Tokusatsu and Infra-Man (1975)

Every story has a beginning.  A love story begins with the meeting of two people who will eventually be together.  A sports story begins with the introduction of the team and players.  An adventure story begins with the hero setting off on their journey into the unknown.  Much in the same way, trends have a beginning to them that can be determined in some way or another.  There is the first time that something is made.  Yet, the true beginning of the trend is when that something gets done in a way that it becomes popular.

This brings me to this week’s story.  In Japan, one of the most popular forms of entertainment is something called tokusatsu.  Technically speaking, tokusatsu means live-action dramas that feature lots of special effects work.  That said, it generally means kaiju, superhero, and mecha dramas.  These are the shows and movies with giant monsters, robots, or people who fight each other. All of these beings are really people in suits kicking and punching each other.  But it makes for great entertainment and that’s the whole point of it.

The kaiju side of tokusatsu became popular through Godzilla and the movies in the Godzilla franchise.  People enjoyed watching a monster destroy Japan, even if the monster was a man in a suit.  Audiences ate it up.  They wanted to see more, and the studio obliged.  Toho created a giant franchise with many more monsters so that people could watch more destruction by men in suits.  Mothra, Ghidorah, and many other monsters would come into the franchise to give more variation in the monsters adding to the destruction in Japan.  Other studios also pushed out their own franchises of kaiju films.  Godzilla began it all though.

Superheroes were another bunch of movies in the tokusatsu films that have become quite popular.  Shows like Kamen Rider and Metal Hero helped to solidify this side of the subgenre in Japanese popular culture.  A single hero fighting humanoid monsters and saving the world from destruction is something that the Japanese latched onto and adored.  They launched a kaiju wave on television that is still happening.  They also helped spawn an international adoration of superheroes versus monsters that would last just as long as the Japanese wave.

Mecha dramas are an interesting group of productions.  The dramas center on people controlling large robots in order to stop monsters and other robots from destroying places.  They are the same sort of shows as many kaiju or superhero shows in Japan.  Giant Robo is one of the shows that used this particular offshoot of tokusatsu to find their place in Japanese culture.

Of course, many shows and movies did not stick to one segment of tokusatsu.  There were shows that mixed the kaiju, superhero, and mecha elements to make a blended product that could capitalize on all of the possible audiences.  The Super Sentai series was one of these shows.  There were teams of superheroes that would band together to fight of the kaiju attacking their homes.  They would be aided by robots and would use these mechanical elements to battle the larger kaiju.  In the Godzilla films, Mechagodzilla was introduced as a robot used to fight against Godzilla.  The different sides of tokusatsu blended together all the time.  There were also a bunch of Japanese series such as Dinosaur War Izenborg that added animation into the mix.  It was a subgenre that mixed many different subgenres.

Tokusatsu as a genre has also helped to inspire movies and television shows around the world.  Godzilla has spawned two American remakes.  VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs were both based upon different incarnations of Metal Hero.  And there were English dubs of various different shows and movies that attempted to get American interest in the style.  It didn’t always work.  When it did, it did though.

One of the movies I’ve already covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies was based on a tokusatsu property.  The aforementioned Dinosaur War Izenborg was adapted into film format in 1982’s Attack of the Super Monsters.  To call that an adaptation is not completely true.  The movie was a compilation of a few episodes of the television series, dubbed into the English language.  The basic concept of the series was that dinosaurs were not really dead and returned to attack Earth.  The Gemini Force, a team of four teenagers with superpowers, uses their skills and mechanical aids to stop the dinosaurs from succeeding in ending mankind.  It’s the blend of animation and tokusatsu style men in suits that makes for an interesting, though not all that entertaining watch.  That was my first foray into tokusatsu in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, but it wouldn’t be my last.

A few years prior to Attack of the Super Monsters or its basis of Dinosaur War Izenborg, there was a movie called The Super Infra-Man that was released.  Most people in North America that know of it know it as Infra-Man.  The movie was made in China in 1975 and took many of the elements of tokusatsu as its inspiration.  Infra-Man is a superhero who fights a bunch of monsters led by Princess Dragon Mom.  These monsters come in various sizes at different times in the movie.  The fighting is mostly martial arts, but also includes some effects for lasers and stuff.  It’s a well done non-Japanese tokusatsu movie that makes me wish they were still internationally popular today.

Yet neither of these compare to the popularity of the Power Rangers franchise, an American adaptation of the Super Sentai series.  Like VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs, Power Rangers uses the footage from the series that it is based on and puts American stories around it.  Much of the action is the Japanese footage, from the robots fighting the monsters to many of the scenes where the Power Rangers fight the minions of the antagonist.  The show has been around for twenty years and has spawned two movies, with a third currently in the works.

Tokusatsu has had a big influence upon the film world since its inception and rise to prominence.  The influence can still be felt in Hollywood today, with Godzilla and Pacific Rim recently being released, and each of those movies getting sequels in the future.  It is a style that found its place in the entertainment culture and managed to remain there.  Through the many things it inspired, it has continued to breathe life into movies and television alike.

And with that, I give you notes:

• Here’s the post for Attack of the Super Monsters, since I wrote about it in this post as well.
• Two other superhero movies I watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies were Superbabies and Metal Man.
• I’ve been watching Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on my other blog and thought I would link to that here.
• Have you seen any of the Japanese movies using the tokusatsu style?  Have you seen adaptations of the style from other countries?  How do you feel about them?  Tell me in the comments.
• If you have suggestions for movies that I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, put them in the comments or contact me on Twitter.  I’m going to be getting the next part of the schedule together pretty soon.