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2026年6月7日 星期日

(Japanese) Spider-Man (1978-1979) 2


"Spider Strings!"

"Spider Machine GP7!"

"Marveller!"

"Change Leopardon!"

Yes, it's time for another round of the Japanese Spider-man TV show, my lowkey sexual obsession with "Amazoness" continuing unabated.

This entry brings me up to 28 episodes out of 41.  That's all I could find on YouTube.  I'd love to watch the remaining 13 episodes, but alas, I couldn't find them online.  

(I even tried searching by スパイダーマン! )



Spider-man helps a boy with a heart condition.  Not much happens in this episode, even if Spider-man FINALLY figures out Amazoness' secret identity as the editor of his girlfriend's newspaper.



Professor Monster and his Iron Cross Army try to blow up a dam AND flood the city of Tokyo with gas that they plan on igniting afterward.  The Iron Cross Army be gangsta like that.

And that's one tough dog.  Not only does it walk off two bullets, but it later falls off the side of a damn and fights off several henchmen.

Not sure what the boy was doing in the mountains in the first place.  Maybe looking for his dad?  But how would he know where his dad was?



A pro wrestler wants to become "the strongest one there is," and ends up getting turned into a "machine bem" that resembles the Thing.



Spider-man helps a boy bullied by classmates while the Iron Cross Army, for inexplicable reasons, commits a series of extremely low level crimes across the Tokyo area.  Can't help but feel sorry for the mom accused of stealing 5 million yen.  That was a low blow, Amazoness, even for you!

And how many boys had fathers killed in car accidents in late 70s Japan?  Judging by this show it was A LOT.



Definitely one of the weirder ones.  I'd put this alongside the cat demon episode.  Spider-man meets an alien boy with mind powers who takes him to a secret village in the mountains where the locals (who can all fly) are planning to sacrifice the boy's sister to a monster in a lake.  Amazoness gets a new outfit in this one, and I'm not a fan of the new look.  Maybe they thought she was too drab in earlier episodes?



Funny how you bad guys keep running into Takuya, isn't it?  It's almost as if he's... Spider-man?

In this one the Iron Cross Army kidnaps a girl (so much kidnapping!) who might have the power of precognition. 



This is one of the more random ones.  An Interpol guy gets caught spying on the Iron Cross Army, and Spider-man helps him escape their clutches.  But why not carry the guy once he's injured?  Isn't Spider-man strong enough?  And why bother to commandeer the helicopter if they weren't going to escape in it?  And why not take the guy directly to the hospital, so he could see his son another day?



One of Professor Monster's more skeletal henchmen goes around stealing people's blood for his boss.  In the midst of that Spider-man rescues a blind little girl.  Can you guess who the little girl's father is?



Watch your back, Takuya, some dude's buying your girlfriend presents behind your back!

Shortly thereafter Takuya stumbles upon - I kid you not - a private club where people gamble on rabbit races, chick races and spider fights.  Go figure.  Was that really a thing in Japan at the time?  I kind of doubt it.

It should be noted that at this point in the series Spider-man not only has a spider sense but also X-ray vision and the completely inexplicable ability to know when someone's trying to contact him.  By this point his powers are pretty much all over the place.

And naturally the "sorceress" running the club turns out to be one of Professor Monster's Machine Bem.  She resembles a lower grade Mysterio.



Spider-man meets A BOY WHO THROWS COCKROACHES ON PEOPLE and who at one point PUTS A COCKROACH IN ANOTHER BOY'S MOUTH.  Yeah, if you enjoy that kind of weirdness this show is for you!

And as you'd expect the machine bem at the end is a cockroach.  Why wouldn't it be a cockroach?  Of course it's a cockroach!!



A former jewel thief is tortured to death by the Iron Cross Army, and they create clone (?) to trick the thief's son into divulging the location of a hidden gem.  But as you'd expect Spider-man shows up, and so much for the missing gem, the Iron Cross Army and their giant crab monster.

