In short: Invasion of the Neptune Men (1961)

A small horde of Japanese children led by His Supreme Annoyingness Kenichi - him of the weird facial expression and the genetic relation to the head of the most important Japanese research center - are doing their childly duty of being annoying and repeatedly singing the film's theme song ("Iron, iron, iron, iron sharp"), when they witness the landing of the mighty Neptunian invasion force - one rocket full of guys with very funny giant helmets (with blinking lights and small rotating thingies!), stumbling about as one does when one can't see much through one's headwear. Nevertheless, those nefarious Neptunians make with the grabby hands, probably in an understandable bid to stop the kids from repeating their song. It is quite fortunate for the children (if not for the viewer's future hearing) that a flying rocket car appears and a (also sillily behelmeted) masked hero jumps out and gives the aliens some kind of (rather lackluster, but it's enough for them) thrashing.

What the children (who will turn out to be nearly all knowing regarding everything else that will follow) don't know is that their new beloved hero Iron Sharp (do not try to think of tentacle porn too much) is in truth Tachibana (a very, very young and puppyishly enthusiastic Sonny Chiba), assistant to the Japanese head scientist, and sometimes their teacher. Not that the plot will get intricate enough to make that important - in fact, it will never be actually revealed to anyone.

The rest of the film consists of various attempts of the Neptunians to subdue the world, be it through provocation of World War III (also once called World War IV here), the creation of real bad weather or the more satisfying solution of a flying saucer attack, which are of course all thwarted by the children, the awesome might of Japanese science (like the electromagnetic shield) or (unfortunately not often enough) Iron Sharp himself.

I was fortunate enough to see this in a fan-subbed version with Japanese audio, thus avoiding a gratingly bad dub from hell.

Seen in this way, Invasion is a typical kid's matinee film. There's nothing too exciting here and the on-screen children are as annoying as Charlton Heston talking about gun control, yet the film still has some of the charms of pulp SF - silly science and paper flat characters are definitely a plus and not a minus here.

I would have preferred spending more time with Chiba's costumed hero than with the children, but I found some of the aliens' attacks to be entertaining enough to keep me watching. I also don't think it would have been dignified to squee "Kawaiiii!" at Young Chiba more often than I already did, so his low profile was probably for the best.

Koji Ota's direction is quite snappy, which is all one can demand from a film like this and some of the effects in the final "flying saucers blast Japanese town" phase do look rather nifty, so I haven't much reason to complain about the aesthetic side of things.  It's all very charming in its early 60s quaintness. Today, that's more than enough for me.

 

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