| Director : Takashi Miike |  
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Takashi Miike, who directed the 13 Assassins, Audition, and Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, directs this movie about a 3rd grade teacher, Shinichi Ichikawa, who watches a Power Ranger like hero from an old TV to get away from his woeful daily existence. His son is picked on at the school they both are at because the students don't like his father. His daughter ignores him and goes out with older guys. His wife is cheating on him.
At night Shinichi dresses up in his Zebraman superhero outfit, and practices his moves. During the day he isn't really too interested in his classes. When a student in a wheelchair, Shinpei, enters his classroom Shinichi finds out that he too loves the Zebraman character from the old TV show. Shinichi starts working with Shinpei and they talk about Zebraman.
Before you know it Zebraman is battling some Crab man villain. The next thing you know the Zebraman has super powers. Zebra kicks to the face are soon bringing down green blooded villains.
Shinichi begins to have designs on Shinpei's mother. Shinichi. He also daves some young girls from bullies. Then we see that the government is trying to cover up the alien invasion.
Next we see a group of kids going crazy. We find out the kids, including Shinichi's son, have been taken over by aliens. Aliens are beginning to pop up everywhere.
Shinichi then finds some Zebraman TV scripts and the ones that were never on TV are happening in real life. Shinichi finds out that the vice=principal was the screenwriter of the scripts. He was trying to warn everyone about the alien invasion, but the scripts weren't published.
Zebraman goes out and tries to stop the invasion. The last episode has the aliens winning, because Zebraman can't fly so Shinichi begins tryng to fly. The army is going to drop a nuetron bomb on the town.
Zebraman goes to the school gym and is soon battling hundreds of aliens. A giant alien knocks him to the ground. When he gets up he is np longer a spof, but is the real Zebraman. He destroys the giant alien. When the time comes he can fly. He has been transformed because he believes.
Quirky, spoofy and comedic, the movie is dubbed in English which adds to the comedic tone. The The movie went on a little too long for me, but might be more entertaining for younger audiences.
