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Zebraman (2004)
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Comic writer and author Frank Martin joins the show to discuss the Japanese superhero film, Zebraman! Directed by Takashi Miike, this is part-satire, part-homage of Japanese tokusatsu superhero fare like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai.
Visit Frank's website to find out about his works
Want to tell us what you think? Have any questions or comments for Perry about superheroes in media or comics? Leave a voice message to play on the show. You can also apply to be a guest on the show.
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This episode is brought to you by BlendJet. Use my special link, zen.ai/supercinemapod12, to save 12% at blendjet.com. The discount will be applied at checkout!
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Transcript
Commitment to Healthier Eating
00:00:02
Speaker
I'm not as young as I used to be, which means I can't treat my body the way I once did. In fact, last year's medical checkup didn't turn out the best, so I decided I needed to change things up and start eating healthier.
Smoothie Making Challenges
00:00:13
Speaker
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00:01:52
Speaker
I want you to be a part of the world. I want you to be a part of the world. I want you to be a part of the world. I want you to be a part of the world. I want you to be a part of the world.
Meet Frank Martin
00:02:24
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and welcoming today a new guest and a fellow writer, and that is Frank Martin. Frank, how are you doing today? I'm doing fabulous. How are you? I'm doing good. So why don't you tell the audience, I should say, a little bit about yourself.
00:02:43
Speaker
I'm a writer and I don't really specify that because I write a little bit of everything. Novels, short stories, write a lot of comics. Currently I bounce all over the place, but currently I am doing my first romantic comedy, like a sex comedy. It's live on Kickstarter, but I love everything. Sci-fi, horror, fantasy, crime. I'm just a lover of writing and stories. So storytelling is my jam.
00:03:08
Speaker
Is there anything in particular you'd like to tell the audience about? Anything that they may have heard of?
Frank Martin's Writing Journey
00:03:15
Speaker
Anything that I've written? I mean, I've written a whole bunch of stuff. Modern Testament was my first series. It was kind of an anthology series focused on urban fantasy, biblical mythology. But I've done The Last Homicide, which was Crime Noir, The Polar Paradox, which is sci-fi adventure. And now I'm venturing into kind of the comedic area with Sex Night, which is the sex comedy book I have now.
00:03:38
Speaker
Okay, awesome. Cool. Yeah, I'm a urban fantasy author myself. Just got in fact, my my latest one is about to be published. Probably by the end of this month is what we're looking at for that. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's number 31.
The Appeal of Superheroes
00:03:54
Speaker
Now I think I'm not sure I lose count. No, they just they all blend together. Yeah, yeah.
00:04:02
Speaker
So, you know, this is a movie about this is a show about superhero movies. So how did you get interested in superheroes?
00:04:10
Speaker
I think like most kids we kind of were spoon-fed superheroes because they were they were light and fun and fantastical but yeah as you get older that love of superheroes sticks with you but you realize they're so multi-dimensional there's just not one there's not that kitty aspect of the spider-man cartoons that you love growing up
00:04:32
Speaker
There's dark superheroes. There's hopeful superheroes. There's character-driven superheroes. Those are romantic superheroes.
Genres in Superhero Realm
00:04:40
Speaker
So understanding all of that is important to loving the genre that I've kind of carried through.
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's all well said. I mean, I think that's one of the things that I've really liked about doing this show is going back and seeing all the different types of flavors of superhero stuff that's out there. And it's why I still love all of them, right? From stuff as quintessentially superhero as like Superman or Spider-Man to the stuff that's more off the beaten path like Wolverine or The Punisher and anything and everything in between those.
00:05:19
Speaker
We were talking about multi-dimensional superheroes. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I like all of them in between.
Defining 'Superhero'
00:05:26
Speaker
Whether it's the ones that are the dark ones, the bright ones, it's all fun for me to explore. And I've written all the different types, too. It's a lot of fun to dip my toes into all those different waters.
00:05:39
Speaker
Superhero is such a big word, you know, encompasses so much. And you don't think traditionally of superheroes, but I mean, we're going to talk about this later, but Power Rangers are superheroes. And that's a totally different genre than Marvel Comics.
00:05:54
Speaker
I'm in the middle of watching, going through all the John Wick movies with my son. And can you make an argument that John Wick is a superhero? I mean, watching these films, he's certainly doing superhero things. It's just the definition is very loose, and I am fluid, and I like that.
00:06:13
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, you can think of, you know, I was a big Buffy fan back in the day and in a lot of ways, you know, yeah, it's, you know, urban fantasy, but it's also very
Marvel's Genre Blending
00:06:23
Speaker
much a superhero story. She's got a secret identity. She's got superpowers. It's it's it's very much in that vein and.
00:06:31
Speaker
who was it that Supreme Court Justice think it was Wendell Holmes I might get the name wrong but when he was talking about pornography he says I don't know what it is I can't define it but I know it when I see it I think that's kind of the same thing with superheroes I don't know how to define it but I know it when I see it and there's a lot of stuff that if you show it to me I'd be like oh yeah that's superhero I'm like why I'm like
00:06:51
Speaker
It just is. It just is. So we could get into this. I know you wanted to talk about things that I'm into right now, but I'm going through all of the... My son is on a big spy thriller kick. So we're going through the Bourne movies and the Mission Impossible movies. Now we're on kind of like John Wick, I guess, action.
00:07:10
Speaker
But John Wick, I brought up as a possible superhero. But I think of like Jason Bourne, the tone of those stories is inherently different. Yes, Jason Bourne does ridiculous things. He survives ridiculous car crashes. But I don't know if I would call him a superhero because
00:07:26
Speaker
the tone is so different than something like that. So yeah, I mean, if on paper, John Wick and Jason Bourne are very similar. But watching the movies, you get a different feel from it. So you know it when you see it. Definitely. I definitely believe in that. Yeah, yeah. And even though we talk about superhero movies on this show, I kind of think
00:07:50
Speaker
I kind of feel like saying that there's a superhero genre is kind of a misnomer, so I'm kind of going against the thesis of this show when I say that, but because it is more of just kind of a...
00:08:01
Speaker
It's more of like a costume that, yeah, it's more like a concept or a concept you put on other genres. And I think that's one of the things that I love about a lot of the Marvel movies is that they find different genres to use with the superhero concept and to make it a little bit more interesting. So Ant-Man's not just a superhero movie, it's a heist film with a superhero. Guardians of the Galaxy is space opera with superheroes and so on and so forth.
