Juukou B-Fighter (1995-96)

directed by Shinichirō Sawai, Kaneharu Mitsumura, Tarō Sakamoto, Hidenori Ishida, Katsuya Watanabe, Osamu Kaneda 

Japan

1272 minutes (52 episodes, 1 movie)

4 stars out of 5

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The first handful of episodes of Juukou B-Fighter did not do much to endear it to me. Some toku series hit it out of the park right away and then stagnate in the middle, but others - like B-Fighter - take a minute to get into their groove. It's particularly egregious here for some reason, though - it almost feels like the series was rushed to get on the air, and the characters were written with a total lack of personality until the show had a more solid footing. I doubt that this was actually what happened, but for a few episodes you really do get the vibe that the show is just kind of putting itself out there unfinished. Fortunately, this wears off. 

The main cast of characters is made up of three partners, Takuya, Daisaku, and Mai (played by Daisuke Tsuchiya, Shigeru Kanai, and Chigusa Tomoe, respectively), who are gifted the ability to transform into armor-plated heroes by the collective power of the world's insect population, and their leader Professor Mukai (played by Takashi Sasano). There is a cast change after episode 19, when Reina Hazuki leaves and Tomoe Chigusa takes over the role of Reddle. What's interesting here is that even though Reddle's suit actress is the same for both characters, she develops an entirely new set of mannerisms and body language when it's supposed to be Mai in the suit.

As with the vast majority of tokusatsu, the villains are way cooler than the good guys, although the balance here is a lot more even than in, say, Super Sentai, where nearly every team (at least in the Showa series, which is mostly what I've seen) is, and I apologize for saying this, boring as hell. B-Fighter uses the typical setup of an extremely powerful leader - Gaohm - and their generals, in this case Schwartz, Jera, and Gigaro. Gigaro's a nothingburger, but Jera and Schwartz make up for it by being super cool in terms of design and personality, and I personally liked Schwartz a lot because I thought it was interesting that he's a computer virus ported into a humanoid body. (Schwartz' VA also puts in a little extra effort the way Reddle's suit actress does when Schwartz is upgraded mid-series and from that point on his voice fluctuates between deep and gravelly and his previous maniacal cackle.)

Far and away the best thing about this show is the character and creature design. Everything here looks so perfect. Some episodes are like a non-stop parade of incredibly awesome costumes. Unusually for a tokusatsu series, the "monster of the week" format is more like "monster of every couple of weeks", and this makes the ones we do get feel that much more special. Gaohm's generals deploy monsters regularly at first (and, like everything else, they are visually stunning to a one) but then that kinda dies off and B-Fighter is mostly either fighting the generals themselves or foiling various plots they've put into motion. I didn't realize immediately that the show had shifted away from the monster-focused format I've been so used to, and I enjoyed it a lot.

A big part of the plot towards the latter quarter of the show is Takuya's rivalry with his artificially-created twin, Black Beet. Gaohm uses Takuya's DNA to create a fighter who is a perfect clone of him, and Black Beet, being possessed of a fully-formed intelligence, struggles with his existence as a being inherently dependent on another being. He becomes obsessed with killing Takuya even though they are so closely linked that pain inflicted on Takuya becomes Black Beet's pain as well. In the end his pursuit of independence costs him his life, but really, that was the point - freedom in death, because freedom in life was impossible.

If there's anything I don't like about the show, it actually involves Takuya's fight with Black Beet. When Takuya first finds out Black Beet is his clone, he feels unworthy to be a B-Fighter and leaves the team for a while. The team is framed as being unable to continue without him; since they're not all together, they can't fight at full power. But in the finale, when the stakes are considerably higher (like, "Earth is actively being swallowed by a black hole" higher), Mai and Daisaku tell Takuya to go finish his battle with Black Beet while they save the entire Earth. If B-Fighter can't battle a bunch of monsters without having all its members assembled, how is it that they manage to destroy a black hole when they're one man down?

But that's the smallest of nitpicks for a show that is otherwise really stellar. I could go on much further about specific things that stuck out to me - Gaohm's existence as essentially a sentient cancer and his bitterness over being ignored fueling his apocalyptic rage, Guru's stunning suit acting, the villain infighting towards the end, the... uh... the mpreg episode... but I'll end my review here with a hearty recommendation that you check the series out. The whole thing is worth getting invested in just for the last two episodes, which constitute one of the best toku series finales I've seen thus far.