Gakuryuu Ishii's Electric Dragon 80.000 V riffs on origin stories and how they inform or clash with our notions of superheroics. Here life-changing brushes with the uncanny do not transform men into daring, messianic champions, instead they become dangerous aberrations. Both Tadanobu Asano's Dragon Eye Morrison and Masatoshi Nagase's Thunderbolt Buddha have absorbed unspeakable amounts of electricity as children, unlocking forgotten or suppressed corners of the human experience. After being struck by lightning while climbing a pylon, Morrison is put in touch with his inner reptile. The spiked-up punk now able to channel the snarling, frothing beast that the city and its society have long since papered over.
Thunderbolt Buddha is a little different. Unlike Morrison, his mains-based psychosis was apparently invited - in the film's closing moments we see glimpses of a beaming child sat atop a TV aerial-cum-lightning rod, begging to be hit. The two men have divergent approaches to their current lives too. While Morrison canvases the city, working as a private investigator for people who've misplaced their lizards, Buddha posts up on rooftops, dressed as a cable technician. He watches flamboyant criminals, plotting their demise from afar. This is the first of Electric Dragon's nods to Bruce Lee, specifically Lo Wei's 1972 film Fist of Fury. As well as this disguise routine, Morrison later summons up the hypnotic motion trails that put the zap on Robert Baker's Russian crime boss.
Ishii's film excites because, despite both men's commitment to civic justice, they can't help but collide. Buddha forces the issue of course, apparently unable to tolerate the existence of another electrically charged do-gooder. There's a sense of weariness at play in Buddha's actions, the taser-wielding vigilante seemingly bored with tracking then frying low-level hoodlums. Buddha's body malfunctions too, yanking him around a lair that looks very much like a power station control room. Perhaps he hopes to assign a successor? Ishii's film - a breeze at 55 minutes - pulses with this curious, contradictory energy. Collaboration be damned, there's a real fight in the offing. When spirits run high, Electric Dragon's black and white screen shatters, consumed by the guttural cries of shonen anime guys and the raw, slashing calligraphy of Heta-uma manga.
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