00:08:30
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think that's the appeal of the MCU is that they are not kind of have their eyes set on one thing. They're allow themselves to breathe and then still allow themselves to come back. I remember in the early days of the MCU,
00:08:45
Speaker
They were big questions. It's kind of ridiculous now to think of it. But they said, how is Iron Man, a science fiction character, going to be in the same universe as Thor, a magical character? And as a comic book fan, we're like, they just are. Like, what are you talking about? They're just like the for people that aren't in that world to think that.
MCU's Shared Universe
00:09:05
Speaker
both of these things, somebody that's completely magical and somebody that works with tech, can both be superheroes existing at the same time. I mean, for us, it's a no brainer, but for everybody else, it was hard to fathom in the beginning. Yeah. So you being having involvement
Story World Believability
00:09:22
Speaker
in screenwriting and stuff, you probably read Save the Cat by Blake Snyder.
00:09:28
Speaker
I did not know. Oh, OK. OK. Well, big big screenwriting book. But but one of the things that I always found funny about that book. And it's a good book about structure and everything. But there is one thing that really kind of made me roll my eyes. And he was talking about this idea of you can't have two unbelievable things in the same movie.
00:09:46
Speaker
And he used the first Spider-Man movies as an example. He's like, you have Spider-Man, Peter Parker gets his powers from this genetically altered spider. And then the Green Goblin gets his powers from something completely different. He's like, and that breaks the story world. I'm like, no, it doesn't. It's very weird. It's a very, very weird thing to say.
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, it was really bizarre. It just it almost took me out. I almost put the book down. He's done that one aspect. It depends on the universe that you're playing in, you know, and believability stretches
00:10:21
Speaker
to whatever universe you're playing in. I hate to come back to John Wick, because I literally have it paused on the TV in front of me. But the most absurd things happen in this movie, but I buy into it because they set the tone directly from the beginning that these unbelievable things will happen. They ground the universe in a level of fantasy that I'm able to accept all this ridiculous stuff. So superheroes is just like that. At some point, you have to accept
00:10:50
Speaker
ridiculous things will happen. This man is shooting organic webs from the middle of his wrists.
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah, weird things are gonna happen. I have a little means to the story. And I think studios now are finally disabusing themselves of that notion because you saw what the MCU did and it wasn't such a big, you saw they're kind of like couching it in like, you know, safe terms at first in the first Thor movie when he's like, he's like, oh, well, you call it science, but my people call it magic. And it's just like, it's that whole idea of,
00:11:25
Speaker
science, magic is just science that hasn't been discovered yet or something like that. And, and so they're trying to couch them that and then you get to Dr. Strange and multiverse of madness and he's whipping out these summoning, you know, demons from other dimensions and shit like that. And, and the Arrowverse stuff too, right? It started off very, very grounded with
The Flash Show Evolution
00:11:44
Speaker
Arrow. And then after, then first they're like, we're, we're not a superhero show. He's the hooded vigilante. He wears grease paint over his eyes. We're serious. This is serious, grounded stuff. And the next thing he's like,
00:11:56
Speaker
So Black Canary's here, she's got a Sonic weapon and there's the League of Assassins out there. And the third season's like, fuck it, we got the Flash, we got, there's Metahumans. There are multiverses, everything's fine.
00:12:10
Speaker
Well, you know what? I do think that there is a line. I love The Flash. I loved it from the beginning. I continue to watch it in its final season. But at some point, it reached the level of BS science that it just... It blew my mind, like what they were trying to justify. Oh, it's...
00:12:30
Speaker
It's negative energy from the sun revolving around a gravity flare. There's only so much that I can accept of you just throwing out random terms to explain what's happening in the story. So I do think that there is a line at some point that you can cross. Like John Wick, if John Wick jumps off of the Statue of Liberty and a zeppelin comes in and he drops on top of it, like, yeah, OK, all right, you're getting too much out there.
00:12:59
Speaker
For me, when Flash crossed the line for me, it was not so much with the sciency stuff of it, but it was just everybody became a superhero. And that was, I think, the part where it pushed it too far for me. Everybody's got power. Everybody's a meta. Everybody's got power. But everybody's a meta. Everybody's got powers. And the supporting cast just ballooned to the point where there were whole episodes. I haven't watched the latest season yet. I'm just going to wait until it all comes out.
00:13:26
Speaker
when they got rid of Cisco and Wells and all that. And then we had whole episodes dealing with Chester and Allegra. And I'm just like, I do not care about any of these characters. And it was a slog to get through those seasons seven and eight for those reasons.
00:13:45
Speaker
But anyway, that's not what we're here to talk
Zebra Man: A Unique Style?
00:13:47
Speaker
about. Today, we're here to talk about Zebra Man. This is a 2004 movie directed by, it's a Japanese movie. It's directed by one of my favorite directors, Takashi Miike. And when you asked me about coming on the show, I've given you a list of superhero movies I own, and we're kind of going back and forth about what you'd be interested in. And then you saw Zebra Man.
00:14:10
Speaker
What's that? I've never heard of this. And I'm like, well, take a look, see what you think. And then you're like, okay, yeah, let's do this. I want to do this one. All right. So obviously you have no history of this other than us emailing back and forth. Other than I saw a movie called Zebra Man and it piqued my interest. That was it.
00:14:28
Speaker
And you know what, I love trying different things. So it doesn't matter if it's a good movie, bad movie, I tried it and absorbed it. And so I had no problem giving anything a shot. So what did you think of Zebra Man?
00:14:44
Speaker
I had a good time with it. I thought it was a little bit long. I thought they could have cut it because of the tone. There's only so much of the wackiness of that you can take in one sitting, especially when it's subtitled and it's not your natural language.
00:15:01
Speaker
growing up on Power Rangers, growing up in American soup. It was a mashup of like Power Rangers, American superhero culture, and more most importantly, American adoption of Japanese culture. I thought it talked about a lot. My favorite part of the movie. Can we jump into like spoilers and everything? Yeah, yeah, go right ahead.
00:15:26
Speaker
My favorite part of the movie was early on. He's watching, I don't know what he's watching, but it's kind of like a Power Rangers-esque show. And the villain of the episode is the girl from the ring.
