Thoughts on Toho’s ZONE FIGHTER (1973)
Over a decade ago, in my overview of the Shōwa-era Godzilla movies, I mentioned that Toho produced a short-lived TV series known as Zone Fighter in which Godzilla, King Ghidorah, and Gigan made guest appearances, making it officially part of the Shōwa Godzilla continuity. I didn’t feel inclined to check it out then, but in subsequent years I’ve gotten much more invested in Japanese tokusatsu TV, so I finally got curious enough to check it out and fill in this gap in my Godzilla review series.
Zone Fighter is the English title for the series, whose real name is Ryūsei Ningen Zōn (usually translated as Zone the Meteor Man, although Ryūsei Ningen is used in insert song lyrics as an epithet for all three heroes individually, so I think the title is meant to be collective). It was Toho’s attempt at a knockoff of the popular Ultraman franchise from Tsuburaya Studios, which was founded by Eiji Tsuburaya, the co-creator of Godzilla and the father of the tokusatsu (special-effects) genre. It was also inspired by the popularity of Henshin Hero (Transforming Hero) series such as Kamen Rider, which had debuted two years earlier. Thus, it blended both human-scale and giant superhero action. Most toku series run for an entire year, around 50 episodes give or take, telling a complete story ending with the villains all killed off (or occasionally redeemed) and the heroes resuming a peaceful life. However, Zone Fighter was unsuccessful and was cancelled after 26 episodes, without a proper finale.
The series centers on the Zone Family, actually called that in English, Zōn Famirii instead of kazoku. They’re a family of refugees from the planet Peaceland (also in English, like most of the terminology used here and in similar shows), which was destroyed by the Garoga, an army of ruthless bug-eyed monsters with buckteeth and long floppy antennae, now bent on destroying Earth as well. The Zones have settled on Earth as the Sakimori family, three of whom can call out “Zone Fight Power!” (with a three-step arm move similar to Kamen Riders’ henshin poses) to transform into masked heroes in leotards, silver helmets, and balaclava-like veil-masks: 18-year-old brother Hikaru/Zone Fighter (Kazuya Aoyama as Hikaru, Tatsumi Nikamoto as ZF), 15/16-year-old sister Hotaru/Zone Angel (Kazumi Kitahara), and 7-year-old brother Akira/Zone Junior (Kenji Sato). They’re assisted by their parents Yoichiro/Zone Father (Shoji Nakayama) and Tsukiko/Zone Mother (Sachiko Kouizuki) and their pipe-smoking grandfather Raita/Zone Great (Shiro Amakusa), who don’t transform but assist with the technology in their secret basement — or at least Zone Father and Zone Great do, while Zone Mother is a typical middle-aged housewife. (The family is entirely assimilated into Japanese culture despite being nominally aliens.) There’s a hotheaded human ally introduced in episode 2, Takeru Jou (Hideaki Obara), who deduces the existence of the Garogas and knows the Sakimoris are opposed to them, but somehow doesn’t realize they’re also the Zone heroes. It’s typical of toku in that the heroes’ identities are secret to their allies but fully known to their enemies, which always seems quite backward to me. (The Sakimoris’ home is protected from Garoga attack by a force-field “Photon Barrier.”)
Zone Fighter, uniquely among the family, can also transform into a giant warrior by doing a different henshin pose (genuflecting with arms out to the sides) and calling “Zone Double Fight!” The giant ZF is a blatant Ultraman clone, right down to having a blue light on his body that blinks red when he runs low on power. (His suit actor, Kin’ichi Kusumi, played various Tsuburaya giant heroes including Mirrorman, Redman, and Ultraman Leo’s brother Astra, while the suit actor for the human-sized Zone Fighter, Tatsumi Nikamoto, played Ultraman Leo.) Unlike most Ultras, though, ZF has his family on hand to recharge him. In the first episode and the last half-dozen, Zones Angel and Junior board a flying craft called Smokey (because it’s concealed in a cloud when not in use) and launch a power capsule that ZF swaps out with the one in his helmet crest/horn; in between, it’s simplified to ZA and ZJ firing recharging beams from their own helmet crystals or from Smokey (though the maneuver is still called Zone Marker Change). I think they brought back the capsule version since it creates more suspense when the kaiju run interference to prevent Smokey from getting into range for the swap. In one case, when ZF was in space engaging King Ghidorah, Zone Great teleported the photon crystal that powered their home’s defensive shield to recharge ZF, but it turned out to be a ruse so that the Garoga could take them captive while ZF was away.
