Director: Hidetoshi Ōmori
Screenplay: Hideki Mitsui
Based on the manga by Ken
Kitashiba and Yasuhiro Watanabe
Voice Cast: Teruaki Ogawa as
Jotaro Zaizen; Hiroshi Ohtake as Keiichi Suzuki; Kōzō Shioya as Takumi
Mochizuki; Rica Fukami as Junko Yoshioka; Rintarou Nishi as Ryuichi Jinnai; Seizo
Katou as Kozo Soneya; Tetsu Inada as Naoto Todo; Tomomichi Nishimura as Seijiro
Matsuzaka
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles1
Da bomb!
We will call this review a tribute to the Anime World Order podcast, which started in December 2005 and still continued into the 2020s. It has outlasted other podcasts about anime, even anime distributors in the USA and even companies from Japan. They have seen one form of anime distribution, that insane idea of selling three to four episodes per full price disc for a whole series, die out in favour of streaming, even seen the brief HD DVD versus Blu-Ray war, even saw when Crunchyroll, a beloved streaming service, used to bootleg anime and were suspicious until gaining much respectability, admiration and even co-funded original titles for their streaming service.
I feel the people we admire - authors, writers, commentators - as much influence our obsessions as much as the first of anything we discover in youth. The first anime I saw will leave an impression, but also the titles (alongside manga) that podcast have brought up, and still need to get to, have influenced me over the years too. They also obsess us with obscurities we wish to track down, or at least for myself the oddities they and no one else bring up become like sacred items to at least see once. I seriously doubt anyone else covered Zaizen Jotaro, as we will call this show for short in this review, but they did back in August 2007, and even then, they only covered six of eleven episodes, a rare case where, for the most part covering the entirety of a work, they did not. Back then, it was still being fan subbed by the morbidly curious. Whilst it may seem an odd tribute to choose what is not a good show in the slightly, they have covered worse, and it was always the oddities, as much as a best, which always tantalised me and I am still tracking down.
What Zaizen Jotaro is, and I am glad to finally knock this show off that list to see, is what you do, adapting a manga started in 2004, to try to sell the type of heroic pulp figure of the "Seinen" genre to an older salaryman if he does not fancy any of those fantasy and science fiction tales. Seinen, a type of story meant to be sold to adult men between their teen years and middle age, has evolved over the years. What is actually represents in what the term means is varied nowadays. It can find connections to the "Gekiga" movement, coined by manga author Yoshihiro Tatsumi to move away from children's comics to those for adults, but it can vary between the more violent and adult content to even comedies about high school girls. It has become as flexible as other "genres" targeted to gendered audience, as "Shōjo" is meant for young girls but could go from science fiction by female authors to dramas. Hence, it cannot really be held as one thing or another. This, nonetheless, for me was clearly an attempt at that type of dynamic storytelling from their more action packed, adult tales....somewhere to a target older male reader's world, not assassinating people like Golgo 13 or fighting in fantasy world, but stamping down on political and financial corruption especially in the construction business.
Now, as anime and manga have proven, no idea is too dull or ridiculous if you can pull it off. Here, I could not help but think of the 2001 anime series adaptation of Salaryman Kintaro, based on the Hiroshi Motomiya manga and probably one of the obscurest anime titles to actually get a release on DVD in the United Kingdom. In that show, a former motorbike gang leader with a noble heart entered respectable white collar work in the construction industry; it was not a perfect show, but it was fascinating in terms of trying to make a melodramatic story in ordinary working life, with all the heightened drama and suspense expected for an action story, and this will not be the last time I evoke this show with Zaizen Jotaro. Zaizen Jotaro has more licensed for bombast as it follows the titular figure, a former cop who had his death faked and is a member of the independently ran anti-corruption group the Government Crime Investigation Agency (GCIA). He is a hot headed but noble figure who believes in justice and has carte blanche to take on corrupt politicians, embezzling business managers, and even the criminal underworld backing them.
He can fight, but his secret weapon is unlimited money. Whilst Batman is a millionaire with the advantage of his class privilege, he at least went into exile to learn martial arts and various techniques just in case technology and wealth were not enough. Jotaro, who exiled to the "deserts of Great Britain" (??), has the ultimate credit card which he waves around also as his badge, the designer gold black card which allows him to hire anything he needs. Giant construction trucks, hired armed back-up, anything. He is armed to take on idiosyncratic and colourful figures, such as a gang leader who loves theatre, and between them throw Shakespeare quotations at each other, to the ultimate villain, a ninety plus year old gang boss who yet has the physique of a forty year old man, looking with his huge muscles like a villain from a Fist of the North Star rip-off, and all those decades to build up a group known as the Black Dragon Group who control everything.
Before we actually get to the truth, as I learnt of this show, Zaizen Jotaro is not a subjectively good show in the slightest, but let us step back rather than merely trash it. Reconsider at least that, yet, this is still the same idealised male image of the man found in other Japanese pop culture. One who woos all beautiful women who he encounters; one who can talk back and be cocky in a culture where, infamously, the phrase "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down" appears a bit in, and as a fighter for truth and justice, especially to stop corrupt people stealing the populous' tax money, he is a bad ass who can out think or just out style anyone else. The difference is he is now in a realm of the ordinary working man, someone who is suave and stylish even in the world of construction business corruption where their crimes are smaller scale like making cheaper (but more dangerous to use) concrete by mixing in sand.
