Monday, April 30, 2012

Zone Fighter: Like Ultraman But Meaner

The character Zone Fighter was created by Toho (the company that makes Godzilla films) to compete with Tsubaraya Productions' Ultraman in a similar niche, presumably with the reasoning that if a former Toho employee could make a successful kaiju vs. hero action series, so could Toho.

The result is arguably inferior, as it didn't really go anywhere (although I suspect Toho didn't invest as much energy into it as they could have-if you look at the monster costumes, they look downright stupid next to the contemporary Ultraman series and Godzilla film costumes, with the obvious exception of Godzilla film guest stars, who were all over the darned place-and Zone Fighter was a little too obvious as a direct imitation of Ultraman) and not very memorable other than Godzilla movie kaiju guest starring.

Well, the Godzilla cameos... and the fact that Zone Fighter liked to solve his problems by shooting things repeatedly with rockets and dismembering them with energy crescents until they died.



Of special note: 0:50 (point-blank shot through the gut and out the back), 1:49 (head falls off after a delayed reaction to being shot repeatedly and black blood explosively sprays out), 4:30 (chops off arms), and 4:52 (delayed reaction head falling off).

The decapitations particularly are both gruesome and funny (my sister nearly died after 1:49).

Sure, Ultraman kills his enemies very dead most of the time, but he wears them down with hand to hand combat first, and then usually kills them in a single stroke. Much more humane. (And no, I'm not actually being sarcastic.)

Admittedly, Zone Fighter's way is a bit more batman.

-Signing off.

No comments: