The Silver Destroyer

Ever since I was a kid, I've thought Bio Hunter Silva was cool. (I remember even trying to draw comics with him as the star. No pun intended, since he travels in the form of a star. Hey, even though what the show says is clearly close to "silver," my family didn't know his name, so we DID refer to him as "Star.") The show thinks he's cool, look at some of the ways they have him enter a scene, with that particular piece of BGM always playing. (My favorite as a kid was when he breaks into Professor Shibata's lair by calmly riding in on a handcar.) Silva's a fan favorite for good reason, and yet I've seen a lot of modern viewers criticize his role in the show, finding him unnecessary and repetitive to the story.

Silva was a shake-up the show needed. He's an outside force that the Bioman really didn't need getting mixed up with -- they have enough on their plate. And as great as that episode was when the Big Three turned on Doctor Man, once he wiped their memory and rebooted them? It showed that there would never again be conflict amongst the villains, which is one of writer Hirohisa Soda's favorite things to have in his shows. So it was great to bring in a villain who had no connections to the regular villains, so he clashed with them. And it's also great that he has a significant, symbolic connection to our heroes -- he was the one who destroyed planet Bio and its people -- and that he's just such a threat, his presence is such a felt danger to them. I like that they bring up Mika -- that Doctor Man's Anti-Bio Gun that killed Mika is nothing compared to what Silva can do. And being a technological creation from another world, he's far more advanced than anything Doctor Man can whip up, so he's a genuine threat to the villains, too, especially if he gets his hands back on his mecha, Barujion! Everybody is screwed in that scenario, which is why Gear's so set on obtaining Barujion for themselves and it becomes a three-way race to find it.

"Silva is too one-note." Yeah? Well, he's a robot programmed for one thing -- the annihilation of anything with Bio Particles. That's his sole purpose to exist. There's no reasoning with him -- heck, we saw Peebo try (and fail). Silva's kind of like another red-eyed, silver-clad robotic killer from 1984 -- the Terminator. Nobody ever calls The Terminator boring or repetitive or overrated or lame. When I was a kid, I thought T-1000 was the coolest son of a bitch. But look at him -- he had only one job to do, and that was to kill a kid. A kid! And he couldn't even manage it! Not even close. Because of T-1000 being bad at his job, we got stuck with several shitty sequels! The T-800 failed time and again to kill Sarah in the first one. Bio Hunter Silva? Destroyed an entire planet. And he gets an Anti-Bio Particle-filled shot off to everyone in his very first appearance and destroys quite a few of Bioman's weapons. So...Bio Hunter Silva is more badass than any of the Terminators, I said it. (Silva hit the TV airwaves just about two weeks before Terminator hit big screens in America, too.) Silva loves murderin', but there's one thing he loves more than murderin' -- and that's his robot, Barujion. And that's probably just because Barujion allows him to murder on a much bigger scale.

I never felt Silva's just stalling -- he appears in Episode 37! He's only in 13 episodes! He doesn't have that much time to go in circles. Is it necessary for him to appear in episodes like 41 or 42, for example? Maybe not, but you can tell they just wanted to include the new cool character and remind you of his presence. He appears only briefly in those episodes -- episodes which are written by secondary writers, so it's not like they were going to be the ones to finally have him find Barujion or kill a Bioman. They're quick appearances meant to excite and make you anticipate his next big move and appearance. I like some of these little appearances, because he pops up at really inopportune times for the Bioman, and he'll often pop up at a moment that will put a wrinkle in Gear's plan. So he's screwing with both sides of characters!

C'mon, you gotta love stuff like when Silva lets himself be kidnapped by Gear. They haul him back to the Neo Grad, all the way at the South Pole, tie him up, feeling victorious, and he just busts out his chains after busting their bubble and getting off insults. He then stands atop Gear's fancy office table in order to get off some shots -- he attacks Doctor Man! -- before making his escape in style. A pure power move, all just to show off his silver robot cojones -- Gear had nothing on him. You can imagine how Silva would be in a modern show -- he'd only be after the Bioman and would probably just go away or even shut down if it wasn't anything with Bio Particles in his eyesight or facing him as his opponent. But, no, like a Terminator, Silva lays it out immediately -- whoever gets in his way will be slaughtered. He's not afraid to throw down with anyone, and he usually has the upper hand over 'em. He isn't all talk.

