With Zebraman, Takashi Miike makes something that feels shockingly close to a family film. There are a couple of implied seedy moments (Miike usually implies very little in his various other non-family-friendly movies), and some kind of gooey sci-fi violence, but it's all a great deal less extreme than what I'm used to seeing from the director.
I also feel like it's aged accidentally well, considering it's set in 2010, and that was a time when superhero movies were really taking off. That being said, it does intentionally harken back to Japanese TV from the 1970s, rather than parodying Western superhero movies, but it's still something that makes the movie a little more interesting.
It's got its clunky moments and some repetitive scenes, but it's mostly a good blend of absurd comedy and cartoonish action, alongside telling a story that's kind of about a midlife crisis. A man adopts the persona of a superhero from an old show he used to watch, and just so happens to do so around the same time various threats "prophesized" in said show start happening in real life. It's creative and fairly well done. It's also probably an acquired taste, but it worked for me more often than it didn't.
I also feel like it's aged accidentally well, considering it's set in 2010, and that was a time when superhero movies were really taking off. That being said, it does intentionally harken back to Japanese TV from the 1970s, rather than parodying Western superhero movies, but it's still something that makes the movie a little more interesting.
It's got its clunky moments and some repetitive scenes, but it's mostly a good blend of absurd comedy and cartoonish action, alongside telling a story that's kind of about a midlife crisis. A man adopts the persona of a superhero from an old show he used to watch, and just so happens to do so around the same time various threats "prophesized" in said show start happening in real life. It's creative and fairly well done. It's also probably an acquired taste, but it worked for me more often than it didn't.