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2026年4月8日 星期三

Super Sentai in the 70s


The Super Sentai series is the last of the big 70s tokusatsu shows I'll be discussing here.  I'll work my way back through the Ultraman and Spider-Man episodes I haven't yet seen in the near future, but it seems unlikely that I'll revisit Super Sentai or Kamen Rider anytime soon.

To recap some of what has come before, tokusatsu was (is) a specific genre of effects-heavy show which aired on Japanese television.  This genre owes some of its stylistic leanings to the ancient Japanese art of Kabuki.  There are examples of the genre from the very beginnings of Japanese film to the present day.

In the popular imagination the first tokusatsu show was Godzilla in the 1950s.  The Godzilla series, influenced by the Western King Kong, featured giant monsters doing battle, a science-based team of "experts" tasked with protecting Japan from these monsters, and other motifs that will be familiar to anyone who's seen giant monster movies.

Godzilla was followed by Ultraman in the 60s, a show in which a giant alien does battle with a "monster of the week."  After a brief lull in the genre, Ultraman was followed by Kamen Rider in the 70s.  Kamen Rider introduced the transformations, cybernetic humans and other tropes often associated with tokusatsu today.

Super Sentai, released in 1975, also helped formulate the genre.  In Super Sentai we see a large cast of unlikely heroes, these opposing shadowy groups bent on world domination.  Super Sentai, created by the same man who created Kamen Rider and often shown alongside that earlier program, ups the ante on Kamen Rider, giving us an entire team of costumed superheroes instead of just one.

Super Sentai would, two decades later, give rise to the American show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a distinctly Western take on the genre which intercut footage of American actors and actresses with footage from the original Japanese TV shows.

Anyway, on to the show itself!


Gorenger Episodes 1 and 2

This is the original series, also known as Himitsu Sentai Gorenger.  The plot of both episodes is extremely minimal, involving four individuals (a kind of Mod Squad, if you will) recruited by a secretive military guy who gives them battle suits.

The funniest part of both episodes is the weird soccer thing they do at the end.  The pink one makes an explosive ball, they kick it back and forth, and then the red one jumps and kicks it into the bad guy, thus rocking him like a hurricane.  Neither of the two bad guys who conclude the first two episodes are especially smart, and the assorted henchmen who attack our heroes seem to do so entirely at random.


J.A.K.Q. Episodes 1 and 2

Check the company logo on the playing cards.  Yep, Nintendo!  In the 70s that's what they were better known for.

As an occasional player of poker it bothers me that the best hand we can muster with this team (assuming that their leader Joker is "wild") is a straight.  They're all wearing suits, after all - why not make them wear the same suit?  Royal flush to the ace - that would feel much better.

Besides, Texas hold 'em is a better game anyway.  Change Joker's name to "Ten," make them all clubs (seems appropriate, given how much they fight), and then you'd have a nice royal flush to the ace.  Five cards and five cyborgs suited up nicely.

The bad guys in this series are named Crime with a capital "C."  It gets a little confusing sometimes, but yes, that's both their name and what they do.  They spread crime so that they can call themselves Crime.  Seems like the name might make it hard to keep a lower profile, but whatever.

The more ridiculous parts of this show are their helmets, which they'd have quite a bit of difficulty seeing through.  There's also the "Covack" finishing move, which combines "atomic, electric, gravitational and magnetic forces" in one go.  Our four heroes don't have a giant robo - at least not in the first two episodes - but rather a flying plane which looks decidedly uncool and less than aerodynamic.

All of the above said, the girl in the hot pants is kinda hot, even if she can't, in my humble opinion, hold a candle to Spider-Man's "Amazoness."  I think what really does it for me with Amazoness is the scowling.


Battle Fever J Episodes 1 and 2

This is the Super Sentai series which would close out the 70s.  It ran in 1979.