00:15:40
Speaker
It was like, I was just like, I'm glad that happened early on because it informed me about what this movie was. I was like, okay, this is what I'm getting into. I can accept this. And they turned the girl from the ring and like into a Power Rangers villain. And it was just, it was absolutely hilarious. And I loved the way they handled that. And I was like, okay, I'm on board. I know where you're going and I'm on board for where we're going. Let's head to that destination, baby. And it didn't disappoint.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah. This movie is actually coming kind of at a weird confluence of events for me. So I had, we had just done a Power Rangers, an episode on the 2017 Power Rangers movie.
Critique of 2017 Power Rangers
00:16:20
Speaker
It came out just on the field. Did you like it? I haven't seen it yet.
00:16:24
Speaker
I'm mixed on it. Mostly I like it. It's, although I got some issues with the, I think the character stuff I thought was the best part about it, but when it got to the Power Ranger stuff, it got a little bit too Zack Snydery and it kind of like tried to take itself a little bit too seriously. It didn't really- Got away from the traditional Power Ranger tone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm okay with taking a bit more of a serious approach to the topic, but I think you gotta remember that there's a,
00:16:52
Speaker
Power Rangers, Super Sentai, it's camp. It's pure camp. And I think you have to have- It's supposed to be. Yeah. And you have to, I think you have to honor that in a way. And the movie didn't do it and everything was just very dark. And when you've got the Power Rangers, they should be bright and colorful. So, and when they had the Zord fight, it's
00:17:13
Speaker
I could not figure out what the hell those Zords were supposed to be because they were just so, the design just so ugly. But I will say that the best thing about it and the only person in the movie who I think really got the assignment was Elizabeth Banks' Rita. Like she camped the hell out of that thing. Well, wasn't she Rita in the reboot or whatever, the live action movie that they had? That's what I'm talking about, the 2017 movie, yeah.
00:17:40
Speaker
Oh, I was talking. Okay, there you go. I thought you meant the new one. Oh, the once and always special? Yeah. Oh, no, that was very campy. That was very much keeping in tone with the Power Rangers show. Yeah, I saw that too. That was fun. That was fun. I haven't seen that. My kids asked about it, so I wish to jump on. But the reboot, I mean, yes, I do agree. They took the camp right out of it and they tried to give it a much grander tone. I mean, I liked it.
00:18:09
Speaker
Right from the beginning, I accepted that that's what they were going to do. So it didn't really bother me all that much. But I do understand if if traditional hardcore fans did not did not appreciate that they did that. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I enjoyed it for the most part. And I enjoyed the character stuff and the interaction with the with the five kids more than anything else in the movie. I thought that was the strongest part of it.
00:18:35
Speaker
But when it got to the Power Rangers stuff, Bryan Cranston did a great job, too. I thought he was good in it. But other than that, it took itself a little bit too seriously for it. I get it. I can definitely dig that. I felt it was like they tried to do a Transformers version of Power Rangers, like the Michael Bay.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, that was that was very much we had a Derek Jason current levy from comically pedantic on we'd all come to that same conclusion also with a bit of Zack Snyder Another another guest on the show mark buskin He wrote in his letterbox review that Zack Snyder's breakfast Club Power Rangers is about is an odd movie I think that's the perfect way to sum it up
00:19:17
Speaker
It's a good way, it's a good way. But back to Zebra Man. Back to Zebra Man, yeah. So that, I just watched Power Rangers through that. I had watched the once and always special. Frequent guest on the show, Anthony Desiato. He does a Power Rangers podcast, Summoning the Zords, and I had just appeared on- I know, I know Anthony. Anthony lives- Oh yeah? Oh, that's right, yeah, yeah.
00:19:38
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I was on Summoning the Zords to talk about Super Sentai. So I had just watched a whole bunch of episodes of that. Rewatched some Power Rangers as well. And then
00:19:51
Speaker
Coincidentally, too, at the same time, I had restarted my Japan on Film podcast where I talk about Japanese movies, and one of the movies we watched was a Takashi Miike family-friendly movie, which was about like, you know, called The Great Yokai War. So I'm back into the mode of watching Miike and kind of like his themes and everything. So when you suggested this movie, and I'm watching it last night, I'm like, this is actually like the perfect time for me to go back and rewatch this movie, because a lot of things really kind of clicked into place for me when I was watching it this time around.
00:20:22
Speaker
Um, and I'd first seen it. I don't think I've seen it since I came to Japan. Uh, I first bought it like way back on DVD in the States and I watched it then. And at the time my thought of it was just kind of like, yeah, it's okay, but it's not his best work. Like this is the guy who made movies like audition and, um, uh, uh, was it
00:20:44
Speaker
13 assassins and and so all these like really you know really violent really epic movies that he's made in the past and then to to go from that to those to this it was a little bit of a letdown at first but now rewatching it again I kind of gained a new appreciation for it.
Perspectives on Zebra Man
00:21:01
Speaker
You were approaching this movie from a completely different place than I am. And that's one of the things I love about stories. So I talk about a lot that you have the five building blocks of storytelling, like character, theme, tone, setting, things that are objective. But there's a sixth building block, which is subjective, which is you can't control
00:21:23
Speaker
the audience that watches your movie. So I'm not familiar with the director. I don't know anything about it. I'm coming in completely blind. Whereas you're coming in as a rewatch that you're living in the country that takes place in for a while. You've already seen it. You know the director. So you have such a different headspace going into the film. And so us talking about it is just kind of like why I like
00:21:50
Speaker
storytelling and talking about it because we're both conversing over the same work of art from two completely different places.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And rewatching it again and now being steeped a little bit more, having a little bit more, I'm not gonna say I'm an expert on Tokusatsu, but having more of a solid grounding in it now after watching several episodes of Super Sentai, maybe kind of understand what he was doing. And just kind of like, and I saw a review on Letterbox that really kind of made this movie crystallize what this movie is about.
00:22:25
Speaker
And this reviewer had said that there are two movies in here and one of them's good and one of them's bad. And he said the first half of the movie is really good because it's all about how it's about this teacher who is neglecting his family. He's a bad dad and all that. He's a bad teacher. And it's because he's so focused on this escapism. It's like the dark side of nerd culture is what he was kind of describing it as. And he's like, and then the second half of the movie completely betrays that.
00:22:54
Speaker
And I was thinking about that, and you being a comic book fan, probably you're, I'm sure you're aware of Grant Morrison. Yes. Yeah, so. I'm not a Jewish Grant Morrison fan, but I am aware.
