Live for Tomorrow: Liveman 45-49

Episodes 45 & 46

And so Ashura gets written off. In the first part, he connects his brain with his Brain Beast, Hacker Brain, and causes electronic mayhem all over Japan. After Falcon kicks his ass -- and kills the Shura Three -- Ashura accidentally hacks into some secret computer on the Brain Base, finding out a bit about Bias' secret. The one that Gou knows about. The one that Bias just let Gou run off knowing. Gou had more details, Ashura picks up a few vague words, but Bias flat out attempts to kill Ashura, blowing up the truck he and his computers are in. Why let Gou off, but kill Ashura?

Anyway, Ashura survives, and reverts back to dumb-dumb criminal Arashi. Arashi's a guy who seems to just go with the flow. Bias tried to kill him? Well, fuck him, he's his enemy now. The Liveman are trying to help him? Well, shit, I guess they're his pals now. In the second episode, Kemp's causing A LOT of mass destruction with his Brain Beast, but I really like how they bring Gou back in the episode. He rescues Jou and Arashi and takes them back to a church; Gou, in the aftermath of all that's happened, has found religion. Sakai's good as this new and improved Gou, genuinely worried once Jou goes back out into battle, and when Arashi chooses to do the same.

I like Arashi's last line to Gou. "It's a strange life we led, huh?" Arashi does things big, and he knows there's only one way to take down Kemp's seemingly indestructible monster, which absorbs whatever weapons attack it. Arashi knows it will be a fight to the death, so he takes the Brain Beast down in a suicide attack. Kemp's furious, but Arashi is victorious. His death is in keeping with the big, rebellious, independent man he was.

Episode 47

Mazenda's send-off. While I like most of this episode, her plan in this one's a bit strange. It's an excuse to bring back old monster suits, but since Liveman already resurrected monsters back in episode 25, Mazenda's plan here is to create a dream realm where just the IMAGES of past monsters can wreak havoc. Eh, it's a weird plan, and it's almost funny that Bias is so desperate to award anyone the 1,000 points that he's handing out points over nothing. "Mazenda went with the fish filet at McDonald's instead of the Big Mac! 100 points!" "Mazenda saved Toei a couple hundred bucks by bringing back old suits. 500 points!" "The show is almost over. 1,000 points!"

What really matters in this episode is Mazenda obtaining the score and Bias sending Gash after her to remove her brain. Throughout the episode, Gou has warned her, but she wouldn't listen...until it was too late. Gash, as always, is an unstoppable mutha, who easily takes down the Liveman, Koron, Gou -- anyone in his way -- to get to Mazenda. When she's finally cornered -- her option is decapitation by Gash's blade or plummet to her death from a cliff -- she ensures that Bias won't get her brain by completing her cybernetic transformation, completely turning her body machine and becoming Robo Mazenda. It's a bold move, a last desperate act but an awesome middle finger to Bias. Gash just walks right away once she does it. She says a few regrets to Gou before she jumps to her death, exploding.

Mazenda always seemed to me like she was cold, but had a strong sense of pride. She wasn't quite as soulless as Kemp, but I think she was close to him in cruelty and villainy. I like characters with shades of gray, but her last minute death speech didn't seem honest to the character. It's one of the many things in keeping with my whole "Liveman was softened by execs" theory. Could have been worse, though -- she could have survived and started hanging out at the Grand Tortoise, dancing with the Liveman in the ending credits.

The final scene of this episode is a highlight, another great Kemp moment. Once he witnesses Mazenda's death from aboard the Brain Base, he seems teary-eyed. He's hunched over, seeming to be crying. Does Kemp feel for anyone other than himself? Is there more to Kenji than meets the eye? Who knows, because the sobs slowly become laughs and he stands and just laughs his ass off, realizing he's going to win it all, after all. It's such a scary display that it freaks out even Bias, and Gash jumps before Bias, gun drawn towards Kemp.

It's this moment where I realized that Kemp should have become the main villain of the series. He's so much more evil than Bias, so much more confident and gleeful in his evildoings. I can easily picture a scenario where he reached a point where he saw himself superior to Bias and killed him and took over. Kemp is the one that set the series in motion, he's the ex-friend and big foe of our Red, so he should have been treated as a HUGE deal, and how huger can you make it than him ending up as the final villain? Yeah, well, Liveman goes the small, cheap, lousy route.

Episode 48

The title of this one should be "How to Chicken Out and Ruin One of Your Villains and Write Them Off in a Stupidly Unremarkable Way." Hey, that title isn't too long. Ever see some of the episode titles for Japanese cop shows?

This is the one where Kemp bites it. And it starts out promisingly enough, with that vicious bastard staging his own defection from Volt, complete with a phony attack, to lure in the Liveman, who are so inexplicably gullible lately. Kemp succeeds and gets the best of them, and it's at that moment that Bias decides he won this week's Hey! Spring of Trivia and grants him the 1,000 point Melon Brain Bread.

