Karate-Robo Zaborgar (2011)

Probably the best Japanese superhero remake movie I've seen in some time.  If only Kamen Rider: The First and The Next didn't take themselves so seriously and meander all over the place with backstories and J-horror in the wrong places, I'd regard those as better.

But this one is a lot of fun, and without the overall weirdness that say Zebraman has going on in it's movie.  Sure, there's some juvenile humor here and there along with some of the now to be expected weird sex stuff that seems to have to be par for the course in these movies now, but overall it's very entertaining.

It's action packed and right when you think it's about to get bogged down in soap another fight breaks out.  Itsuji Itao isn't a great martial artist, but he really has a lot of enthusiasm.  He also does a really good Bruce Lee imitation on occasion.  It's been so long since I've seen that imitation it's almost fresh.  Almost.  Itsuji does a good job, at least in the first half.  He has a lot to live up to following the late Akira Yamaguchi (Joji Yuki/Riderman in Kamen Rider V3) who was Yutaka Daimon in the original series.

The story has two parts, the first being young Daimon's battle with Sigma and his falling in love with Miss Borg.  After he loses faith in the government the movie flash forwards to 25 years later when the final battle with Sigma takes place.  One of the cool things is the scenes from the original series are shown with the closing credits so you can see what they took from the series. 

I wasn't disappointed in this movie, which makes me sad.  Sure, there were CG effects, but there were a lot of fight scenes without turning the actors into cg cartoons.  Even Zaborgar and Machine Hawk were actors in suits most of the time.  I am happy about that as well.  The title of Karate Robo is accurate, since both he and Daimon do karate in the movie.