It’s never explained what the source of the Zones’ power is, beyond the implication that it’s connected to Peaceland’s advanced technology. In that case, though, it’s unclear why the collective population of Peaceland was unable to save their planet from being destroyed by the Garoga when a single Peacelandian family is able to defeat the Garoga’s schemes against Earth on a weekly basis.
Godzilla shows up four different times over the 26 episodes, assisting ZF when things get tough. The Zones are aware of his presence and occasionally just decide to call him for help, using pocket-sized robots called Zobots that they use to send recorded voice messages like rocket-propelled carrier pigeons, which seems pointless given that they can also be used as radios. Apparently, sometime between Godzilla vs. Gigan and this, Godzilla relocated from Monster Island to a cave near Tokyo (complete with a sliding door in the entrance, somehow), so he can arrive promptly when summoned. As for King Ghidorah and Gigan, they’re simply depicted as part of the Garogas’ contingent of Kyoju (Terror-Beasts), the kaiju that the Garogas keep on hand in their space station and launch to Earth in rocket capsules, even though the other Kyoju are the Garogas’ own creations. This is consistent with how KG and Gigan had been portrayed in the previous several movies, as monsters under the control of one group of invading aliens or another. Zone Fighter’s battle with King Ghidorah in episodes 5-6 ends with the three-headed dragon retreating for good, since he still needs to be alive in Destroy All Monsters, the chronologically last story in the Shōwa continuity. But Gigan meets his final fate at Zone Fighter’s hands (well, first Godzilla’s and then ZF’s, since apparently Gigan has the ninja power of resurrection, so ZF has to kill him more decisively after Godzilla wanders off).
What’s surprising about Godzilla’s first two appearances is how casually they’re treated. The episodes mention him in their titles and previews, but otherwise his appearances aren’t presented with any sense of occasion; he’s simply another weapon in the Zones’ arsenal to be called on when ZF is in a pinch. The third Godzilla episode does better, opening with a training scene between Zone Fighter and Godzilla, and introducing him with more ceremony later on by showing Goji emerging from his cave and running to ZF’s rescue, then coordinating with him in the fight as a full partner.
The original kaiju in the rest of the series are mostly quite freaky and imaginative designs, though a bit crude in construction, as many TV kaiju in the Showa era tended to be. Godzilla and the others seem a bit drab in comparison to their garish weirdness. Otherwise, though, I’m not too impressed by the show’s production values. A number of episodes, including those directed by Jun Fukuda (director of Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, Son of Godzilla, G vs. Gigan, G vs. Megalon, and G vs. Mechagodzilla), have cluttered, unclear fight scenes on both scales, with clumsy camera work and jerky cuts obscuring the action, and sometimes with dim lighting as well. Fukuda does six episodes in all, including the first two, while eight are directed by Godzilla’s co-creator and original director Ishiro Honda.
Sometimes the show gets pretty weird and silly. The giant battle in episode 13 features a combat move that’s both incredibly dumb and kind of clever at the same time. While battling an electrically charged monster he can’t touch, the giant Zone Fighter tears a tree trunk out of the ground, yells “Ryuusei Static Power!,” and… rubs it back and forth under his armpit for 15-20 seconds to charge it with static electricity, using it to short out the monster’s electric circuitry. So he came up with a creative (yet goofy) improvised attack, but he still felt the need to yell out a title for it (prefaced with “Ryuusei” like all his other giant-mode attacks). Then there was the Honda-directed 2-parter in episodes 18-19 where the Kyoju swallows a highly sensitive super-explosive, so ZF can’t hit it. So he tries to convince the monster to leave with a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors (which he wins handily because the monster’s flippers can only do “paper”), fencing with tree trunks, and a ring toss game, but the monster is a sore loser and refuses to go. In a jarring tonal shift, ZF ultimately defeats the monster quite brutally by blowing off its tail, arms, and head, which somehow doesn’t set off the explosive.
Zone Fighter has cheesy entertainment value if you have a taste for Shōwa-era tokusatsu, but I wouldn’t call it one of the better shows from that era. The best shows of the era sometimes had surprisingly thoughtful or character-driven stories or impressively stylish direction amid the cheesy silliness (particularly in the Ultraman franchise), but Zone Fighter is pretty by-the-numbers action with little character development and frequently mediocre execution. Indeed, the later episodes are often incoherent, with plot points forgotten mid-story and weird moments that seem like they were meant to be arty but just come off as nonsensical. It’s an interesting curiosity, but not much more.