Weirdly enough, like Spider-Man this show was also a co-production between Toei and Marvel.  It was supposed to feature Captain America (!), but that idea fell apart somewhere along the way.

Instead of Captain America we get Miss America, an American-born espionage agent who does battle in a revealing leotard.  At some point in the tokusatsu shows producers got wise to the fact that having a sexier member of the team was more attractive to young boys, and given the popularity of shows like Sailor Moon this might have been a selling point for young Japanese girls as well.

Battle Fever J pits our cybernetic heroes against Egos, an organization that wants to get rid of "bad technology" in favor of their own "good technology" which predates modern civilization.  If you ask me the whole thing sounds a lot like a metaphor for Scientology, but even if it's there such a metaphor would have been lost on a Japanese-speaking audience - at least in the late 70s.

The bonkers part of Battle Fever J is that each of the cyborgs have dance moves representing their geographical region.  Oh, and they also (somehow) jump into the sky and make letters with their bodies before launching their final attack.

Gotta love how the team puts together seemingly random facts to uncover a sinister plot in the second episode.  Some guy in a car accident?  A girl's suicide?  A man who gets a promotion at work?  Way to connect the dots, Battle Fever!

This team, by the way, does get its own giant robo.  It doesn't get used in the first two episodes, but there are scenes of it under construction.

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NOTE: It's not that I wouldn't enjoy more Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.  It's just that Toei keeps a tight grip on those shows, and what I've discussed here was all that I could find on YouTube.
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2026年4月6日 星期一

(Japanese) Spider-Man (1978-1979) 1


You'd think that the American Amazing Spider-Man TV show would be some kind of influence on this show, but no, this doesn't seem to be the case.  American comic book culture had enough purchase in Japan to make the licensing of the character in Japan possible, but after those responsible for the Japanese TV version acquired the character they pretty much ran with the idea, retaining only the costume and character's powers.

The biggest influences on the Japanese TV show were, rather, the tokusatsu shows that preceded it.  Given Spider-Man's buglike nature Kamen Rider was an obvious influence, but the creators really threw everything they had into the show, giving us a kaleidoscopic vision of Spider-Man complete with transforming robots, aliens, monsters, and characters who feel the need to announce their superpowers with special words.

This show ran for 41 episodes.  I'll be reviewing 14 this outing, and the remaining 27 might get reviewed in future entries.



Spider-Man does NOT live in New York!  Spider-Man is NOT bitten by a radioactive spider!  Spider-Man is NOT a high school student!

Instead he is, like Kamen Rider before him, another "70s motorcycle dude."  This particular 70s motorcycle dude, Takuya Hamashiro by name, finds an alien who's been imprisoned in a cave for 400 years with a whole lot of spiders, and this alien, a refugee from planet Spider, gives our hero spider extract which, of course, gives him spider powers.

Then some of the bad aliens show up and sh*t goes DOWN.  Suddenly Spider-Man has a weird bracelet thing, and he uses this bracelet to summon Marveller, his flying ship, or his sweet, sweet spider car.

There's also some kind of revenge subplot in there, but I can't quite remember what happened.  Wikipedia says his father was killed by the bad aliens, but I must have blinked and missed it.



Professor Monster's henchwoman is kinda hot.  I'm not that evil or anything, but I wouldn't mind serving underneath her.

Hitomi, while we're talking about the women of Spider-Man, is kinda dumb.  It's like dude, your boyfriend was here just a second ago, how are you not aware that he's Spider-manning on the side?  Aren't you supposed to be a reporter or something?

This one goes into more of Spider-Man's backstory, detailing the exploits of the guy who gave Spider-man his powers.  It is a timeworn tale of murder, attempted revenge, and unexpected cave diving.  Not that they never bother to explain WHY our hero was chosen to receive the spider extract, despite the fact that space guy was in the cave waiting to find someone for 400 years.



