Kaiketsu Zubat: Episode Twelve Review

Following the action-packed, suspenseful events of episode 11, unexpected turn of events continue in episode 12: Ten Seconds to Execution. 

After the slight deviations in episodes 10 and 11, episode 12 seems to continue down the path of expecting the unexpected, although not completely running off course of its original formula.

First, we see a man named Shinji and his fiancee Yuuko attacked by one of the two bad guys in this episode, Boomerang Jack. In his typical “cool guy” manner, Hayakawa shows up playing what may be considered his theme song. I find it rather impressive he can play such music without moving his fingers to change the chords.

These bad guys sure like to make their schemes complicated. If they wanted the money, why didn’t they just go straight to the postmaster himself? That would make more sense because he was the one in charge of the money. Of course, if they had done that, Hayazawa still probably would have shown up, and someone still would’ve ended up dead.

So when the police come to help protect the money, they demand to see it. That’s not suspicious at all; anyone can deduce something bad is going to happen. A confrontation happens and, really only arriving when there’s danger, Hayakawa fights to save the money, but fails to do so and Shinji loses his life in the process.

When Shinji is killed, I thought to myself, ‘Well here we go again. Why does someone always end up dead?’ But, in a nice and refreshing twist, the postmaster is arrested and charged with theft and murder. I guess this episode, and maybe the entire show, is a one step forward, two steps back type of show. The money is delivered to Boss L and the “police chief” is warned about Hayazawa. Of course, these warnings prove useless, like they always have, because where there’s a will, there’s a way for Hayazawa and nobody has realized that yet.

After subsequently falling into a trap and escaping, which made me roll my eyes and say “here we go again,” Hayazawa calls the Zubacar, which re-captured my attention, to save the postmaster from his execution. To me, Hayazawa was more upset about the execution than the postmaster was. That guy was calm, cool, and collected. Also, I had no idea the Zubacar was voice activated. That’s interesting and awesome at the same time.

After saving the postmaster, Zubat, with his impressive skills with a whip, fights Boomerang Jack and the Darkness Gang boss man, managing to defeat them in under the five minutes he’s allowed. But, not before asking his typical “Did you kill Asuka Goro?” questions and finishing with his Zubat attack. These bad guys must be a terrible evil organization if they don’t even know who killed one guy. Shouldn’t there be some sort of communication? But, it wouldn’t be a show if everyone knew who killed Asuka.

We don’t see Osamu or Midori in this episode until the end, so we don’t have to deal with them causing problems or getting captured and tortured. I’m sure it’s a rare occurrence when they only make a small appearance in an episode and that kind of shakes things up a bit. We will have to see if there are any future episodes where their presence isn’t part of the main story line.

Having been born about a decade and a half after this show originally aired, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The first few episodes started with the same predictable pattern, but as the episodes progressed it started deviating to different, somewhat unpredictable patterns. Someone once said to me, “Nothing good came from the seventies.” That may be true, but from the little things I’ve seen and heard from that decade, Zubat is on the better side of things and episode 12 manages to help with that impression, and I’m interested to see where future episodes lead.

Every Wednesday The Tokusatsu Network staff members review every episode of a tokusatsu series. To see previous episode reviews, visit our Reviews page.