Hero Historia returns this June 14th, flying the flag for the anniversary of the day of the glorious birth of Miyauchi Hiroshi.
It’s June 14th! In the United States of America, that makes it Flag Day, the day that the stars and stripes design was accepted as the symbol for the nation back in 1770-whatever. It’s a C-tier holiday, at best. They don’t close schools or anything for it. On the other hand, in 1947, on the Eastern edge of Tokyo Bay, Miyauchi Hiroshi was born! Tokusatsu isn’t short on legendary figures, with Toei even using the term to describe any character or actor the moment their first show is finished… However, Miyauchi is breathing rarefied air. Think of me as a tour guide for the day and let me introduce you to one of the men who helped make tokusatsu what it is!
Henshin… V3!!!
To begin at the beginning, if you’re somehow not aware, Miyauchi was Kazami Shiro, aka Kamen Rider V3! This was the second ever Rider show and Toei was still very much figuring out how to make a franchise out of their runaway hit. (Somewhat famously, several later episodes of V3 are full on remakes of episodes from the first series, the creative team assuming that either the kids would have forgotten it or stopped watching.) The thing that gives V3 its identity (and makes it the superior show, if I may hazard an opinion), is Shiro himself. Unlike Hongo and Ichimonji, people without attachments kidnapped to be remade by Shocker, Shiro starts out with a good life and loving family that he loses to violence. So, he pleads the Double Riders to convert him for revenge. He starts the show as a shockingly angry hero for the era, all his friendly moments a façade. The shift isn’t foregrounded like it would be in a modern show, but he has a clear arc of learning to fight to protect the living instead of avenging the dead. When Riderman makes his debut, he’s a reflection of who Shiro started as and we see the ideal hero Shiro’s become. Miyauchi’s charisma allows both the beginning and end of the arc to captivate. Also, the fits are impeccable.
The Birth of Super Sentai
A few years later, when pulling together Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, Miyauchi would take his second (of an eventual eight) new character in their productions as the original Blue, AoRanger. Much like the first Kamen Rider show, the show was a success that ran well over a year before ending and leading to the next instalment. Given the lower screen time, AoRanger has less personality but notably also has a “sole survivor” backstory and something of a cowboy motif, which we’ll return to in a moment.
When J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai, the second Sentai, was in need of a shake up, the decision was made to bring Miyauchi back in as Banba Soukichi – the first additional Ranger, Big One. Banba immediately makes the rest of the team look bad, in my eyes. He takes over as leader, demoting Spade Ace, he has all the powers of the other four combined, and he’s a better class of cyborg than they are, able to transform without an inconvenient chamber. His wacky disguises, plans to outwit CRIME and smug satisfaction are the defining characteristic of the last twelve episodes. He even duels the final enemy of the show for most of the final fight, the others mostly arriving with their parts of the team bazooka, which is named for him. I realise that makes it sound like a complaint but please believe that it’s so much more fun with him there. A whole show with a hero this powerful and cocky would be a very different animal.
Cowboy at Heart
In between Gorenger and J.A.K.Q, he starred in a whole show as a hero even more powerful and cocky than Big One! Kaiketsu Zubat is another Ishinomori creation, a sometimes surreal pseudo neo Western detective superhero with a bit more ongoing plot than most Showa hero shows. Miyauchi stars as Hayakawa Ken, a detective(?), inventor(?), traveling musician(?) who hunts his best friend’s killer across Japan, foiling criminal enterprises as he goes. If you’ve spent any significant time in toku fan spaces, you’ve seen Zubat clips from the most famous feature of the show: every story has that week’s crime boss defended by an assassin with a skill you usually wouldn’t think could be used to kill people. Ken has not only heard of every single one of these assassins but he happens to be better than them at their signature skill, which he happily demonstrates. There are duels fought with golf, American football, carpentry, bartending, plate throwing, and trumpet playing (which, admittedly, is more like a blowgun fight). Frankly, the villainous Kung Fu fighter seems like the strange one. Ken breezes from town to town, foiling the organisation Dakkar over and over without even knowing they exist until the last five episodes, flirting and singing as he goes. He has a hero form (that directly inspired Viewtiful Joe), but the titular Zubat is more like the robo in a Sentai – the real episode is on pause until the lead actor is back on screen. If you haven’t guessed, this is my favourite Miyauchi show, and probably my favourite Showa toku overall.
In Toei’s Spider-Man adaptation, he would technically play a new character in a small guest role, but being that Officer Tachibana is a guitar slinging cowboy detective in Seventies Japan, it’s basically a role reprisal with an added son. Also, I haven’t watched Uchuu Keiji Gavan, but I do know that Miyauchi’s character, Uchuu Keiji Alan, is also a cowboy.
Hiroshi really likes a wide brimmed hat.
Da Chief
By the 90s, he was no longer a lead hero actor, since he was now approaching 50. Instead, he spent the first half of the decade playing mentors, military commander types who give the protagonists their marching orders. Between Winspector, Solbrain, and Exceedraft, his fatherly Department Head Masaki Shunsuke is in 105 episodes, making him the character who shows up the most in all of Metal Heroes, despite not being a Metal Hero at any point. Ohranger’s Chief Miura is a little nearer to my heart, being another eccentric polymath, a combination archaeologist and engineer who used ancient technology to make the team’s gear. He also has an adopted daughter who initially hates him because she thinks he killed her father and one time he threatened to full on murder Carranger’s Red Racer.
The Legend Era
Miyauchi had usually been willing to return in the past, playing V3 in three other shows and two TV specials, but these cameos are the bulk of his tokusatsu work from here on. The biggest role by far is in Gaoranger VS Super Sentai, where Banba Soukichi is the leader of the Sentai Legends team formed and gets to turn up the trickster charm again. In Kamen Rider: The First, a movie reimagining of the original show (which isn’t even the best version of that concept but it has a distinct 2005 charm), he’s in one scene as Tachibana Tobei, not a mentor, just a bike mechanic. Sadly, he isn’t even in the same movie as the reimagined version of his own character. He can be found in a number of big crossover events, though often just a voice role that can be hard to distinguish from reused audio. To date, his last role was as a bookstore owner in drama/loveletter Tokusatsu GaGaGa in 2019.
So he’s not Fujioka Hiroshi, who seems unwilling to retire until Death himself beats him in a decathlon. I would be surprised if he ever made another appearance in a Toei production but an eternity of cameos and callbacks isn’t really what I’d want for anyone – let the man be retired, I say. The better way to appreciate him is to go back and enjoy his body of work. His was the face that proved “a sequel to Kamen Rider” could work. He was the first Blue Ranger, the first White Ranger, and arguably the blueprint for Sixth Rangers. When Gavan needed to imply a whole organisation of heroes, Miyauchi is who they tapped. And hell, Zubat blazed a trail I don’t think anyone else has really tried to follow. I won’t ever say that anyone has to watch anything to be a real fan, you can appreciate modern stuff on its own, despite… the whole thing this column does. But it’s his birthday, give one of his shows a shot. It’s my birthday too, so watch an episode of Zubat for the both of us. Or you can send me $50,000, I’m flexible.
Do you have a favourite Miyauchi work? How do you feel about flags? Let us know in the comment section below.