00:23:09
Speaker
So in his book Supergods, Grant Morrison talked about growing up in Scotland, how his parents were activists, and he's talking about the fear of the nuclear bomb. And then he said that Superman was kind of like the protector against the nuclear bomb. He's like, we don't have to fear the nuclear bomb because we have Superman. It was kind of like how he reassured himself as a kid.
00:23:33
Speaker
The way I kind of looked at this, came away from this movie is the fact that he's hiding this aspect of his identity, right? He's hiding this aspect of him being a fan of this, you know, this kishy, campy, you know, low budget superhero thing. And then in the second half of the movie, he really kind of embraces it. And that ends up being kind of like the key he needs to kind of advance in his life. So I thought it was more about
00:24:03
Speaker
you know, keeping that love of stuff alive from your childhood and like, you know, being able to enjoy things as you did as a child is kind of what I was thinking of after I'd read that review.
00:24:14
Speaker
What were some thoughts that you had? I would more agree with you. The whole point of telling a story is that the characters in the beginning go through an evolution and they wind up in a different place at the end. That's kind of the point. So the fact that the first half is a different movie than the second half
00:24:37
Speaker
is what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be something that's a little sad, a little depressing, a little character heavy. And then we see it just goes completely bonkers, which is fun on a tonal level. But at the same time, it allows this character to embrace the ridiculousness, you know, and he really becomes he evolves. And he becomes a hero from what he was before. And that's kind of the
00:25:00
Speaker
the whole journey of the movie. And if you don't get that, that's fine. You're allowed to not to get a movie and understand it and like it. But I think that's kind of what that reviewer was complaining about. For me, that's part of the charm.
00:25:16
Speaker
I think so too. There's a whole lot of stuff dealing with Japanese. I saw a lot of the Tokusatsu stuff that I picked up on this time compared to last time because the whole aspect of the transforming and all that.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the big differences from Japanese superheroes versus American superheroes is there's that whole transformation. They literally become someone different. It's not like in in American superhero comics where all they do is they just they put on a costume and then they become a superhero. This is something that they actually have to go through a process of change.
Zebra Man's Key Scene
00:25:52
Speaker
I thought that was also
00:25:55
Speaker
worked into it as well. One of my favorite points in the movie, and this goes back to the person, the reviewer that said it's two different movies, you can actually pinpoint an exact moment that this movie transitions. And that's during the fight in the alley, he's just some guy in a costume trying to stop a crime. And the guy throws, I forget what it is, but he throws like some weapon
00:26:21
Speaker
at zebra man and zebra man jumps up and does like a backflip to avoid it and he realizes i just did like a superhero movie like i just i have powers and it was just it was the look on his face really told you that okay this movie's different than what's been going on before you know whatever happened before
00:26:43
Speaker
With this guy, he's depressed. His life kind of stinks. He's not happy. He's dressing up as a superhero. This is going to transform into some sort of science fiction adventure. And so, yeah, that was the moment that I could say that it's where the two different movies split.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the fact that he, I mean, the fact that he finds this, this kid, right? Shimpay, who he, this, this, this student who comes into his class and just transferred in and he's been in some accident and he can't walk. And I felt that that was, I didn't really get that
Cultural Context in Zebra Man
00:27:23
Speaker
thing. It might have been like subtitles and I might have missed something, but why couldn't he walk? I felt like his dad killed himself and then his legs just gave out because of the trauma. Like that was... Yeah, so I had a mistake when I watched this movie last night because
00:27:41
Speaker
What I do with my DVD collection is I rip all the DVDs to an external hard drive, and I run them off a Plex server on a mini PC I have. So that way, I've got over 1,000 DVDs. This way, it's easy to access them all. I can keep them all organized very nicely. And I don't have to worry about
00:27:57
Speaker
space constraints with having big DVD cases. So you have this digital DVD library, basically? Basically, yeah. And I have the disc too, but they're kept in these big file things. And I got rid of the individual cases for them. But when I had ripped this movie and converted it, I had made a mistake. I had accidentally, without realizing it, probably because I was doing a whole bunch of movies at the same time,
00:28:23
Speaker
I had put, I had ripped it with the English dub instead of the Japanese original audio. And so when I went in to watch it last night, it started off with the English dub and I'm like, oh, wait a second. And I tried to go in and change it and I'm like, oh shit, the Japanese option's not on here. So we watched two different movies is what you're telling me. No, I'm saying that this is why it's kind of unclear to me as well because I had, and I tried to watch it with the English subtitles and the dub and the subtitles are a little bit different. So there's obviously some,
00:28:53
Speaker
Some stuff that's not quite translated. You watched the English dub and English subtitles at the same time? Yeah, yeah. And the English subtitles did not match the English dub exactly. Like, there's some discrepancies between them. So, yeah, and I'm watching it and I wasn't exactly clear on what was happening with, uh, with, uh, Shimpay's injury as well. I couldn't quite figure that out either. I thought it was a mental thing. Like, he couldn't walk because he was just traumatized by his father's death or something.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's kind of what they were going for, which is a weird choice. But in a movie like this, it's not the weirdest thing. So we can go with it. You know what? That's very interesting. From a storytelling aspect, that's pretty dumb. But the fact that everything else in the movie is so weird, you overlook it.
00:29:42
Speaker
you know right it's like it just it doesn't make any sense but it's kind of like we're gonna do it anyway because nothing else makes sense and so they just got accepted it moved on yeah i mean if it was something like in um you know in the movie scrooged where the little boy sees his sees his father killed and then he he's not able to speak after that
00:30:02
Speaker
you know, because the cycle that that would make sense, like having it be, you know, affecting how we can walk the physical. Yeah, that's my favorite. By the way, it's an amazing one. Yeah. But and but what I think was interesting about that is the fact that his
00:30:24
Speaker
Uh, Shinichi's life, his whole, his whole personal life is a total mess, right? He's, he's a loser at work. Nobody, nobody likes him. Nobody, um, put, nobody really has any time for him.
00:30:35
Speaker
His son's getting beat up because he's such a loser at work. He teaches at his son's school. His daughter's running around with older guys. His wife is stepping out on him and cheating on him. And he's just kind of like, you know, isolating himself and just like kind of living out his fantasies when he thinks nobody's around. He puts on the zebra man costume and he does all these weird moves.
