this morning, i watched the first episode of robot detective. what a strange show! the plot of this episode revolves around hidden heist money and criminals ordering murder contracts on each other. you don’t see that in kids shows anymore!
the tone is totally serious throughout, too, with the exception of like one scene where K (the robot detective) goes to his himan partner’s house to pick him up for work, and the human partner gets all flustered about k meeting his unmarried daughters. all this grittiness is kind of undenrmined throughout by k’s bright red double-breasted suit and his stupid-looking red and silver car.
then, at the end of the episode, as k and the week’s monster are fighting on a boat, an image of what appears to be a goddess statue appears in the sky. but it’s not a goddess statue, it’s a giant robot that k calls “mother”
yesterday, i also watched the first two episodes of a currently-airing show, garo versus road. it’s yet another japanese property regarding a game where people have to survive. not only that, but it’s also about a videogame where if you die in the game, you die in real life. it’s not super-exciting, and there’s been barely any effects shots so far, but for some reason, i’m hooked enough to want to keep watching. i guess we’ll see how long that lasts!
i am still going through the channel and want to call out Changerion as my favourite of the more traditional kamenrider-likes so far. it is extremely 90s. his costume appears to have a cd-rom drive which generates weapons and his special attack is to fire a full-size cgi replica of himself(?) directly through the chests of his opponents, killing them instantly. also i guess part of the conceit is that the guy who actually gets the robot suit is kind of this lazy conman detective character, which is enjoyable. in the first episode he rescues a sausage dog twice and in the second he shuts down a shoe store that turns out to be owned by an evil foot-themed monster guy.
poitrine is fun but a more standard magical girl show. the villain of the first episode is a man dressed in sherlock holmes costume and what appears to be a racist mask who calls himself the Video Game Thief and sneaks into the homes of children so he can electrocute them and steal their famicom games. the one he tries to steal this time is Dragon Ball 3. when Poitrine finds him she announces “even if the universe forgives you, i will not!”
chojin bibyun is kind of unmemorable but has a good villain in this enormous floating eye
if you watch kagestar, and watch more of it, the first 12 episodes have since been fansubbed by big nova/metallic fansubs
apparently, the suit for changerion was incredibly heavy, and could only be used for a couple of minutes at a time before risking injury to the guy inside.
thutmose and chukuna paipai are, like poitrine, also pretty standard magical girl shows, but with egyptian and chinese themes, respectively.
the final episode of garo versus road airs later this week. this show must have been made as an experiment into how little screentime you need to give to costumed characters in a tokusatsu hero show, as there’s been practically none. still entertaining, though. lots of violence.
tsuburaya are really going all out with trying to build english-speaking tokusatsu fandom! a bunch more bluray releases have been announced recently, including gridman, plus they’ve been simulcasting ultraman z on youtube with english subs.
ultraman z is a kids show, and the youtube uploads even include the jp toy ads, but they really knew what they were doing when they wrote the two female characters. one is a tough badass who shoots monsters with a sniper rifle, the other a cute co-worker who gets all nerdy and enthusiastic about monsters and related stuff.
i’ve ordered the US blurays of ultra q and the heisei gamera trilogy, since i’ve read in a bunch of places that they’re not actually region locked, despite what the packaging says. i hope it’s true! unfortunately, the same places say that all the US godzilla blurays, and the juspion sd bluray actually are region locked.
ok, both br sets arrived today! i quickly put them in just to test the region mcgoo, and can confirm that neither one is locked!
i’ll start on the gamera movies when i’ve made my way through the power rangers ninja storm dvd box (two discs to go), and i’ll watch ultra q… at some point? ultra q comes with a nice little book, too
New subbed episodes of Ultraman Z on YouTube every Friday are the one bright spot of 2020.
Ace showed up this week and taught Z how to use the holes in his head-fin, then gave him a COVID safe forearm bump as a farewell.
During the rad commercial breaks where they plug toys and the mobile game, they recently started plugging some kind of stage show, which has me imagining an Ultraman version of Perfect Blue. There’s also a spot for some sort of all green screen team up movie called The Absolute Conspiracy, which I hope has to do with vodka.
last week they also started uploading an episode of gridman every friday, too! it’s very 90s and the villain is an incel gamer. ad the battles take place inside computers, but all the computer parts look kind of like brightly lit buildings at night.
the toei tokusatsu world channel, though they originally said that more subtitles might appear in thte future, so far that hasn’t happened and it’s still only the first two episodes of every sho that have subs. but! they did upload a compilation of all the heisei era kamen rider openings last week, and the first half of it is very nostalgic
Rewatching the American version (Super Human Samurai Syber Squad, for our younger board members who weren’t around to be hoodwinked in by the guy from Blossom’s brother), that part has aged frighteningly well.
