martin

The Golden Bat

I'm not super deeply familiar with The Golden Bat franchise. I've read some of the kamishibai, seen a few episodes of the anime in Japanese, Italian (I think it's pretty popular in Italy), and Korean (some of the people I've spoken with in Korea have told me he's a Korean superhero, not Japanese), and read a bit of the different iterations of the manga. And seen this movie a couple of times. But that's about it, I think. I don't really feel any connection with the character, though I kind of want to, cause the idea of a superhero from 1930 is cool as hell.  I rewatched the movie because I've been mentioning the kamishibai in class a lot recently, plus been kind of preparing to check out the recently found 1970s Golden Bat comedy.  This 1966 tokusatsu is just so fun and cheesy. It has all the ingredients of a good Cold War-era science fiction for kids. There are the scientists that hold the future of the world in their hands, the secret organizations (here, they're more like a secret wing of the UN), the thinly veiled foreign threat, the superhero that fights it and saves the day. Plus everything that makes Golden Bat an interesting franchize - the titular hero who laughs maniacally and the weird looking Nazo and his creepy underlings.  What struck me on this rewatch was how didactic this movie is. It feels much more than most of the tokusatsu I've seen recently, which is just a bit annoying, because I don't really want my flying skeleton superheroes teaching me some patriotic crap. Luckily, this overly direct messaging is only at the very end and it doesn't really stop the movie from being a good time. It feels like a long episode of a TV show, the special effects are mostly not amazing, the costumes are even less amazing, but just the right kind of not amazing to be endearing.