We meet harried but dedicated reporter Kyoko Kono (Yû Aoi) interviewing a scientist about his new method of biomass power on live Japanese television when a strange and self-directing vapor infiltrates the studio, slipping under the scientist’s clothes and into his airways. All hell breaks loose: the autonomous, aggressive vapor floods his body, suspending him high in the air. His clothes stretch and his legs twitch as the vapor forces itself down his throat—before he explodes, blood and viscera raining down on the studio.
—Courtesy of Netflix
The Human Vapor is a tokusatsu film, which literally translates as “special photography” and refers to Japanese film and television that makes prominent use of practical special effects. Think monster suits, miniature battlefields and cityscapes, masked superheroes and giant mechas. (Famously, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers was created by localizing footage from tokusatsu series Super Sentai into new stories for Western audiences.)
The Human Vapor belongs to a niche category under the tokusatsu umbrella—Toho’s “Transforming Human Series”, three films where scientifically altered humans, made amoral or downright villainous through their transformation, use their new supernatural powers to steal and kill, forging a new ethical code and escaping the authorities. In The Human Vapor, Mizuno (Yoshio Tsuchiya) is a librarian who, after being discharged from the air force for health concerns, takes part in a scientist’s astronautical experiment that goes awry. (Think The Invisible Man for Japan’s nuclear age.) The doctor becomes Mizano’s first victim; let loose with no father figure to guide his powerful new existence, the gaseous man pulls off a series of bank robberies to fund performances for his beloved Fujichiyo (Kaoru Yachigusa), a Noh and Kabuki-trained dancer in dire need of a comeback.
What made The Human Vapor unique?
The Human Vapor is built around Mizuno, and Yoshio Tsuchiya’s controlled, intense charisma ably conveys the calm, arrogant ambition the character now possesses. He turns himself in to the police, only to demonstrate how easily he can escape; later, he sits down with the press to explain his entire elaborate backstory, eager to explain his new ideology. The film is notable for smuggling in a socio-political angle: the atomic powers that gave Mizuno his powers also gave him a new morality, and his superiority over society feels just as chilling to the authorities as his supernatural powers. “I am no longer a human being,” he says. “Therefore I am no longer subject to human law.”
—Courtesy of Netflix
There is no bank robbery in Human Vapor; the eight-episode story is entirely original, turning its focus to idols and yakuza whenever it chooses. But in homage to Honda’s film, Netflix’s Human Vapor carries over several elements. The leads are named Detective Kenji Okamoto (Shun Ogori) and Kyoko Kono, but they are not romantic partners – at least, not anymore. They met on a case, but when Kenji was ready to propose, Kyoko ruined one of his investigations with an ill-timed prime suspect interview, resulting in Kenj’s suspension.
Still, the character is rendered in a completely different fashion. Mizuno the Human Vapor was eloquent and rational, a flesh-and-blood man believably warped by power, still in touch with human emotions. The series version of the Human Vapor is heavy on menace, but not very talkative; when he does speak, it’s in a low, slow voice and his stare is piercing in its vacantness. Compared to Mizuno’s controlled, lively energy, this Human Vapor feels like he’s in a hypnotic trance—and the series contrasts the Vapor’s sinister, muted human form and hyperactive VFX of his lethal gaseous powers.
Human Vapor ups the source material’s social critique
As Kyoko and Okamoto follow the Human Vapor’s trail, a history of institutional abuses and neglected people takes shape: ostensibly a charitable organization, the White Center offered shelter to vulnerable and impoverished people only to exploit them into forced labor in abysmal conditions behind closed doors. As soon as we learn that the White Center is connected to a 1999 meteorite crash, the Human Vapor’s nefarious grudge feels far less opaque. Human Vapor pushes with more grisly conviction The Human Vapor’s criticism of authority figures playing fast and loose with desperate people’s lives.
While we do learn Human Vapor’s origins and accomplices, the fact that the grand reveal is rooted in senseless pain orchestrated by criminal corruption does not come as a surprise. Human Vapor plays it smart with its adaptation choices, not just upgrading effects-heavy spectacle, but also bringing the film’s subtext of anti-authority righteousness to the foreground, leaning on tragic character dynamics that propel the action in ways that tokusatsu monsters and superheroes cannot.
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