The Skull Man Episode 1

Kamen Rider meets Fantomas.

Kamen Rider is Shotaro Ishinomori’s most famous creation, a masked hero battling the evil organisation who created him. Skull Man is his more adult take on the same theme orginally published in 1970, and later revived by Kazuhiko Shimamoto in the nineties.

Fantomas is the arch villain of a series of pulp novels by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre. He is the inspiration behind other villains/anti heroes such as Diabolik, Satanik and Kriminal. These last two are quite pertinant as they wear skull-faced costumes, like The Skull Man.

What seems to be the possible Fantomas influence, is the removal of The Skull Man from the protagonist role and making him the antagonist, at least for now. And secondly, positioning a journalist character, Hayato Minagami, as the protagonist instead (Fantomas had the journalist Jerome Fedor as one of the two main characters who oppose the villain). I might be stretching a bit, but that was the vibe I got from it.

However, whether the similarities are deliberate or accidental is irrelevant. The show’s approach works, and avoids becoming the Guyver-esque mutant of the week beat em up it could have been. Which is not to say Guyver-esque mutant of the week beat em ups are inherently bad, it’s just not really the approach you want for a show only 13 episodes long that looks this good.

Yes, this show is one of the better looking BONES shows. This first episode puts Darker than Black’s in the shade. And while it’s direction and animation isn’t as damn clever as Ouran High Host Club’s use of limited animation, it is full of well observed touches. Iwa ni Hana has already pointed out the great body language, so head over there. Character design and animation direction on this episode is by Jun Shibata, who has escaped the increasingly mediocre ufotable, It’s good to see Shibata’s talent being put to use on a much better story than those that ufotable have been turning out since 2×2 Shinobuden.

The fact that Geneon are involved, the high production standard and the 13 episode run all scream English language release, and if the rest of series lives up to the potential of this first episode it’s definitely a future purchase. As a boxset of course, I’m not insane.