I think the drama he causes to stir within Gear is something that helps break up his one-minded mission, because it forces him to have to deal with something that's out of his wheelhouse. Did they drag out his search for Barujion? Yeah, but that's because of how much they built Barujion up. They couldn't just haul it out right away, knowing it was an important factor of the end game, and have Barujion just keep losing over and over. They build it up, and it finally appears, but they keep teasing the idea since Gear quickly grabs Barujion away from Silva before he has a chance to really use it. And it had to be that way, because there's no reason why Silva just wouldn't dominate once he had his mecha. Look at what happens when Silva finally gets his ass in the cockpit -- he's wiping the ground of the South Pole with the Bio Robo.

Barujion loses quickly, but at least there's a new factor in play -- it's not just Bio Robo trying its same moves until they eventually win. Bio Robo calls for Peebo and uses Peebo as an energy source. For me that works since they're the two pieces of technology from Bio and it can be seen as vengeance after 500 years for what Silva did to Bio. It's also just a result of the 20-minute '80s shows realizing that mecha's not where it's at -- a newer show would obviously have the entire episode (maybe more) be a mecha fight between Bio Robo and Barujion, but look at what Bioman does in one episode -- the Bio Robo raids the Neo Grad, they go to save Gou's father, Shuuichi infiltrates as Prince, Gou's father sacrifices himself, Psygorn gets killed, Mason gets killed, Silva and Barujion are killed...that's a lot of stuff going down! And, like the other '80s shows, they chose to focus on the stuff that really mattered. (Gou's farewell to his father, his reaction as he hears his father die behind him beats any fight they could have had with Barujion.) Maybe Barujion didn't last long enough for you, but...I think the show made the right choices. And I still think Barujion is cool, too! (I almost bought that limited and expensive soft vinyl they released of it several years ago.) Silva at least gets to shine in this final episode, as he attempts to remake Prince AND kills Mason in a duel, proving that the spikes he emits from his elbows aren't just there to look purdy. He kills Mason! Mason, the number two guy in Gear! Mason, who had just had what looked like was supposed to be the "Classic Number Two Villain VS Niibori Final Duel," only it wasn't -- Silva snipes in!

People think Silva was killed in an underwhelming, too easy of a way. To be honest...most of Bioman's villains were. Bioman's a show that had more ideas than they had time to do with. I think that's something that led to those rushed-seeming villain deaths. Like the show was just taking its time and then was like "Oh, shit! We've gotta wrap things up!" I always felt it was lackluster that, after episodes upon episodes of the Zyunoids taking Super Electron hits that, oh, it's finally just one too many once the series is near its finish, so they finally just die from the attack. Monster and Farrah had similar demises -- oh, they safely eject from their mechas just in time for episodes upon episodes, but finally just can't make it? Silva gets the memorable scene where he's ejected from the ruined Barujion, appearing to be completely safe. He seems to be continuing his mission of finding and eradicating all things which possess Bio Particles before he just halts and falls over to his death. Even though it's artifical snow, they film the scene nicely, having snow fall as the Bio Hunter takes his last steps. Even the Bioman were like "That bastard never stopped!" The way Silva's scene is filmed, this little character quirk, differentiates it from the other villain deaths, so I'd say that Silva has a more memorable death scene than the other Gear villains that aren't Doctor Man. The show recognized Silva was special.

I tend to find the costumed villains less interesting than the face ones, but it's easier to overlook for me if they're meant to be robots. And I always say, if you insist on having a costumed villain, you better make it a good -- no, GREAT -- design. And Silva's design is just awesome. Yutaka Izubuchi's a giant for a reason. And the fact that I'm usually critical or dismissive of masked/costumed-only villains in toku, yet like Silva so much should tell you how fucking cool he is.

But a great design can only get you so far, you also need actors matching in quality. When you have a character like Silva, who's supposed to be cool, and you're depending on separate suit and voice actors to bring that character to life, it can be dicey. It often doesn't work. It can go either way, but most of the time the suit actor will get it, but the voice actor's performance is just so far away from what the character is supposed to be. (See: Megaranger's Gireil, Gaoranger's Rouki.) Silva lucked out in having the kick-ass Yoshinori Okamoto -- a rising star of a great, dependable villain actor -- play him in suit. Okamoto is responsible for 98% of why the character is cool and kicks ass. He gives the character such a tough, menacing presence, but has these cool, clean, precise movements. He makes Silva the confident professional killer he's supposed to be, but also gives him a kind of cowboy swagger. But Silva's also fortunately armed with the versatile Kazuo Hayashi giving voice to him. Hayashi had voiced mainly a lot of monsters-of-the-week prior to Silva, and you can tell he just relished having such a big, pivotal character in toku. (I actually think Hayashi's voice is similar to Okamoto's, so I didn't even know for the longest time that it *wasn't* Okamoto providing the voice.) Hayashi has a lot of fun with the role, giving the character a lot of shades of emotion when other voice actors would have played the character with a robotic monotone. You gotta love when Silva just laughs his ass off whenever one of his opponents comes up short in an attack against him.

