Zebraman 2 viewed. now where's my tokusatsu merchandise???

So I finally cracked and watched the zebraman 2 film. For those not familiar with Zebraman, its an awesome Tokusatsu film by fav director, Takashi_Miike. First film got good ratings on both the tomato meter and on IMDB. No word if a U.S. dvd release for the 2nd film will occur anytime soon so I'll have to settle for the original RAW dvd. Too bad no one's fansubbed it yet. Guess it'll be at least another few months(hopefully??) before I can really appreciate the takashi miike jokes and dialog. Regardless, I totally cracked and watched it; not sure if a subbed dialog will change my views, but until I have it(or improve my translation skill^^;...so behind studies), I won't give a review or anything til then.

If I had to give an impression right now, I'd say that Zebraman 2 is alot like Iron Man 2: Entertaining, but not as charming as the first one. Not that its bad or anything, I still enjoyed viewing what I did see. With that said, I'd like to say that despite being a toksatsu ZEBRA hero, I'm totally diggin the designs. I liked the designs from the first film and Zebraman 2 totally stepped up for the costume design. Remember, when you were a kid watching bad batman films,but thought the batsuits were so badass? Nevermind batnipples and the lame script or any of the other semantics-the thought was, "cool superhero costume." A grown man dressed as a zebra themed hero can't be worse than a man dressed as a bat. Cool is cool. And I think Zebraman is effin BOSS.


With Japan's very big Toksatsu genre from kamen rider,godzilla, to numerous others, there's been tons of great merchandise. from statues,busts,RAHs, Bandai released figures and more, I have one question: WHERE'S THE ZEBRAMAN MERCHANDISE?? For anyone who's a kamen rider fan and collects figures, you know what the designs are and how that translates to figures. Look at the design of a recent kamen rider, Ryuki(or Dragon Knight for the U.S.)



This is the overall basic design of Ryuki.Not bad. Now look at another design of Ryuki from The SIC line...



Similar,but more detailed. I personally prefer this look.

Thats what Zebraman 2 did to the look of the first Zebraman designs. Below is the only merchandise of Zebraman I could locate. Very impressive indeed. Very detailed. Think of the possibilities with a figure!! Hell, even Batman and Spiderman got the SIC treatment.(yeah, they're bigger than zebraman,but dammit, they already got tons of merchandise.)










Anyways, if anyone knows of any additional merchandise for zebraman, let a guy know! We'll finish up with some trailers from the films and some pics.Enjoy and if you're interested and haven't seen it, check it out ^^. Til next post.


P.S. - Happy Lunar New Year! year of the Rabbit yo.

Kamen Rider Ryuki pictures from HobbySearch
Zebraman bust pictures from GunJap blog
Zebraman film pictures from Gonin Movie Blog