Jetman 17-18 (The Problem With Vyram)

EPISODES 17 & 18

Episodes that could have been a four-parter, instead of a two-parter. These two episodes try to cover so much ground -- Gai's laying it all out for Kaori, his "death," the arrival of Vyram's leader, Radeige's being demoted to human... Juuza and Radeige's storylines certainly could have been expanded upon.

17 features the sorta controversial scene of Gai dragging Kaori away against her will, into an elevator, to confront her. It's impulsive and rude, but fans act like he knocks her down and kicks the shit out of her until she agrees to a date. He's there at the store, just kind of bottling up frustration, and when Kaori's parading out bikinis she wants to buy to impress Ryu, he decides it's time to just put all of his cards on the table. So he whisks Kaori away and confronts her. (It's not his fault the blackout causes the elevator to stop and lose power.) Kaori's uncomfortable, but not scared, so I think people read this scene wrong.

Finally frustrated at Kaori's attempt to play nice and spare feelings by not saying anything to Gai -- what she feels about either him or Ryu -- Gai finally just reaches a point where he'd even prefer she hate him rather than feel nothing. I always kind of wondered if Gai would have backed off if she DID say she hated him.

What's really ridiculous about this ordeal is that the remaining Jetman are stranded in another elevator, with Raita freaking out about what Gai might be doing to Kaori. He really overreacts more than the viewers of the scene. And, again, the show brings up that he loves Kaori, too, and you just roll your eyes. Raita even says that he knows he's not good enough for Kaori, so the best he can do is look out for her, so...yay, Satsuki! Know that Raita thinks he's lowering himself by settling for you!

But in this scene, Ryu shows how awesome he could be. He tells Raita he's overreacting, and that he thinks Gai's a better person than Raita thinks he is. Look at this from Ryu's perspective: Gai's been nothing but a colossal pain in the ass, but Ryu still sees the good in him and vouches for him. And it says something that Gai gets pissed when the team finally meet up and Raita's at the attack with accusations; he's NOT a shitbag who would harm Kaori.

The cause of the blackouts is from the arrival of Juuza, Empress of the Vyram empire. Radeige's in-tune or powerful enough that he senses her arrival. Even though they play it vague just who and how important Juuza is, she's a great addition to the show, with more of a presence and strength and intimidation factor than the other Vyram members. It's such a shame she's used for just two episodes, and ends up being so easily disposed of. (I would have also preferred for someone like Atsuko Takahata to have played her.)

When Radeige attempts to overthrow her, she attacks him and "punishes" him in the worst way she finds she can -- by turning him into a human. In the process, he loses his memory and is found on the beach. (Just like Shouichi Tsugami.) He's found and comes to befriend a terminally ill young woman, who he ultimately ends up betraying once his memory is returned and he goes full-on Radeige. For all of my complaints about Daisuke Tachi's performance as Radeige, he's better at playing the amnesiac version. (Maybe playing a serious villain isn't for him? Because he's also kind of funny as Mokumokuren in Kakuranger.) And because it's Inoue, there's just a cloud over his friendship with the ill girl, especially when his presence raises her spirits, and she's making wishes for his sake.

Jetman fans like this storyline for highlighting how vicious Radeige is. He's stopped by the girl, who sees him in the full Radeige outfit, trying to get through to any of the kindness he had, and he kills her. That the amnesiac Radeige was so kind, and that her words cause Radeige hesitation (and his face goes from blue to flesh colored as he hears her) says that, for what a evil piece of shit Radeige is, there has to be SOMEthing decent in him, deep down. Inoue loves blurring the lines between heroes and villains and he usually likes making villains a little more complex. But, for some reason, I never found the Vyram to be as deep or layered or shaded in gray as a lot of Inoue's other villains. This two-parter is the first time anything's been given to Radeige that wasn't just muttering your standard villain threats and condemnations.

And here's what I learned upon my latest rewatch of Jetman: the Vyram are atypical Inoue villains in that there's not much depth to them, at least for the early half of the series. There's always been something about the Vyram villains that never quite worked for me, but I always chalked it up to casting choices and weak designs. But when I thought about it on this rewatch, I realized they just don't have much going for them as characters, and not a compelling motivation for what they do. The Vyram don't feel united; they don't seem like they have a history, you don't feel anything for their little game. They're just not nuanced.

I think I'm just really spoiled by the villains in Hirohisa Soda's shows. He'd give his villains layers, and moments of sympathy or understanding, but he also remembered to make them interesting and alive and damned formidable. I always said Jetman had Maskman envy, and the Tube is a villain group that never gets the respect it should, so I'll use them as an example. Although he's mysterious, we learn who Zeba is, and come to understand the dark history that fuels his motivation. Igam's a proud warrior stuck between two lives, with a personal grudge against the usurper Zeba, the whole mess Ial made and a personal grudge against Red Mask for "corrupting" Ial. You can easily surmise Baraba's history, especially once his mother is introduced. You can feel the years of hostility between Igam and Baraba and their clans. Kiros! Kiros is great, working for the villains with the promise they'll let him have Ial, while also in a bitter battle with Red Mask for her love. There's interplay between the villains; personality clashes, disagreements over methods; there's a sense of shared history, you get quite an impression of Tube's underground world.

Or take a look at the officers of Flashman's Mes -- you don't exactly find out a lot about them, but it's easy to surmise since they're lab experiments, but they're also colorful, memorable, there's a unity to them, they're competent. They're made more memorable by good casting and high quality design work.

Now, what can you say about the Vyram members? Who they are? Where they come from? Their history, their individual personalities? Radeige's a megalomaniac; if you didn't know she was secretly Rie, what's to say about Maria?; Toran's just a typical Evile Brat; Grey's a robot, but isn't it cool he likes alcohol, cigars and music?! And they often feel just so disorganized -- I get that they're meant to be a sort of mirror to the Jetman team, but it's not entirely successful since we're meant to believe the Vyram have successfully conquered other dimensions. It's not really until the later episodes that anything of note is done with the Vyram, and even then it seems just so...small. And really not like Inoue. This is the guy who got the Kamen Rider The First gig and was like "Oh, reboot the original series? OK. Here's an entire movie about two Shocker monsters instead. Enjoy!" He's the guy who, in Kamen Rider 1's big anniversary movie, decided to have Jigoku Taishi fight alongside Rider, ending with Hongou letting Jigoku Taishi off the hook with a smile! The guy loves his villains!

My theory is that Inoue had to compromise on Jetman. He could either go as far as he was allowed with the Jetman's flawed, clashing heroes and the love triangle or have devious, dreadful villains, but not both, so he chose to go with the former. Which, hey, if that's the scenario, maybe he made the better choice. As I just said, Soda had explored villains more than any Sentai before his reign had. Inoue could have followed his footsteps or done something different, which in this case would be the hard lean into the team drama and love story.

And that's not to say I don't like the Vyram; they still beat most of the villain groups that come after them. (I don't feel like I should have to even say that; why is everything so one-sided these days? You can still like something and be critical of parts of it.) I'm just of two minds about the Vyram, in comparison to Soda's villains, in comparison to the way Inoue usually handles villains. And I'm just a little harder on the Vyram since they represent the last mainly-actor villain group in Sentai, before The Rubber Suits take over.

With that out of the way...what was I saying? Oh, yeah. Gai dies in this two-parter! So, that happened.