Yatterman

ヤッターマン - Yattâman

CD1 - Subtitles ; CD2 - Subtitles

Yatterman follows the adventures of Gan (J-pop sensation Sho Sakurai), a young mechanical genius who uses his father’s high-tech toy shop as a front for building crime-fighting robots, and his electronics-whiz girlfriend, Ai (Saki Fukuda). Together, they can transform into Yatterman, joint superheroes who command the enormous mecha-dog Yatterwoof in their battles against the evil Dorobrow gang.

Gan and Ai are “Yatterman #1 and #2,” respectively, and always work as a pair; aside from dodging laser beams, performing high-kicking cartoon leaps and wielding awesome tech weapons, they are very human, and have no real special powers. There’s a few supernatural elements at work in the movie, but it’s worth noting how much of Yatterman’s action is based in futuristic and fantastic technologies — and despite the original series’ ’70s origins and Miike’s painstaking, often gorgeously detailed adherence to the look of his source material, it never feels dated.