Jotaro, even with eyebrows so sharp he could open cans with them, to borrow a joke from that AWO Podcast review, is a fantasy ideal for a male reader to imagine himself as. Definitely a ladies' man as, whilst chaste, there is one sex scene and almost every woman he encounters (side agents, criminal mistresses, kept women of luxury) becomes almost the equivalent of the harem genre female characters, joining the GCIA and looking on lovingly at him. (There is even some slapstick of him having wandering eyes; also unfortunately some material, groping people from behind, not acceptable even from the pervert male high school student nowadays). The fantasy of luxury, in spite of this being about the fantasy of swatting down corrupt politicians, cannot be ignored either. Barely really touching the common man, baring at least the police or the one company employee who Jotaro rescues and has on his team, it is as much about middle class or luxurious people with unlimited money to have the best suits, the best food and alcohol etc.
Truthfully as well, this is in context to a very silly show with is also insanely cheap. Before we even get to the series' narrative, this is a rudimentary looking programme to say the least, with the added quirk of its attempt at style. Shorthand that looks jarring, such as many swipe pans to transition to new scenes, one involving a gun being waved across the screen from right to left to cut to the next scene. Or cutting within a shot an extreme close up of a character or an image, in the space originally of the initial shot, in what is like a collage-like hybrid of two different shots which, actually, stands out but is beholden to how cheap the show looks.
The first episode belies this as well as, for a show meant to be about the edgy subject of corruption in Japanese culture, suggesting a detailed and labyrinth mystery, this show is also comically broad. From his introduction our titular protagonist is a cartoon, buzzing an airport control tower, including bending reality of electronics by being able to project his face in a panel, to being able to snap his fingers and have an army of people dress him smartly in public. Even his catchphrase - "Da bomb" - is goofy, and never spoken (in English) in a logical circumstance where it makes sense to. The show tones down considerably, but in that first episode you get a highway over run with large 18-wheelers trying to run him over, to monks, Christian not Buddhist, inexplicably trying to off him, setting the stage for what may seem a hyper-exaggerated farce.
Even beyond then, it does feel like a child's fantasy of cops and robbers, grown to an adult's with no real sense of what it is trying to tackle in political corrupt and a lot of abruptness. I learnt some things, I kid you not reader, of worth to be a better man, quotations of Shakespeare to what foods are detoxins that can help one live longer, like plums, when Zotaro is finally introduced to the main villain by buying the hospital he is at. The show is useless if you wanted any plot to elaborate on what actual business corrupt is. Salaryman Kintaro, whilst also ridiculous, at least had a scene where Kintaro learns how construction companies bid on projects to do the work on, needed as exposition for when Kintaro is aware of people attempting to rig the ballots; if remotely accurate to how Japanese business work, that exposition in itself was at least of worth. Here, there is never even an elaborate plot explanation for the world, even before it leads to business men being assassinated or forced to kill themselves, about the intricacies of embezzlement even if simplified.
Even if broad, even if still pandering to this macho fantasy, even with the limited animation, this show would have been fascinating as a melodramatic tale, with gangs and manly tears being shed, police officers firing their pistols in the air in salute to their fallen comrade at a funeral and a confrontation at the beach, which elaborated on a world of business and political corruption from them. Even for a show as ridiculous as having the daughter of that fallen officer be the one who inspires everyone with words beyond her years yet naive, this could have been an intently over-the-top but in-depth tale. Even a show where the lead literally becomes a superhero by disguising himself like a caricature of a chauffeur could have some gravitas. Anime's greatest virtue is that, grown up with even if usually shown after midnight on Japanese television, it is not that it is more mature, as children's shows existing can attest to, but that like manga you have the ability to tackle any premise or tone. The series Hidetoshi Ōmori, whilst that show is not known about anymore, adapted a shonen (young teen audience) manga called Dan Doh!!! in 2004 for television, a story about golf. So a business crime narrative would have worked. A man with a credit card for a weapon against greedy fatcats is still credible. Neither is actually done well.
Most of Zaizen Jotaro is amusingly naff instead. An ending of an episode abruptly ends cutting in a shot of a fighter plane abruptly exploding in the sky, Jotaro not since a film serial lead fraught with fighting against episode end cliff-hangers, others following suit in their unexpected abrupt turns. Characters, usually the men, metaphorically beat their chests about justice and helping Japan be the best without corruption, not necessary jingoistic either as the GCIA is meant to be the Japanese equivalent of the FBI. In another show, it would have had weight that many of the figures we meant are old men, or men in their middle age, which saw Japan rebuild itself after World War II or were there as the country was slowly gaining economic stability, but here it is lost.
I would be amused if it ever got a proper Blu Ray release or streamed in the West. All anime should be available. I cannot hate Zaizen Jotaro, because it is too charming in what it is in spite of what is wasted. But nonetheless, I will not kid the reader that this is a good show. Lowered expectations are not enough to get around the moments that drift along, or the problematic gender politics where one female character just get killed for an emotional weight, or that it does not have a real ending either, just a form of abrupt conclusion, and that most of the show's most dynamic scenes are just conferences by businessmen being really polite as they apologise for scandals that the plot does not explain. It is however an odd, amusing piece of time capsule, with some interest, some entertainment, and some fascination.
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1) Unreleased in the West, I had to rely for this piece on a version, found in the year 2020, where the subtitles were clearly translated by someone (or a computer software) with not the most perfect grasp of English specifically in sentence structure, which could be awkwardly put together at times. I am still glad to have been able to see the show, and it still made sense, so my heart goes out to the person (or even software) that let this review even happen.
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