The Skull Soldier (1992)

directed by Masaki Kyômoto

Japan

90 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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I only found out that this movie exists just last night and I was very surprised that I hadn't already seen it - me, who has seen every Tsuburaya production that's been subtitled, and several that haven't. The Skull Soldier came out during that long stretch between 1980 and 1996 where there was no Ultra series on the air, so although the franchise was still massively popular and remained in the public eye, Tsuburaya was not currently attached to the series that is by far its best-known creation. The protagonist was obviously designed by Keita Amemiya, and as a whole this film feels very much like it's trying to capitalize on the previous year's Zeiram and move away from more recognizable hero tropes towards a darker, more adult atmosphere. Mostly, it doesn't succeed at doing that, or at much of anything else; this is not a very good movie. But it is a rare one for the Tsupro diehards out there.

Within literally thirty seconds of starting the movie I began to get a bit of an inkling as to why this is not as well-known as the studio's other work. The whole film isn't like this, but the opening two minutes are dangerously close to pretty much softcore porn. Seeing this from Tsuburaya, a studio whose output has overwhelmingly been geared towards children, was, uh... jarring, to say the least. The explicit scenes towards the beginning of the film reinforce what feels, overall, like an overtly obvious attempt by a studio known for its tamer fare to reinvent itself. I don't feel like this artificial division between children's media and media aimed towards adults is at all necessary, and I'm especially surprised to see it from a studio like Tsuburaya, because the early Ultra series were full of incredibly complex, sometimes very emotionally distressing stories and imagery, and those shows have always been marketed at kids. So coming out with this film and putting boobs and gore in it just to make clear that it's not for kids kind of feels like overcompensating when I know the studio is capable of and has done better.

The film itself is about a young man, Narumi, who has created a new identity for himself through which he pursues revenge against the people who killed his sister. His sister was targeted by some bad guys who were involved somehow with an experimental scientific program that spawned an artificial hormone which had the effect of making bones stronger, giving skin the ability to heal faster, and in general creating supersoldiers - at a cost. If the recipient doesn't take an injection of the hormone every sixteen hours, they begin to experience grotesque side-effects that eventually lead to death. Narumi's not a bad guy but he is a fake lawyer - by day, he's mild-mannered, unassuming, just wants his client's money back, please and thank you. But secretly, he's taken advantage of his own dosage with the Skull Soldier hormone to become an armored fighter bent on personal revenge, if not actual justice. I'm not entirely clear on how or why Narumi's sister ran afoul of the people who ended up killing her or why they had such a grudge against Narumi himself that they tried to kill him too. You mostly don't need to worry about the plot too much. The overall aesthetic felt much more important to me than the storyline.

Apart from the opening scene, the next thing that surprised me about this film is that there's a ton of gay and trans characters in it. Now... this is not "good" representation; these characters are meant as comic relief and the whole reason they're there is kind of to show that Narumi has become a bit of an outcast in society and thus he hangs around all these supposed freaks and weirdos. Coarse, derogatory language gets thrown around a lot. But when the crew of Narumi's friends is around each other, there's a back-and-forth that feels remarkably less degrading than a lot of depictions of LGBTQ+ people I see in tokusatsu. Two of Narumi's friends are an older gay couple and towards the end of the film one of them pretty unambiguously comes out as a trans woman. ("Now isn't the time to talk about these things!" is as much commentary as that gets.) Talk about going to a sex change clinic is thrown around as casually as if people were talking about buying a new outfit. It's all done as a joke and this really, really isn't a fair or respectful way to depict gay/trans people onscreen, but just the sheer fact that there are gay and trans people in this and they aren't villains and they don't get killed... it was nice.

Actually, the whole movie has this very subtle trans vibe that I probably can't explain because I'm probably just imagining it. But I mean, there's the obvious element of the protagonist literally being on hormones, and then there's the way that his taking hormones leads directly to his appearance changing, that he has this secret identity where he has more power and freedom than in his normal, fake-lawyer public life. His main rival is also somewhat outside the gender binary, putting on his sister's lipstick and nail polish to prepare for the final battle. This is the kind of thing where, if I found out that the writer or director came out as trans sometime after making the film, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

So, like I said, the bit parts, the small side characters, are really the best part of The Skull Soldier. Personally, I watched this because Kenji Ushio is in it, and he's actually one of the most interesting characters in the whole film - in fact, I think he's a little too interesting from an objective standpoint, because wanting to know his backstory and why he was the way he was took away from wanting to know the same things about the guy who was supposed to be the protagonist. I don't even really know how to describe his character, Gaja. He happened upon Narumi half-drowned and dying and saved his life and then sometime after that they both decided he would be Narumi's sidekick. He drives Narumi around and deals with angry debtors and is even willing (with bulletproof plates, fortunately) to jump into the literal line of fire for him. He doesn't speak, and wears a very dapper old-fashioned suit with top hat at all times. Where he came from or what he was doing before he encountered Narumi is never explained. The way I'm describing him makes him sound not too out of the ordinary in terms of your perennial superhero butler type, but in the movie he really does have this vibe of being a much bigger deal than his role required. This could very well just be because I know he's Kenji Ushio under some godawful prosthetics. Anybody else in the role probably would not have given it such gravitas. Despite not having any spoken lines he brings that character to life surprisingly well.

So this is not a very good movie. Everybody seems to agree on this fact, based on reviews I'm reading, but everybody also seems to agree that they like it. I particularly agree with the review that says "This is so idiotic. There should be like five more of these movies". The Skull Soldier suit is essentially the only area of the film that's aesthetically interesting, the rest is generic, grimy, concrete-jungle-at-night atmosphere that you could find in any other movie. There's a sort of half-baked side story about Narumi's ex-boss from when he was a cop and it was so unimportant and boring that I actually forgot, until reading reviews reminded me, that there was cop stuff in this movie at all (although I do appreciate the way every character who eventually ends up fighting for good has to quit being a cop before they can do that). I would not recommend this for anything other than 90 minutes of fun, unless you're like me and trying to watch every single thing Tsuburaya Productions has ever done, and even then, watch at your own discretion.