When Toku first launched in 2017, it seemed like a cruel joke: an obscure cable channel broadcasting Ultraman shows never before available in English. Each new season they acquired was accompanied by a triumphant press release... and each failed to turn up anywhere online. But 2018 brought the launch of a Toku streaming service, along with the acquisition of several older Ultra Series that Crunchyroll lost the rights to. I signed up in October during their $1.99-a-month-for-9-months sale, and promptly discovered a tokusatsu film they hadn't announced: Minoru Kawasaki's Outerman (2015).
Outerman passed the English-speaking tokusatsu fandom by; you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who talked about it besides the omnipotent Kevin Derendorf. Given Kawasaki's previous works in the genre and its lack of subtitles until now, this is not terribly surprising. Here's the real surprise: Outerman is a fine-tuned Ultraman parody, overcoming rickety production values with a clever premise that never loses steam.
Here's the short of it: after fifty years on the air, a real Outerman shows up in Japan one day to the delight of the populace. He promises to "change this environment to be one as great as Planet Outer's," which the government soon learns is connected to all those recent reports of earthquakes and poisonous gas. Earth is just the latest planet to be targeted by the Outermen for terraforming and conquest; they themselves gave the idea for the show to a legendary special effects director in order to soften our defenses. Who could open fire on their childhood hero?
Humanity's last hope is a Silbee alien named Talba. The Silbee are the Outermen's arch-nemesis on the show, while in reality they're just another civilization they drove to the brink of extinction. Talba must fuse with three people with zero love for Outerman to gain enough power to match the faux-hero, and finds them in out-of-work actors Hideki Yoshino, Haruo Adachi, and Koichi Moriwaki, who all became typecast after they played Heisei-era Outerman hosts. His other allies include three Outerman otaku who've watched every episode of the show, and young Hiroshi, already the fictional Silbee's biggest fan.
Outerman's best quality is its sincerity, embracing the camaraderie and old-fashioned heroism of the Ultra Series even as it turns its superheroes into supervillains. Hatred of Outerman alone isn't enough to make Talba and the three actors defenders of the Earth. It takes meeting Hiroshi to give the nomad Talba a cause worth fighting for, and his efforts inspire the jaded actors in turn. The film also examines how heavily this one series has influenced Japanese culture. Even as they plot against Outerman, a scientist reflects on how the show inspired his career path, and a tough-guy soldier tells Talba how much Silbee used to scare him as a kid. All of the ex-Outerman actors are played by ex-Kamen Rider and Super Sentai stars (Junki Tozuka, Shun Shioya, and Yasuhisa Furuhara, respectively), which adds an extra layer to their only-famous-for-roles-they-did-years-ago purgatory. Best of all, Outerman ends with a riff on the narration from the Ultra Seven episode "The Targeted Town": "Of course, this is a story of fiction. You wonder why? A tokusatsu series that is loved by people for 50 years never exists in the real world." The Ultra Series celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2016.
The final fight falters somewhat; Kawasaki reuses footage from the televised Outerman/Silbee battle from the beginning of the film, which comes across as laziness instead of blurring the lines between fiction and reality. The revelation the otaku learn from rewatching the Outer Series is also a bit lame. But we care about the characters and their struggle, and that counts for a lot. I can't believe I'm making this comparison, but Outerman follows in the footsteps of Ishiro Honda and Shusuke Kaneko in portraying ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. In Kawasaki's other tokusatsu movies, the monsters are less outlandish than the humans. If not for a few signature touches, like a montage of TV programs, merchandise from his previous films in the background, and veteran Ultra Series actors galore, I wouldn't have ever guessed he directed Outerman! It's focused, the comedy comes naturally, and it'll make your believe in wandering alien heroes again.
★★★★/★★★★★
Outerman's best quality is its sincerity, embracing the camaraderie and old-fashioned heroism of the Ultra Series even as it turns its superheroes into supervillains. Hatred of Outerman alone isn't enough to make Talba and the three actors defenders of the Earth. It takes meeting Hiroshi to give the nomad Talba a cause worth fighting for, and his efforts inspire the jaded actors in turn. The film also examines how heavily this one series has influenced Japanese culture. Even as they plot against Outerman, a scientist reflects on how the show inspired his career path, and a tough-guy soldier tells Talba how much Silbee used to scare him as a kid. All of the ex-Outerman actors are played by ex-Kamen Rider and Super Sentai stars (Junki Tozuka, Shun Shioya, and Yasuhisa Furuhara, respectively), which adds an extra layer to their only-famous-for-roles-they-did-years-ago purgatory. Best of all, Outerman ends with a riff on the narration from the Ultra Seven episode "The Targeted Town": "Of course, this is a story of fiction. You wonder why? A tokusatsu series that is loved by people for 50 years never exists in the real world." The Ultra Series celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2016.
The final fight falters somewhat; Kawasaki reuses footage from the televised Outerman/Silbee battle from the beginning of the film, which comes across as laziness instead of blurring the lines between fiction and reality. The revelation the otaku learn from rewatching the Outer Series is also a bit lame. But we care about the characters and their struggle, and that counts for a lot. I can't believe I'm making this comparison, but Outerman follows in the footsteps of Ishiro Honda and Shusuke Kaneko in portraying ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. In Kawasaki's other tokusatsu movies, the monsters are less outlandish than the humans. If not for a few signature touches, like a montage of TV programs, merchandise from his previous films in the background, and veteran Ultra Series actors galore, I wouldn't have ever guessed he directed Outerman! It's focused, the comedy comes naturally, and it'll make your believe in wandering alien heroes again.
★★★★/★★★★★
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