Bias learned from the Mazenda mess, though. No sending Gash with a rusty blade to collect the brain, now. Gash appears with a giant orb that he places over Kemp's noggin, cleanly sucking his brain out. It's not clear, but I assume that Kemp's own brain is replaced by Gash with one of the artificial brains that are regularly used to create Brain Beasts, as Kemp soon after becomes a Brain Beast, the Fear Brain Beast. An incredible letdown to have such an important character, a character who I think should have been the show's final villain, to become just a plain, old ordinary monster of the week. Such a mistake, such a frustrating letdown.

Worst of all? Is Yuusuke involved? Is Yuusuke there for a final fight with his former friend, the one he vowed to kill in episode 35? Is Yuusuke there so we at least get the chance for a classic Kazuo Niibori VS Red's big rival duel? NO! Yuusuke decides to follow Gash and board the spaceship he arrived in, so he can be taken to the Brainbase, while leaving the other four to handle Fear Beast Brain. What...the...fuuuuuuuuuu...WHAT, NO, ARGH!?!? God, what a blunder. I literally just got a headache in frustration just thinking about it. (It's especially sucky to deny us a classic Niibori battle after episodes 32 and 35 teased us with Falcon VS Kemp showdowns that abruptly ended.)

Once Bias obtains Kemp's brain from Gash, he hooks up to his big Edward Nygma devices and unveils his big plan -- to brainwash Earth to worship him. Literally. I don't know if he had any plans beyond that, but his biggest kick is to make everyone drop what they're doing, bow and pray in his name. Thankfully Yuusuke made the decision to deny us a cool showdown with Kemp, otherwise Earth would be screwed, because the four Liveman even fall under Bias' spell. (Koron does her best to snap them out of it, but is on the verge of being tossed over a cliff by the four Liveman before Yuusuke interferes with Bias' attack aboard the Brainbase. So, really, everyone on Earth owes Yuusuke a thanks for being saved.)

Once the Liveman team have snapped out of it, they join Koron in Super Live Robo and kill Fear Beast Brain. Koron is in Falcon's seat. So, not only are we denied a final confrontation between Red and Kemp, but it's almost like the show's giving us the finger by having Koron in Red's position, while Red's off pissing around the Brainbase.

Once Falcon's made his way to Bias' secret Nygmatech room, he pretty much immediately stabs Bias with the Falcon Saber. While it would be out of character for Bias to throw down with any action moves, it's hard not to think of the great fight Jouji Nakata had with Niibori in Flashman, so for Falcon to literally walk into a room, introduce himself and deal Bias a fatal blow, all quick and casually, seems underwhelming.  

However, luckily for Bias, all of the brains he's collected from past followers serves one crucial purpose -- he somehow, through his evil science, uses these brains to heal himself and remain youthful. Here he goes full out and uses the brain to revert himself to the age of a child. This is Bias' big secret -- he's really a man of advanced years, who manipulates his followers/students until he can make use of them. Namely, until they reach a point -- the 1,000 points, actually -- where their brains are cooked enough so that he can drink 'em up and stay young. Bias, Volt -- it's all pretty much a sham. He uses his students for his own end. This all picks up in...

Episode 49

The final episode. Bias is now a kid, Yuusuke is now a prisoner at the Brainbase. Let me go off on a tangent here. Bias is a kid, standing in his secret room, surrounded by a bunch of brains he's collected and stored in plastic hamster balls. Let's dumb this down like this: Bias steals brains to stay young. This is all out of some bad B-Movie from the 1950s. And it definitely doesn't help that Liveman's just out of money at this point. Toei's not putting anything into the finale, it's set at the Brainbase and the rocky terrain. The brains are rubber little pieces of chicken. And throughout these final two episodes, Bias shrinks Kemp's brain, carrying it around in a small ball and uses it as a catch-all weapon. Yeah!

Now, when Liveman started, it obviously kept the vibe Maskman had, of evoking more of a drama. Liveman started out wanting to be similarly grounded, serious. (The Maskman through Turboranger run has been listed as the "youth drama" Sentai series in some of the modern Sentai books.) And certainly the casting of Daisuke Shima and Megumi Mori was meant to draw in average viewers, the non-toku fans. Look at those first few Liveman episodes and see just how different they are; in terms of content and drama and just how high it was aiming.

It was the first Sentai show -- one of the rare toku shows, period -- where the villains were actually HUMAN. Not only humans, but former friends and classmates of the heroes. Things felt so real, intimate, personal in those episodes. Our three heroes lost their friends, colleagues, mentors -- the odds were against them, but they used their knowledge to fight against Volt's knowledge. As I said, Bias and Volt were played more like a cult. Bias was mysterious, quiet, but intimidating. He was charismatic, but dark. You didn't know his story, what his agenda was, but...you know damn well it wasn't stealing brains to stay young.