00:30:57
Speaker
but it's when he and he's trying to hide this right he's always doing all these zebra man drawings and stuff when he's at work and stuff he's always looking around seeing if anybody can see and then
00:31:07
Speaker
One day in school, he sees Shimpay drawing Zebra Man as well. And then he starts talking to them about Zebra Man. And Shimpay's like, oh my god, you know Zebra Man? You're so cool. And he's like, whoa, someone thinks it's cool that I like this? And that gives him the, because there's that earlier scene when he's wearing the costume and he's looking out the window and he sees the drink machine and he's like,
00:31:30
Speaker
I'm gonna go out and get a drink in the costume." And he's like, maybe I shouldn't. And he's like, he's like trying to question, questioning whether or not he should, he should step out in public and let people see him for what he is. And then when he talks to Shimpay and he decides, I'm going to go surprise him in costume as Zebra Man. And he walks out and
00:31:49
Speaker
and it's this funny scene where he's walking around outside and he keeps trying to hide himself whenever he sees someone walking about where at one point there's there's someone who walks by and he just turns his back to them even though he's still in the costume it's very bizarre but i uh i definitely love it it was it was it was just fun to see a guy
00:32:13
Speaker
trying to change something without knowing how or why. But I did think that that part of the movie was a little weird, that Shinpei was basically a child that helped him evolve and grow, but it wasn't his son.
00:32:33
Speaker
And I thought that relationship was a little weird, the fact that he's got like a friendship with a boy from school. And he's like, he didn't neglect his son, but his son wasn't that character, which I thought was in a traditional screen telling sense. That's who you would assign that character to.
00:32:53
Speaker
I think that's an aspect of, I think that's a more specific. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something more specific to that because teachers are very heavily involved in their students lives in Japan for one thing. So, um, so it's not that unusual to see that kind of relationship develop. Um, and the fact that he's been a bad teacher, but then he finds this connection with this kid who also disability rights in Japan is a huge issue. Like they're,
00:33:19
Speaker
Japan is terrible on disability rights, so that's another aspect as well I think plays into it, and the relationship that develops between Shinichi and Shimpae's mother as well ties into that, so it's this, because there's a lot of
00:33:38
Speaker
There are a lot of families in Japan, they're only families more out of circumstance or out of convenience, like marriages of convenience and that kind of thing. And as opposed to marriages based on a love or... It was a weird aspect of the story that like, he's kind of sort of got a thing for the mom of the son that he's mentoring, which
00:34:02
Speaker
In an American film, it might have been like, this doesn't belong in this movie. It felt a little out of place. I did not appreciate it. I thought it added a new dynamic to the story, but it just felt, from an American standpoint, it was like, if this was an American movie, that wouldn't be a part of it. They would definitely take that out.
00:34:25
Speaker
100% yeah I completely agree with you and it's been a lot like it's been like 15 years since I first saw this movie so I can't remember what I thought about it at the time and that relationship but
00:34:37
Speaker
just my vague memories, I think I would have agreed with you back then. And, but having been in Japan for so long, knowing, understanding a little bit more about family dynamics in Japan, I think I understand that aspect of it a little bit more. And I'm still not completely sold on it. I think it still would have been made more sense if it had been the sun, but I can also, I can kind of see where Mika was trying to go with that.
00:35:04
Speaker
Another question I have from you from a cultural standpoint is the special effects in CGI. Because number one, how old is this movie? 15 years old? Almost 20 years old. It came out in 2004.
00:35:18
Speaker
almost 20 years old I can't tell if the CGI is purposely campy or if it was just something of the time you know it was like the best CGI that they could offer the time because I do watch movies that come out now and they're like
00:35:35
Speaker
whatever CGI we can afford, we're just gonna throw in there and run with it and sometimes it looks terrible and that's the point. It doesn't look all that great and the producers are fine with it. I didn't know from this, from a cultural standpoint and from a time standpoint whether or not the graphics and the special effects and the CGI was like that on purpose.
00:35:59
Speaker
So I think it's both. I think it's both. Because first off, you're right. Japanese movies do not have anywhere close to the budget, as American superhero movies do. The budget on Zebra Man probably wouldn't cover the catering on a Marvel movie.
00:36:17
Speaker
So they're just like, the budgets are completely out of whack. So one thing is, this is probably the best they could afford. But another thing too, and this is where having watched The Great Yokai War comes into it as well for me, because in that movie, it had this weird mix of practical effects and CGI. And Mike chose a very interesting thing.
00:36:43
Speaker
All the yokai, because the basic gist of that movie, it's yokai versus man-made machines. And the yokai are the characters, the good guys you're siding with, like the spirit realms, the old characters from mythology, all that. Those are almost universally done with practical effects. And they look great. And the machines are almost universally done with bad CGI. And it looks terrible.
00:37:08
Speaker
And kinda like the way I read that movie was, I didn't think it was an accident that Mika was relying so much on bad CGI for the evil characters, for the cold, emotionless machines, versus the yokai that were done with a lot of care with these practical effects. And Mika has used a lot of practical effects in his movies, especially at that time.
00:37:32
Speaker
I think in that movie, it was done to kind of show the contrast. In this movie, I think it's, again, this movie is very much, at one point, in one part, it is a satire of the Tokusatsu stuff, but at the same time, it's also kind of a love letter to it, so I think he was really just trying to play up into the whole, it's campy, it's ridiculous, it looks stupid, but we have fun with it anyway.
00:37:55
Speaker
I love that explanation, that something can honor something and make fun of it at the same time. And that's what this was. And I think that's what drew me to it. And I do see that in this film, because if you look at Zebra Man himself as a costume,
00:38:15
Speaker
First it's very like homemade cosplay kind of looking. And then he gets powered up and he looks awesome. But it's a practical costume, you know? It's a real suit. He's not like wearing some weird thing that Iron Man has when they CGI it afterwards. But he's fighting weird blob monsters that are put in in post
Climactic Battle in Zebra Man
00:38:37
Speaker
-production. So it definitely aligns with that.
00:38:41
Speaker
spoiler for the complete end of the film that I absolutely loved when he transforms into an actual Pegasus zebra and then cuts a Z into the middle of the guy's head like Zorro. That reached the peak of campiness for me. And it was like this put the perfect capstone on this movie. It was just so, it was complete CGI ridiculousness.