Yutaka Izubuchi's unused design for a character called Silverman.

Like the unused design for Gou's brother, a couple of the Sentai books have unused designs by Yutaka Izubuchi pertaining to Silva. The one I want to talk about is called Silverman, and all that's said about him is just that he's of the same origins as Silva. You'd think a cohort of Silva's, but I think it's interesting to note that this character bears Gear's emblem rather than the one Silva has. When I first saw this Silverman design, I thought it was an upgrade for Silva; I was like "a Super Silva?!" So I was disappointed once I saw the text. But it made me think of how cool it would have been in the show if, once Silva was defeated, Doctor Man had some Mecha Clones go and scoop up his pieces, with Doctor Man then rebuilding Silva to suit his own purposes. It would make sense since Doctor Man was so fascinated by Silva, but it would also show just how surprisingly advanced Doctor Man is that he can take alien technology and make it do his bidding. I always thought that the reason the Bio Robo reactivates in order to stop Gear was the show saying that Doctor Man's knowledge and technology were approaching or near the same level of threat as what destroyed Bio. Doctor Man DID have the goods and was advanced well beyond what any other Earthling dared attempt.

And not to be all conspiracy theory nutty once again, but what if that Silverman design DID originate as something like I just described? Because why would a cohort of Silva's have Gear's mark? Also: Silverman was actually one of Silva's original names when the character was in working stages. Also: can't you picture an egomaniac like Doctor Man rebuilding Silva and naming it SilverMAN after him? Just sayin'. Since the Silverman drawing comes from a book covering all of the Sentai shows made in 2001, there's so many shows to cover by that point, I have to wonder if it could be a little wrong in the info. Whereas the stuff about Gou's brother and Silva's original name comes from Yutaka Izubuchi's design book from early '85 -- I tend to believe information from around the time the work was still new, and information that's coming from someone who worked directly on the show as opposed to someone who was hired to raid the archives and put together a compilation book decades later.

Imagine if the show did my Super Silva scenario -- the Bio Hunter would now be working for Gear, which is something Gou feared when Silva first showed up. Maybe he could have been the final opponent before Doctor Man in the finale instead of freakin' Farrah Cat! (You're cool in action movies, Yukari Ohshima, but Farrah Cat is just such a nonpresence in the show. She's treated with less importance than most of the Zyunoids!)

And one more thing. I like Kamen Rider. It's my second favorite of the big toku franchises. But I love Super Sentai. There's always that pitting every franchise against each other in the fandom, and it always comes down to Sentai VS Rider. I've participated in many of those battles -- some in good fun, some bloody. Superhero Taisen was a boring and sloppy movie, but I LOVE that they brought Silva back and made him Rider Hunter Silva. At the height of goofing around with GIFs of Sentais killing Riders on HJU circa '06, I would have had a lot of fun with this; I probably would have had the mods change my username to Rider Hunter Shougo, with Rider Hunter Silva as my avatar. It was great for a new movie to dust off a villain from the era of Sentai I grew up with, and it was really awesome that they got Hayashi to provide the voice again, in this age of replacement voices. Who was really missed from that movie, though? Okamoto! I like suit-actor Kazutoshi Yokoyama in his Metal Hero work and the three Sentai Reds he played, but he was a pretty pathetic Silva in Superhero Taisen. They were better off just stop-motion animating the Medicom. Sad thing? Okamoto did stunts in that movie! Why the hell didn't they let him play Silva?! No, Okamoto supposedly plays Aka Ranger. Sad thing? Kazuo Niibori did stunts for that movie! Why the hell didn't they let him play Aka Ranger?! Those movies are made up on the spot, man. Plus Silva was sadly way underused.

Those who slam Silva, I've got one word for your criticisms, and it's repeated three times...