Zone Fighter (1973)

Zone Fight Power!

While I do ultimately feel that Zone Fighter is nothing more than an attempt by Toho to cash in on Tsuburaya Production's territory, Zone Fighter eventually manages to do enough to stand out amongst the seemingly endless surplus of Ultra shows with its family of superhero's dynamic plus some memorable guest stars in the form of Godzilla and company.

The evil Garogas plan to take over Earth with their army of giant Terror-Beasts. They are opposed by the Zone Family, hailing from a planet called Peaceland that the Garogas destroyed. The family uses a variety of exotic vehicles and weapons. Still, their best defence against Garogas is their oldest child Hikaru, who is able to transform into the giant Zone Fighter.

The problem with Zone Fighter comes a lot from the tone, less so the production. It's a show that gets confused often as to what it wants to be. Some episodes are great, others border on unwatchable. It's a series Toho isn't especially proud of and director Jun Fukuda when asked about the show in interviews refused to even comment on its existence. Not really a good sign for the show in general.

The visual effects work stands up quite well for the most part with a multitude of different talents lending themselves to the series. Teruyoshi Nakano for 10 of the 26 episodes. Koichi Kawakita for 8. Yoshio Tabuchi for 6. Shinichi Kamisawa, who also wrote for the series, 2 episodes a piece. The direction is hit or miss, the ones directed by either Ishirō Honda or Jun Fukuda tend to be the more interesting ones and there are even two later episodes directed by Kōhei Oguri of House fame. So the show is hardly lacking in the visual department.

Further problems stem more from its writing and characters than anything else. At times juvenile and childish other times dark and sinister, the more childlike episodes stick out a lot more, it doesn't help one of the main characters is a child and his friends make frequent appearances with some godawful child acting to boot. Kazuya Aoyama, later appearing in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, as the titular Zone Fighter does pretty much carry the show for the most part alongside Shiro Amakusa even if his role is massively reduced to that of a mentor. The rest of the characters, especially the villains are very give or take.

The music by Go Misawa is fine overall, the main theme "Zone Fighter" and the insert song "Meteor Victory" however, are massive earworms that won't leave you alone no matter how hard you try to erase them. There's a large usage of horns and brass present throughout and it can get overwhelming at points.

What really got me interested was Zone Fighter's presence in the Shōwa era Godzilla timeline, taking place after vs. Megalon but before vs. Mechagodzilla. It features the likes of Godzilla himself, King Ghidorah making an appearance in two episodes duking it out with Zone Fighter and not Godzilla and ultimately remains the only monster to not be killed by either in the show and finally the final appearance of Shōwa era Gigan. What happens to Gigan in this is almost unacceptable in terms of how he's defeated by the villain's incompetence more than the abilities of Godzilla or Zone Fighter. My poor boy.

Zone Fighter is a very real oddity of Shōwa Godzilla. It doesn't utilise its unique selling point to its full potential, as the show always ensures that Hikaru remains front and centre as its main hero. As much as it would like to reassure you that Zone Angel and Zone Junior are a key part of the show, ultimately it's always Hikaru that saves the day whilst Angel and Junior are acting as support. It's a shame because the glimpses you see of these supporting characters taking centre stage show you exactly just how remarkable Zone Fighter could have been but it seems to have been destined to end on an unresolved cliffhanger which I imagine Toho have no intention of ending.

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