Hikari Sentai Maskman was a popular Tokusatsu program that was aired on the Philippines back in the early 90’s as well as in other countries like Brazil and France. It was filled with action and a bit of love story, drama and comedy. The balance of these elements make this series successful in the said countries.
But now let us put a focus on an interesting character on the series. Non other than one of the primary villainess, Prince Igamu.
Mina Asami as Prince Igam
Mina Asami as Princess Iyaru
Portrayed by Mina Asami who also played Princess Iyaru which is Igam’s twin sister, she is one hell of a character. In order to secure her royal status, she allowed her self to be raised as a male, trained to become a warrior so that she would be one day become the heir of the Underground Empire had not the evil Lethal Doggler II who disguised as Zeba usurped the throne. She became so blindly loyal to Zeba that she is willing to kill her own sister for betrayal and falling in love with Takeru who is the main protagonist Red Mask. But in the end we knew that she was able to see the error of her ways, helped defeat Zeba and became a nun to redeem her self.
She is one interesting character. But there is a twist here. Though originally, Igam was supposed to be a female pretending to be a male, the Filipino-dub missed that part. During the run of the series in the Philippines, Igam was portrayed instead as a warrior princess instead of a female pretending to be female. There are 2 possible theories why there is this loophole in the storyline.
First is that the dubbers in Filipino were not fully aware of the story of Maskman. Maybe they were not able to understand the plot of the story so they decided that they just portray Igam as a female warrior.
The second theory is about a recurring trend in portraying characters especially the female ones. If we look at the costume of Igam very carefully, we could see that it is a leotard-based costume. Either with exposed legs or legs hidden in tights, this type of costume was used effectively to portray a sexy and strong female character whether it is a villain or heroine.
We could see this trend occur in other tokusatsu programs:
Farrah Cat of Choudenshi Bioman
cartoons and comics:
Psylocke
manga and anime
Miya Alice of Hyper Combat Unit Dangaioh
and video games.
Cammy White of Street Fighter
It is proven time and time again that making a female character wearing such costumes makes them not only eye-candies but also gives them a strong and brave aura. Perhaps it gives us an impression that a woman who was able to wear sexy outfits are brave and daring. In Igam’s case, it could be said that she being portrayed as a female warrior is a common sense interpretation.
In my view, there is a failure on the part of the writers of Maskman to make Igam a female pretending to be a male. There could have been better outfits to achieve this aim.
Yuria (Kenshiro's fiancee) as The Last Nanto General
Even the original male pretender, the Chinese female warrior Mulan was also able to pretend to be a male based on her original artwork.
Mulan
So that this mean that there was a complete failure? No. Though it might not be convincing that she is portraying a female pretending to be a male, she was however portrayed as a very powerful woman character. Her suit was able to add depth to her character and makes her one hell of a villain. Her character development was also well executed, evolving from a person who only values honor than anything else to a person who was able to see the light in the end to change for the better. And she is one of the reasons why Maskman became successful outside Japan.
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