sadako-ish character. It’s very strange, but also really engaging, and I have to say that I would have like to see more oddities from Miike in this regard as the film is fairly straight forward by his standards.

The charm of the film is probably that Ichikawa, for all his hoplessness is the hero, in a haphazard fashion. He’s not quite Superman or Batman, he’s more weak than he is courageous, but often dreams that he is the latter. The dream sequence of Zebraman vs the crab man is testament to that, where he loses his arm and the busty Zebra Nurse arrives with a syringe the size of a suitcase in hand, and skimpy bare chested striped outfit to boot. Ichikawa wants to be a hero, but doesn’t quite have it in him.

The story plods along for the most part, and is pretty standard fare with regards to invasion type films. Aliens invade, they’re discovered, and Zebraman happens to come to the rescue to save the day. Everthing in between is simply filler material. There are times where Miike shines through, offering a bit of his norm, such as the birth of a green alien baby, psycho kids weilding baseball bats attacking shop keepers, aliens that look and behave like a large green bogey. Just a typical day at school really.

In terms of special effects, it’s rather modest. Aside from the wire action, and some glowing eyes, there isn’t a lot, with the whole special effects budget seemingly saved for the last 20 or so minutes in a spectacular extravaganza of an end, with some interesting symbolic scenes. It’s a fairly down to Earth film for a super hero film, since most of the time Ichikawa is still trying to be Zebraman, before he discovers his powers.

It’s certainly a longer film than perhaps it should have been. I’m not even sure who the film is aimed at, as it’s a bit too violent for young children, and has too much depth for young attention span challenged teenagers.

If anything, I think Miike has missed the mark, creating an interesting film, but one that is mostly distraction than real entertainment. Perhaps he decided to tone his effort down, in an attempt to make something more accessible, but there’s enough here to be unsuitable for large mainstream audiences.

Acting is camp, and fits into the whole superhero story ideals. Costumes range from extravagant to downright ridicuous, but really offer a whacky effort compared to the serious and rather dull alternatives such as X-Men.

As superhero films go, this is certainly leftfield entertainment, and couldn’t quite fit into the collection where you have Superman, Batman, and others. This would perhaps be sitting on the same shelf as Takashi’s other films, somewhere around the Happiness of the Katakuri’s mark.

Verdict: Simple but lacking the challenge of a Miike Takashi film. Feel good, safe fun for kids