Recently I sat down with my younger brother and watched a few episodes of Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. I actually liked it more than I thought I would, and my brother felt the same; the characters were all fun, the dialogue was nice and cheesy, and the action both in and out of the Sentai footage was pretty good. I reminded me of how much I would love to see the West embrace tokusatsu as a genre in a world where superheroes come packaged with copius amounts of computer-rendered action. Power Rangers proves that there is demand for tokusatsu from audiences on this side of the world and I want to see more takes on it here.

Enter Guyver, a manga about a young man who gets his hands on a Bio-Boosted Armor and becomes an armored superhero. It got a couple anime adaptations in the form of an OVA series in 1986 as well as an anime series in 2005, and it has a small following of fans who its familiar superhero tropes of symbiotic organisms and armored heroes. A tokusatsu film was produced in 1991 that translated the premise into an American setting, and with it came American sensibilities such as the humor and the toning-in down of the dark themes and imagery. The film wasn't well received, but the costumes were fun and Mark Hamill played a character in it for some reason. I haven't watched this one, though, but going off of the faults that its sequel has I think I'm better off.

Personal Score

this criteria uses the DecentFilms rating formula.

Letter-Grade Recommendability: C-
Artistic/Entertainment Value - ★★☆☆☆
Moral/Spiritual Value - 0
Age Appropriateness: Teens & Up

The stuff I like about Guyver: Dark Hero I really do like, so let's start with the parts that were really lacking. The biggest sin of the movie is the soundtrack, which is so abysmal that it becomes noticeable: there cannot be more than three tracks in this movie, and the main theme is repeated constantly to the point of nausea. It actively brings down the weight of every scene, but that's not saying much because the cinematography is very rough, often times out of focus and without very good shots to present what is happening. Scenes linger a little too long, padding out for a two-hour runtime that really needed to be cut down. I dislike the excuse of budget, but I learned that this had a budget of less than $900k, which makes the incompetent cinematography on every level make more sense. Again, it's no excuse, especially considering the set production.

The story is equally as mediocre, involving the hero trying to learn the origin of the Guyver Units and through that his purpose. I don't remember the names of any of the characters, not even the name of the lead. There is some awful acting in this movie with no one doing a particularly good job; Hayter is arguably the best, but whether that's because he's the lead is up for debate. It's amusing that Hayter would later go on to become the iconic voice actor for Solid Snake, because this was not a good showcase of anyone's acting chops.

What does get a good showcase here, though, is the sets. This is where the movie finally gets to shine, with everything else feeling like mediocre filler to turn these action scenes into a feature film. The costumes are beautifully made with great practical effects: steam hisses from Guyver's mask, his eyes glow in the dark, and his design in general is extremely cool. The other monsters aren't nearly as memorable, but they also look good with nice detail and would not look out of place as monsters of the week for someone like Kamen Rider. This is all complemented with the action that really puts these suits through the ringer, tossing them around roughly and exposing them to a myriad of elements that feel like they should eviscerate the costumes but don't. Rewatching it last night thoroughly impressed me in that department, and I enjoyed these scenes a lot.

That's really the only thing you should watch this movie for. If you are willing to put up with some serious B-movie material that occasionally pulls out some prime tokusatsu action, then you'll enjoy this movie. I hope that one day someone follows in this movie's footsteps and makes a good story to compliment a tokusatsu format; who knows, maybe the upcoming Disney reboot of Power Rangers will try to tackle this niche (but most likely not).