Spider-man's super car, the GP7, can also fly.  This comes in handy when the Marveller is circling overhead.  If the monster is too much for the GP7 he can switch to the Marveller mid-air.  Then?  OF COURSE it's Leopardon time!

In this one the baddies create a fake Spider-man to ruin Spider-man's reputation and draw him out of hiding.  Aside from that there's A LOT of flipping.



Spider-man finally meets Professor Monster!  Prof Monster gets the bright idea to write a computer program which will determine Spider-man's fate (or something), the outcome of this program being a death match with Mer-Man.

Hitomi, girl, you can probably do better than your present boyfriend.  He's not emotionally supportive and he's got a secret life you know nothing about.



A young boy witnesses the Iron Cross Army up to no good, and after they hit him with a truck (!) Spider-man decides to donate blood to help the kid recover.

Surprisingly the kid DOESN'T develop spider powers by the end of the episode.  I feel like the writers really dropped the ball on that one.

The robot vs. kaiju battles at the end are fast becoming the weak points of every episode.  Spider-Man struggles for a bit, he calls forth Marveller, he changes Marveller into Leopardon, and Leopardon does the same three moves before dispatching his foe with Sword Vigor.  Was all this done for the sake of merchandising?  Or just to save film?



This is one of the more boring ones.  Professor Monster's sexy henchwoman spends a lot of time in the forest chasing people.



If I ever buy one of the toys its' going to be Spider-Man's car, the GP7.

If you're watching this show for the sake of sheer ridiculousness you might start with episode 1 and then skip to episode 7, because episode 7 is where things REALLY get silly.

In this one a rock band writes a hit song about Spider-Man, and Professor Monster gets the bright idea to replace the band with cyborgs who will sing/play the song at a frequency which drives Spider-Man crazy.  The resulting "Spiderman Boogie" is a song I will never, ever be able to get out of my head.



Probably my favorite episode thus far.  Professor Monster's henchmen dig up a cat demon from the Edo Period and turn it into a still more formidable cat demon monster.  Spider-Man later gets wise to the plot and uses magic to irritate it before thoroughly stomping it with Leopardon.

Gotta love Spider-Man holding beads and burning both a statue of a cat and a magic spell written on paper.  I'll take Buddhist/Shinto Spider-Man over all others!

Bonus points for actual cats, one of which Spider-Man saves from the cat demon monster.



Like episode 8 another favorite.  Matters take a turn for the weird after Professor Monster uses a beetle monster to spy on Spider-Man and his immediate family.  Somewhere along the line the beetle monster falls in love with Spider-Man's sister and even steals a dress for her from a local store.



A snake woman lures men to their deaths in a mountain house.  Turns out she knew Spider-Man's alter ego back in the day, and her conflicted loyalties spell the end of Professor Monster's nefarious plans - at least in this episode.

Thankfully by this point in the series they vary the penultimate robot-monster showdown a bit.  



The abridged version?  The one on YouTube is the standard 23+ minutes.

There are some slightly upgraded special effects in the movie, and also the addition of an INTERPOL character who appears off and on in later episodes.  The INTERPOL stuff complicates the show in a good way.



For all its corniness this episode is weirdly affecting.  In this one Spider-Man gets poisoned and the boy from episode 5 shows up again to provide him with a much-needed blood transfusion.



A young woman becomes a "modified human" as both a way of getting her boyfriend back and becoming a top model.

Oddly enough no Leopardon in this episode.  Only Spider-Man swearing revenge for the hundredth time.  For someone set on revenge he sure does let Professor Monster and Amazoness slip through his fingers a lot.



"Machine Bem, Biker Monster!"

A biker is turned into a cyborg-chameleon hybrid (or something) and Takuya (a.k.a. Spider-Man) resolves some daddy issues.

Not sure why Professor Monster would want to tool around town in a tricked-out hearse but oh well.



Big Bat tries to divine Spider-Man's secret identity by making him look like a chump.  You can probably guess how it ends.

"Change!  Leopardon!"

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