00:39:07
Speaker
and it would just, it made everything that came before worthwhile, so. Yeah. Yeah, I love that part as well, especially the reactions from something like, what the hell? Even they're like, what the hell is happening in this moment? Yeah, there's a lot going on here and there's a lot to absorb. And I feel like, like if I asked my wife to watch this with me, she would be like, you were insane for making me watch this.
00:39:37
Speaker
But I'm like, you're not coming to this movie with the same appreciation of Japanese horror or Power Rangers or superhero action that I am. So I'm a different person than you. So I understand what he's trying to do, missing all of these things in a bowl and just grinding them up and throwing them into a story. So yeah, it's definitely made for a particular audience.
00:40:03
Speaker
Well, I mean, to that point, like my wife's Japanese. And when we start, when I started watching this movie and because I, you know, I told her I had to watch a movie for the podcast. Like, what do you have to watch? I'm like, Zebra Man. And she's like, Zebra Man? And she's like, are you serious? That movie? And I'm just like, what? She's like, it's terrible. I'm like, have you ever seen it? And she's like, no, it just looks terrible. And I'm like, OK, well, I'm I have to watch it. So so I put it on and at one and she's just sitting there and she's just kind of sitting there and she's not saying anything. And at one point she had to
00:40:32
Speaker
She had to do something with our daughter. And she's like, pause it. I'm like, wait, pause it? She's like, yeah, pause it. Now she ended up going to bed with my daughter early, so she didn't watch the whole thing. But she was starting to get into it a little bit. I think that's that cultural aspect you're talking about, right? Because she has a little bit more cultural familiarity with some of the stuff that's going on. Plus, I've kind of
00:40:57
Speaker
indoctrinated her into superhero movies. So she was able to appreciate a little bit more probably than your wife is able to. Is that your son you're holding? Yeah. Yeah. I love how he was just making a fuss during the beginning and now you picked him up and he's out. He's just... Yeah. That's the only one. Every time. Every time. And as soon as I put him down, he's going to wake up again.
00:41:22
Speaker
I think, yes, I mean, I don't know how my wife will react. She doesn't have that same cultural aspect of it besides the Japanese factor, all the other stuff that's going on. But at the heart of the film, and I think this is at the heart of storytelling in general,
00:41:39
Speaker
It's a really sweet character journey, you know, just from beginning to end, seeing him come into his own and finally accepting who he is as this hero, as this superhero with powers. Like that was kind of a whole thing, right? I can't fly. I can't beat him because I can't fly. And he finally and he flew in the end. It was just it's just.
00:42:01
Speaker
a nice journey, a nice evolution for that character. So, I mean, maybe possibly if my wife was past all that other stuff, she could see that core of the story of seeing a guy finally reach his potential. And I think that's...
00:42:17
Speaker
Special. Absolutely. And there are definite flaws with this movie. I mean, you mentioned the runtime. I think you're absolutely right. I think it does drag a little bit. It's got a bit of... And that happens a lot with some of Mikke's movies I found. Some of them are very tight, but this one I think it does drag a little bit on. There's a little bit of padding in here that I think you could have trimmed a little bit around the edges and you wouldn't have lost anything with it.
00:42:44
Speaker
For example, like the whole subplot with the daughter. And also just a side note, the crab man she's dating, Kita Hara, is played by Akira Imoto, who is a amazing Japanese actor.
00:42:59
Speaker
And he usually does like these, he does like a lot of like serious dramas and stuff like that. So seeing him in this movie was a real treat. I love doing that with my kids. I've been showing them older movies that I grew up with. And sometimes really serious dramatic actors show up in these weird roles. And then that's their first experience with them. And I'm like, you don't understand. This guy is amazing. This idiot that he's playing right now, that's not who he is. So just don't. He's very funny. But I don't know any of these guys.
00:43:30
Speaker
It was a funny thing I noticed too.
00:43:35
Speaker
The actress who plays the daughter, she was from the Grudge movies, the Japanese versions of them. So I thought that was also nice. Was she the ghost or was she like one of the people being haunted? I can't remember. I think she may have been the... I can't remember the character's name because it's been so long since I've seen the Ju-On movies. I have to do a little bit more research and just double check. But I think she was the main character in it. I can't remember exactly though. So one of the things about this movie that's
Unexplored Themes in Zebra Man
00:44:06
Speaker
that I love, and I love this aspect is because a lot of movies when they're talking about time travel, right, or prophecy, talk a lot about the philosophy of what prophecy means. As like, if I give you a prophecy, is it going to affect how you
00:44:25
Speaker
what you're gonna do. If you know what your future is, is it going to affect your choices? Right, right, the whole self-fulfilling prophecy aspect. Exactly. And this is huge in that the reason he emulates Zebra Man is because he saw the Zebra Man show. And the reason he made the Zebra Man show, the principle, is because of a prophecy. So it's kind of like if he never made the show, was he going to become Zebra Man in the first place?
00:44:54
Speaker
And that's an enormous aspect of the show, but it's never explored or touched upon. And I think that's what a touchstone of a great story is that there's just so much subtext that when you start peeling back the layers, you just get deeper and deeper into the story and see more and more that makes you love about it.
00:45:17
Speaker
Yeah. Well, also, the point – and this is what I wanted to bring up with the Crabman is I felt like that whole subplot with Midori dating this older guy, I couldn't – I felt like there was –
00:45:32
Speaker
that wasn't really necessary to the story. I felt like we could have, there's something there. There's something to talk about in a Japanese societal way about the fact that you've got this young girl running around with this older guy and there's probably a financial arrangement there. That's an absolute thing that happens here. It's a big issue and it is something that's worth talking about.
00:45:54
Speaker
but I don't think it's really addressed in any sort of meaningful way. I apologize for cutting them off, but I thought, and I might have been wrong in this because I might've got the characters confused, but in the very end, his daughter is in the crowd, right? And when he's going to town hall, she sees him. Is she sort of like attracted to Zebra Man? Or is that the friends? No, that's her mother. That's her mother who's attracted to him.
00:46:22
Speaker
or the mother's attraction. And then she's the one who says, does he kind of look like dad? And she's like, no, of course not. So I completely misread that. But yes, it did seem like she had a scene with, it was just her and the elderly boyfriend in bed, rolling around, which you cut that out. There was no point of that. Or you could have at least trimmed it down to something a little bit more.
