I make no claims as to my familiarity with Japanese superhero shows. I watched Power Rangers sparingly at best when I was a kid, and even then only for that one Asian girl who played the Yellow Ranger and is dead now. But one show, in nineteen minutes and nine seconds, has enamored me with the genre. What miraculous program, you ask, could do such a thing? Its hallowed name is but two words, two syllables, lavish in its elegant simplicity: God Man.
God Man's pilot opens in a fairly standard manner, with the title and an opening sequence set to a song. Yet almost immediately one comes to appreciate God Man's deviations from the pedestrian, the little touches that set God Man in a category of its own. First of all, where a less inspired director might get an actual singer to record a catchy tune with pop elements, the daring innovators behind God Man substitute a middle-aged man with no vocal training and a rather nasty head cold. Second, where most superheroes are shown beating up bad guys and performing other tasks generally associated with superheroes in their openings, God Man is shown getting his ass unremittedly beaten down. Even his special attacks are shown having no discernible effect other than to make the enemies, who resemble zombies at a rave, run back and forth a little. But the magic of God Man is just beginning.
The episode proper begins with a group of Japanese children, one of whom is inexplicably wearing Groucho glasses, engaging in the type of simulated murder that would make various media watchdog groups recoil in horror, wet their panties and call Jack Thompson, all at once. Their stick-fighting hedonism is interrupted when, in an explosion one of the studio's employees played on his son's NES, a rejected prop from ABC's Dinosaurs (with white stuff, the origin of which I will not speculate about, on its upper lip) appears and starts to stumble forward in the manner of a drunkard. The children, intimidated by the rejected prop's shoddy worksmanship, run and scream for God Man's eponymous hero. In a strange twist of the Doppler effect, all of the kids successfully project their voices directly behind the camera.
There are certain heroes so iconic, so embedded in our culture that elements of their appearance become inextricable parts of our lexicon. Indiana Jones's fedora and whip. The Terminator's sunglasses and leather jacket. Today, they are joined by God Man, his ski visor, and the disembodied top of a totem pole. Anyway, God Man arrives and grows to the scale of the Dinosaurs prop (although really, it's impossible to tell that said prop is supposed to be any taller than six feet, until the fight moves to some fake houses several minutes later) with a stunning display of special effects that cements God Man's status as an artistically valuable indie production, as the effects budget was obviously ten dollars. Said display will also give small children epilepsy.
God Man heroically rushes the nefarious prop and proceeds to... kind of weakly clap it on the shoulders. Undeterred by the total failure of his assault to do anything, he proceeds to torpidly slap, kick and shove at his foe, while a man in the dubbing studio blows on the microphone. Although his attacks are obviously having no effect at all, and he is getting repeatedly thrown on the ground and into one of the walls at an indoor rock climbing center, God Man perseveres, in the style of the classic heroes. He perseveres for two minutes before the opening sequence, with its beautifully simple chorus of "SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS," replays to punctuate the action.
We return to find God Man and his enemy sharing an intimate moment. For ten glorious seconds, the two rivals put aside their differences and embrace, rocking back and forth as they contemplate the circumstances that set them against each other, for only one to emerge alive. Their rumination comes to an abrupt end as they break away from each other, somber in the knowledge that it had to be this way. God Man continues his half-hearted assault, and the director introduces a brilliant moment of moral ambiguity as our ostensible hero is shown hitting a foe who is looking away from him and is obviously disoriented. God Man's dishonorable tactics force the viewer to ask himself whom among these two is truly the god, and who the devil.
Following another repeat of the opening sequence, God Man throws himself upon his enemy again and engages in a brief moment of passion. Yet he is rejected, indicating his foe's conviction that their differences are, regrettably, irreconcilable. Another two minutes of expertly choreographed "drunken-style" fighting commence before the Dinosaurs prop throws God Man down and turns to run, contempt and loathing for this pointless conflict evident in his wide, unblinking eyes. Yet God Man, in his rejection-driven bloodlust, will not let matters end so simply, and attacks his fleeing foe, reinforcing the sense of moral ambiguity established earlier. Yet he is thrown to the ground again--multiple times--and, realizing that he is outclassed, brings out the first of his many trump cards.
A sound effect ripped from a '30s Looney Tunes cartoon heralds the rather sudden appearance of God Man's mace, with which he strikes his foe from behind as it approaches a model railroad's town. Of course, his mace proves as ineffectual as his hand-to-hand fighting; it fails even to faze its owner when it ricochets and strikes him in the knee. The music changes to nineteenth-century ballroom fare as God Man continues his utterly pointless attack.
Unfortunately, when I came to write the remainder of this review, I found that the God Man pilot had been removed from Youtube. But really, most of the rest of the episode consisted of reused footage from earlier in the battle, a cinematic technique that would later be extensively used in the popular Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED DESTINY. (Fortunately, the Godman opening remains on Youtube.) So I leave you, dear reader, with this close-up of God Man's heroic visage.
