Yatterman


Title: Yatterman
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Action, Comedy
Starring: Shô Sakurai, Saki Fukuda, Kyôko Fukada, Katsuhisa Namase, Kendô Kobayashi
Director: Takeshi Miike
Language: Japanese

It would appear as though the director made famous for the likes of “Ichi the Killer” and “Gozu” - the certifiable master of creating chaos with a budget – has been given money to play around with. When most finally break into this category of actually having funds, they strive for a certain sense of realism; from “The Dark Knight” to “Pan's Labyrinth,” everything is normally worked to give this a dark and gritty sense of real danger to accentuate the impact of the story being told. And much like “The Dark Knight,” this too is a film borne from a 70s comic about a superhero relying on his intellect and striving to do what he can to thwart the evil that plagues the land, but when Miike does it he goes in completely the opposite direction.

Yatterman is comprised of mechanic extraordinaire Gan, or #1 to his enemies, (Sakurai) and his counterpart, the delightful sidekick Ai, predictably #2 to foes, (S. Fukuda) who work together with Gan's mechanical creations; Yatterwan the giant robot dog who when given a mecha-bone is able to give birth to a litter of mini-mecha (a different one each week!) and Gan's small robot Omotchama who runs on batteries and...actually doesn't really do a lot but float around the place and call Gan an idiot. With a secret lair deep underneath a...errr...toy store, they do battle with the evil Dorombo gang; Boyacky (Namase) the brains, Tonzuro (Kobayashi) the muscle and Doronjo (K. Fukuda) the boss you'd sleep with given half the chance. Operating under the order of the mysterious Lord of Thieves to steal the four skull stones, foretold to give the bearer of all of them when combined unimaginable power. With all of them scattered across the world, the first two discovered by an archaeologist killed for his discovery (though left one with his daughter, who finds herself under the care of Yatterman) the heroes and villains do battle in a race against time to find the stones.

From the very beginning its literally filled with intentionally fake looking CGI and bizarre mechanical incarnations amidst a brightly coloured backdrop that looks like what you'd expect if Tim Burton made a film about how he once got lost in Lazytown. On Acid. Foes jump out like something straight from a “Sonic the Hedgehog” comic – Robotnik's crazy contraptions included – with obvious disguises taken from the local joke shop, wielding giant utensils against #1's deadly ball-in-a-cup that delivers an electric shock if he yells the right phrase, and #2's sword, which is quite frankly the only slightly sensible weapon in the entire film. (Ketsuya Terada – a name I've yet to mention – deserves some serious commendation here for just how bizarre these character designs were, clearly having honed his skills since his last live-action anime film, the no less bizarre “Cutie Honey"). Cars are kicked around like footballs and clothes somehow take themselves off, turn inside out, then re-appear on their bodies. The losers grumble about how they seem to lose every week whilst the heroes crack jokes about how no matter how big the explosion they're in the middle of, they always seem to survive and come back for more, and just when you think it all couldn't get more ridiculously over the top, they do a musical number. Seriously.

The best way I can really describe it is as a film for young children that should not under any circumstances be considered suitable for anyone under the age of 12, which is oddly precisely the demographic he would need to hit. Unlike some children's films released long after their peak, the popular Yatterman anime stopped airing in the late 70s and has been forgotten by the younger generations since (not that I'm claiming to have known about it beforehand), and it acknowledges that its primary audience – those that remember the original – have long since grown up, and so the humour has matured into something altogether more adult whilst never denying it the whacky absurdity of the original; its self-parodical without being offensive to its predecessor; a worthy tribute to the original for its aging fans to reminisce over. It may be silly and childish beyond belief, but that's precisely what makes this retro-romp so much fun.

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