00:46:49
Speaker
uh tighter and and yes i think comedies in general need to be tighter because they don't have that character drama that needs the fleshing out that other films do need so that that's really my only criticism uh other than that
00:47:07
Speaker
I enjoy it was it not it felt like it felt like a stew where a stew is just a bunch of different things thrown in you're mixing it around and you're gonna come up with something brand new that people can appreciate
00:47:20
Speaker
No, I think that's a good way of looking at it because, and it's one of those things where you throw all this stuff in, you're not sure how it's gonna come out, right? It could taste amazing. It could taste like dog shit. And this one, I think this does a, I enjoy this a lot more than I don't. It's a lot more entertaining and I get a lot more out of it than I did when I first watched it. And I think this is the kind of movie I think you can appreciate more
00:47:49
Speaker
if you have a little bit more familiarity with the the Super Sentai stuff and you know going back to what you said about satire being you know how one thing can how can be a satire but at the same time be appreciative of it I think in some ways a lot of the best satires are I mean you think about for example the screen movies right the especially that first one it's clear Wes Craven loves horror movies obviously his whole career has done horror movies
00:48:16
Speaker
Scream works. Scream's a total satire of the horror genre. It makes fun of the tropes of it, but there's a clear love of the genre too. And you compare it to something like the, you know, like the, remember when they were doing the nonstop, you know, insert genre here movies parody, and they're just all terrible. And I think it's because they forgot that you're supposed to actually care about the stuff that you're parodying. You can't just mock it and just not have that love for it.
00:48:47
Speaker
I definitely agree. I'm a huge fan of Scream. I've had a weird relationship with Scream lately because my kids watch YouTube.
00:49:00
Speaker
My kids get introduced to modern movies through advertisements, watching kid videos on YouTube. So my daughter's a huge horror fan. I know we're going off on a tangent here, but she came to me and said, I watched these commercials for this Scream movie. I want to watch Scream. And I'm like, if you want to watch Scream 6, we're going to start with Scream 1. And she said, fine.
00:49:24
Speaker
And so we watched them all. We went to the theater and watched it together. It's now her favorite franchise. And now we're watching Scream Queens. Are you familiar with that show? I know of it, but I haven't actually seen it yet.
00:49:38
Speaker
So it's horror, but it's so campy that it comes into the realm of comedy, more so than Scream. And she's watching it, and because she's gone through Scream and she loves all of those tropes, it's given her appreciation for Scream Queens, which a lot of the tropes are turned into a completely comedic realm, and she understands it.
00:50:03
Speaker
So yeah, I get it and I love that I'm able to teach a new generation to love a genre and then to love poking fun of a genre.
Balancing Love and Satire in Superheroes
00:50:14
Speaker
It really makes you a fan when you're able to be happy when people want to tear apart something you love. That's a weird way to put it, but it's definitely true.
00:50:27
Speaker
No, I get it. And, you know, I mean, these the superheroes, there's a lot of stuff that there's a baked in ridiculousness to the concept. There is a lot to make fun of. Yeah, there is a lot to make fun of. You know why? Because the superhero genre started campy and ridiculous. It didn't get there. That's how it was to begin with. And then it became serious. So now it's coming for a circle is that people are making camp out of the seriousness that was made out of the campiness.
00:50:57
Speaker
It's truly bizarre, but I think only superhero lovers and aficionados of the genre can appreciate. Well, I think that's why something like Deadpool works so well. Ryan Reynolds obviously loves that character. He obviously loves superhero stuff. The writers, directors, obviously they love what they're doing. They love poking, but they poke fun. And it's that whole idea.
00:51:22
Speaker
when you're with your friends, right? You're making fun of your friends, you're teasing each other and everything like that. But if someone from outside the group does that, then you're gonna have a problem. They don't get it. They don't get it. So like, I watched when Deadpool came out, um, I
00:51:38
Speaker
was really busy i couldn't get to it but i saw so many great of people that i respect talking highly about it i'm like i gotta see this i took off of work went to see it for showing like ten thirty by myself and then halfway through the opening credits i'm like i'm gonna like this movie
00:51:56
Speaker
These people know what they're doing. I can already tell that this is going to be awesome. And I really enjoyed the first movie because it felt like a satire from people who love what they're doing, rather than a satire that was done because satire is the thing, you know? Right. Yeah. So fans tell, fans can tell. That's kind of the bottom line. Well, yeah. Like you compare it to something like
00:52:25
Speaker
some of the bad superhero movies that have come out, like Steel is my favorite one to poke fun at. I know Anthony's gonna roll his eyes when he hears this part, but I mean, I think Steel is a movie that's made by people who don't like superheroes and who can't understand, so they either make it really campy or they try and suck all the fun out of it.
00:52:44
Speaker
I think Steele was a victim of its time. It was at the time where people saw potential in superhero movies and properties, but they didn't quite understand them. So they decided, hey, Steele, this is a chance to make our superhero movie. And they had an idea of what a superhero movie was, but they didn't really understand why it was that way.
00:53:12
Speaker
And fans can tell, it's hard to, again, it's one of those things. It's hard to define, but you just know it when you see it. Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Zebra Man's Audience Appeal
00:53:22
Speaker
Any other things you wanted to mention about Zebra Man? I think those are kind of the big points I had wanted to hit on. The big points that I would want to hit on? No, I said those are the, what we've talked about, it's kind of like the big points I had wanted to hit on. How about you? Is there anything else you wanted to mention about it?
00:53:39
Speaker
No, I mean, it's different. I dug it. I dug it because I appreciate the genre and all of the little aspects of the genre. I think if you're, for lack of a better term, a normie, or at least an American normie, you might get bored with it or not quite understand it. But there was a lot in there for me as a geek, as a fan to appreciate and enjoy.
00:54:07
Speaker
There's also a sequel to this. Well, actually kind of two sequels. So it's Zebra Man 2. I was looking that up. I was kind of Wikipediaing it, but I would love to hear your explanation. There's a lot of information. Yeah, I haven't seen it actually, but it is direct. When I first heard of there was a sequel, I'm like, oh, okay. But there was also a sequel to One Missed Call, which Mika also directed, but he wasn't involved with the sequels.
00:54:30
Speaker
And so I thought, I'm like, oh, so there's a Zebra Man 2? I bet Mika wasn't involved. But no, he directed this one too, so I am curious to see it. Apparently, though, it...
