Wishful Casting: Liveman, The Other Two Edition

I've written before about how I find Tetsuya/Black Bison and Jun'ichi/Green Sai to be a weak spot of Liveman. What should have been really cool characters that tied themes of the show together and added new layers of drama ended up being two pointless idjits played by bad actors. (Seirou Yamaguchi bellows and garbles his lines so badly he should have been in Kamen Rider Blade.)

I've kicked around the idea for a while of a "Wishful Casting" post for these two, but it's kind of turned into "Shougo's Fan Fic'ing Retcon of Liveman's Other Two."

I'll start by saying this: Tetsuya and Jun'ichi are obviously supposed to be younger than the Liveman. Not, like, KIDS, but younger than Takuji and Mari, who were Liveman's age. Despite what ages the actors claim to have been, Tetsuya's actor looks older than the rest of the cast. (We were introduced to Takuji's brother, Takeshi, in an early episode, and he was about 10! Where's Tetsuya fit in?) Jun'ichi looks about the same age as Mari's actress. (OK, here's the facts: Tetsuya's actor was 21, which made him as old as Jou's actor and OLDER than Megumi.)

Now, the ages of my casting choices might be a little too young for most, but I think, under the right circumstances, they could have worked.

For Tetsuya/Black Bison, I would cast Hidenori Iura (Goggle V's Tatsuya; Bioman's Shuuichi & Prince; Solbrain's Jun). Iura would have been about 19 at the time of Liveman. I think he's a good performer, and pretty likable, and he showed in his performance in Bioman a frustration and temper that would have worked for Tetsuya, and he showed a swift, tough heroism in Solbrain. You'd buy a hotheaded, fists-first-questions-later Tetsuya not only from a better performer, but from someone a little younger and impulsive. (Iura kind of reminds me of a cross between Hiroshi Watari and Kenta Satou.)

I always thought Green Sai should have been Mari's little sister. So, I'll call her Junko Aikawa, and for that role, I would cast Tokie Shibata. I know people will think I'm uncreative in just picking someone from my Changeman, and she's made other casting lists of mine before, but I went through a lot of age-appropriate actresses and really think she's the best choice. She could hold the same rage and want of revenge as Tetsuya, but I think Shibata's proven that she could also nail the tragedy of the situation and convey a lot of sadness for her fallen sister. As she proved with her character Nana in Changeman, Shibata can generate a great amount of sympathy. And as important as Nana was to Changeman, Shibata was only in, I think, eight episodes. It's a shockingly low number of appearances, but Shibata made an impressive impact, and I always thought she needed a regular tokusatsu appearance to cement her status in tokusatsu history. (Even though Iura appeared in just as little of Bioman, he at least was a regular character in Goggle V and Solbrain.) Green Sai suit actor Shoji Hachisuka played a lot of heroines, so Sai already has a pretty feminine look.

What I also liked about picking Iura and Shibata is that it's a Bioman reunion. Shibata guest-starred on two fan favorite episodes of Bioman as the android Miki, who Iura's character befriended, and who met a tragic end. I think these two would have added a nice little anniversary bonus to the hero side of Liveman that the villain side does. (Volt being a little Flashman reunion, with Kaura, his sidekick Gardan and Wanda.) It's obvious that Daisuke Shima and Megumi Mori ate up a lot of the show's money, which is why we got two awful nobodies as Tetsuya and Jun'ichi, but I don't think Iura and Shibata would have exactly bankrupted them.

And, yes, the first order of business once Green Sai is made female is to eliminate the pregnancy episode, which would go from silly-with-a-male-character to creepy-with-a-female. (It's absurd and hilarious how over-the-top people react to that episode. It's a stupid episode! Such a stupid episode, but it's the one thing people who hate Liveman cling to. It was a silly plot without the anti-abortion message people warp it into being -- the point was newbie team member Jun'ichi feeling for the life of a monster, and sort of reteaching the old-timers that lesson. It wasn't some "message," and while it was a dumb episode, it wasn't franchise-destroying like G3 Princesses or something like that.)

*sigh* Just another case of having to imagine this kind of casting to improve a sadly detrimental hole in an otherwise great series.