I can see where writer Hirohisa Soda was going with this decision, though. He wants to tie the show's life theme into the main villain's ultimate goal. If our heroes of life are teaching you how wonderful it is to be alive, it's something Bias already knows -- he's afraid to die, he wants immortality, even if it's at the cost of other people's lives. I think that's a good motive for our villain, and I even like the idea.

But if you're meant to sympathize with Bias, because all he wants to do is live, then his B-Movie brain-stealing plot wasn't the way to convey that storyline. Because you can understand that motive, but the show goes about it in such an over-the-top, intangible way. And we needed more background on Bias, who he was prior to the mad scientist/cult leader, to try and truly understand where he was coming from. In this case, the show was just too mysterious with Bias.

But I like that it's Megumi, the brains of our team, who's given the episode's important speech, in which she tries to convince child Bias to make a clean start, and live out one last regular life and atone for his actions. But that's cutting Bias A LOT of slack. Everything we've seen him -- and his officers, under his orders -- do throughout the series, he's obviously done a dozen times over. He has A LOT of blood on his hands, and the Liveman are too damn easygoing to offer him this shot at freedom. There's a fine line between our heroes being compassionate and understanding and them just being chumps.

You can see that Bias actually considers it, but he fights it. But it's too late, because Megumi's words have been heard by...Kemp's brain, the one Bias has been carrying around. Now, double-bullshit on this development, since we know Kemp's a bastard, I'd argue a bigger bastard than Bias. But, no, Kemp's all like "Yeah! I regret how I lived! I want to live again!" And not only does Kemp's brain have this reaction, but all of the other brains in Bias' collection -- made up of presumably people as vile as Kemp -- rebel, too, wanting to live again. This ends up robbing Bias of the power he obtained from his brain collection, and he rapidly ages -- to his true age. And the show's so low on money at this point that the make-up just looks like someone pushed Nakata's face in a bowl of oatmeal.

The episode *tries* to give us an EPIC FINALE SHOWDOWN between Falcon and Gash. I emphasized tries, because it's just kind of generic, some quick swordplay. Besides, Falcon just chops an arm off and lets Gash escape with Bias back to the Brainbase, because Falcon decides to go and help the others fight the latest Brain Beast, who doesn't even have a theme or anything to set him apart. It's such an afterthought, and makes for an underwhelming finale for the Liveman to be dealing with this non-descript, forgettable Brain Beast while the last two regular villains are limping to their escape. Since the Brainbase was damaged in an earlier battle, Bias and Gash die aboard the ship once they try to take off in it, completely separate and unrelated from what the heroes are up to!

When the Brainbase explodes, it sends Gash's severed head to where our heroes are standing, and it begins playing clips from the series. (I'm sure Tetsuya and Jun'ichi liked watching their siblings get killed.) It's the norm in Sentai finales to play lighthearted or fun clips in the credits of the finale, but Liveman plays clips entirely of the villains. It's so damn strange. We then see Gash's head sink into the earth, while the heroes rejoice that the world has been saved from Volt. Sidebar: when Boukenger was airing, I had a dream scenario of them finding Gash's head, and it being a Precious. (Hey, if Gash recorded everything Volt did, his head holds a lot of dangerous material that the Negatives would like!)

It's a very weird, very cheap, very unfulfilling finale, to a show that had such an amazing, unique, grand start to it. Liveman went from having one of the best premieres in toku history to one of the weakest finales. It started with a roar and went out with a whimper.
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Despite how frustrating it becomes, there's still a lot of good in Liveman, and you can see where it wanted to go, what it wanted to be. A big, big problem is the show not getting the money it needed, it really limits things -- locations, talent, plotlines. And I don't know if it's in relation to the possibility that execs wanted to soften the show, but Hirohisa Soda really seemed to start pulling punches with the storyline. The strongest episodes in the second half of the series are the ones written by Kunio Fujii -- he had a stronger grasp on the heroes' relationships with the villains. Did Soda sugarcoat his initial intentions? How did Fujii slips these strong, no-holds-barred episodes past Toei, if they indeed wanted to lighten the show? The production mysteries of a 30-year-old show.

Even if it stumbled, Liveman is an important show to the franchise, one that set the bar higher, one that works on different levels and one that I think has been misunderstood and mistreated by modern fans. It's still one of my favorites, and I actually enjoyed it a lot on this latest rewatch. I was so glad to feel some of my old love for Liveman again. (Would you believe that I once considered Liveman my top favorite Sentai? And this was after Flashman was my top favorite as a kid. Shhhhhh.)