00:54:42
Speaker
It was, yeah, it wasn't well received in Japan. And a big reason was because there was a theme of a religious war and the antagonist. Yeah, and the antagonists were portrayed as kind of analogous to the happy science movement in Japan, which is this whole other thing there. So there's a lot of cultural stuff to get into with that.
00:55:03
Speaker
Tell me, is that like a real thing? Because I read that, and I actually went into a deep dive. I'm like, this is like the Scientology of Japan. I need to read more about it. It basically is. Yeah, yeah. It basically is. Like, they've got their own, I think it's, yeah, they've got their own political party and everything. It's fucking bonkers. There's a lot of cult type stuff in Japan. So even though they say Japan is not really religious, there's still that issue with it.
00:55:31
Speaker
So I am curious to get into it from that aspect of it. And also there was a direct-to-video tie-in, too, called Vengeful Zebra Miniskirt Police, which was used to promote the release. And it's set one year before the movie, and it focuses on the characters in the movie called the Zebra Miniskirt Police. So I've got to track both of these two back there.
00:55:56
Speaker
I didn't even, the second one, I'm completely shocked that you found out about that. But if you do find it, I would be interested. Okay, I'll keep that in mind. So I found, I had Zebra Man on Amazon.
00:56:14
Speaker
I should say Prime Video. They did not have Zebra Man 2, so... Okay, yeah. So I probably have to hit up the video store to see about that, which we still have here, which is nice. The other final thing I'd say is, if this is your first introduction to Takashi Miike, the guy is an amazing workhorse of a director, and he's done tons of stuff in all genres.
00:56:38
Speaker
Thirteen Assassin sounds like something, like I recognize the name, but I don't think I've seen it. Thirteen Assassin is great. No, no, no, it's the remake. So that came out in like- 2010. 2010, yes. Okay, so that's what I was thinking. I got on Epoch, maybe. I don't know, did I see that? I don't know if I've seen it. I saw Ninja Assassin, which I know was directed by the second director from the Matrix films.
00:57:07
Speaker
Oh, really? I didn't know that. He did deep vendetta, too. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. I did know that. I did know that. Takashi Mika, he's done a lot of amazing stuff. Like I said, he's one of my favorite Japanese directors. Audition is, if you like horror movies, you should definitely check out Audition. You know what? But that's me, because when you look at all the books that I've written, that I've put out, I'm all over the place.
00:57:33
Speaker
I could do something like Zebra Man and I could do something like a complete utter personal horror movies. So- I would definitely recommend, yeah, I definitely recommend doing a deep dive into Mika, then I think you'll find a lot of stuff of his that you'd be keen on. One thing I will mention, cause he's worked with Sho Aikawa who plays Zebra Man in this too. He's worked with Mika on a lot of movies. And one of them I definitely have to recommend is a movie called Gozu.
00:58:02
Speaker
It is a fucking bonkers surreal film. Find it if you can. It is, it is. And let me know what you think about it. It is crazy. Send me an email. Just give me a list of Rex and I'll jump on him. I'll be sure to do that. I think some of them I've covered on Japan on film, so I'll send you links to the episodes too that we've covered on it. But yeah, Frank, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about this movie with me.
00:58:32
Speaker
There's not that many people I could talk about this movie with, to be honest with you. I'm glad that, you know what? I like this movie and I have a very narrow circle of geek friends that appreciate genre stuff. So the fact that you outdid me by actually living in Japan is very nice. So yeah, this is fun. I would say if you're gonna watch it,
00:59:00
Speaker
It might help to do a refresher on some YouTube videos of Power Rangers or Super Sentai to kind of get yourself into that mood again and then dive into this movie. I think that would be the best way to watch this. I grew up on it. It was like riding a bike.
00:59:15
Speaker
Once you touch that nostalgic nerve, you know, it's just, it's just, ah. And I was like, it was very cool. And then I was like, wait a second, is that the girl from the ring? Is she fighting? Wait, she's backing up into a well that is the girl from the ring.
00:59:32
Speaker
It's like, God, I'm sold. My mom's signing up. It is funny because one missed call, which is kind of like his Ring-esque horror film, which had a god-awful remake in the States. But the original Japanese one is pretty cool because it's also kind of a satire of the J-horror stuff. So he does a really good job with satirizing these Japanese-types to move concepts. The Ring is one of the
00:59:58
Speaker
a few exceptions, I liked the American version. That one, yes, yeah. I don't know. I went back and forth on it for a long time, but one of the things I appreciated when I rewatched it, and after living in Japan for so long, and now I teach a class in Japanese movies, I've studied Japanese movies for the podcast, and I really realized that. I'm like, oh my God, this is like an actual translation, literally a translation.
01:00:26
Speaker
trying to take all these stuff that's very key to Japan and making it fit in American context, which most of those movies do not do when they remake them. So I liked it, and I haven't seen it in a long time to be able to do the proper comparison I was doing, but the Samara character in the Japanese version
01:00:50
Speaker
is a different character than the American version. She doesn't have the same motivations. And so like that little, it was just very subtle, but that subtle change made me like appreciate her as an American villain so much more than what the Japanese version did. So I love the Japanese version. It was a very good movie.
01:01:12
Speaker
It's an interesting I'll send you the link to the the Japan on film episode we did when we had compared the American version and the and the Japanese version because there's some very interesting cultural comparisons they do. But yeah, check out one missed call would probably be the mike film I'd say that and goes or very interesting because one missed call is kind of like his satire slash love letter to Japanese horror kind of like zebra man is a satire slash love letter to tokusatsu.
01:01:39
Speaker
So it's a nice exercise to go back and look at them in that context. But until then, Frank, why don't you tell people where they can find your stuff?
01:01:50
Speaker
I'm very simple. My handle across social media is at frankthewriter. That's Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Also my website is frankthewriter.com. If you happen to like my writings, the easiest way to keep up with me is signing up to my mailing list, which is on my website. Again, frankthewriter.com.
01:02:12
Speaker
Okay, great. Thanks so much for coming on, and we'll have links to that in the show notes. So guys, you can check that out. As for us, SuperheroCinephiles.com is the website, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And remember, if you sign up for the Patreon page, you get these episodes a week in advance, no ads. Plus you also get access to the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club companion show. We're about once a month. We talk about comic books and graphic novels. So thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
01:02:41
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points
01:03:01
Speaker
If you're interested in reading some comments but don't know where you should start, plus you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash supercinemahot and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:03:45
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.