Comparison of Exceedraft E13 with Bloodsport (1988)

The brutal, full contact martial arts fights in Exceedraft E13 are reminiscent of the film Bloodsport (1988), starring action star Jean-Claude Van Damme and martial arts specialist Bolo Yeung.

Bloodsport is based on Frank Dux's allegedly true story of participating in the Kumite, an international full contact martial arts tournament where the world's most powerful fighters are invited to test their skills. The tournament is also a gambling event as spectators bet their cash on the fighters' progress. With a budget of $1.5–2.3 million, Bloodsport earned $50 million at the box office. It also launched Jean-Claude Van Damme's career as a mainstream action star.

Marvin Ringard's Tokusatsu hardcover book talks of the Metal Hero series borrowing from American films, like how the Robocop (1987) started the series' cop show era with Kidou Keiji Jiban (1989) and the Rescue Police Trilogy which Exceedraft is a part of. Exceedraft also includes a direct reference to the first Terminator film in E16,"The Depths of Despair of Ai". In its presentation, Exceedraft follows the pattern of Metal Hero shows to borrow from works outside of the tokusatsu genre and from works of Western culture in particular.

The influence from other genres and artistic works is most obvious in Exceedraft E13 during the sunset showdown in its climax which briefly departs from the conventional visual storytelling of tokusatsu shows.

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It's fascinating to think about Exceedraft taking inspiration from Western martial arts films inspired by Asian culture. The influence of Japanese culture specifically in Bloodsport is clear in its protagonist's backstory and its central tournament. Frank Dux could only fight in the tournament as he's trained by a Japanese teacher. The tournament is called 'Kumite' which is actually a term for sparring with karate techniques. To surrender in a Kumite fight, a fighter has to say "matte" which is Japanese for "stop" (but the 'te' part is pronounced in the film not like the Japanese 'te' but like the 'te' of Barbie's company Mattel). Exceedraft E13 features actual kumite, i.e. karate sparring, in multiple fights [LINK]. While we only see karate fights in the episode, Fujio's dojo is actually a mixed martial arts dojo, which is perhaps a reference to the clashes of different martial arts styles in other works (like Bloodsport) with a similar premise.

What's understated about Bloodsport is how it presents its martial arts fighters as existing on a sort of boundary between extremes. Unlike the illegal matches in works inspired by it, Bloodsport's Kumite is run as a venerated martial arts event permitted by both the Hong Kong triad and the country's police force. The tournament itself is held near the boundary separating Hong Kong and mainland China. Its fighters are simultaneously one another's adversaries and members of a shared brotherhood, as seen from when they pause a fight to pay respects to one of them who has died from fighting in the tournament.

Exceedraft E13 is similar in having its events develop along the boundaries that mark mental versus physical fighting tactics, and of the hazy line dividing disguise and authenticity. The episode's crossing of an artistic boundary to incorporate elements beyond its genre of children superhero shows perhaps even pre-empts its exploration of the boundaries between the alien and human world and the forces of God and the devil.