Japanese Spiderman

For those who haven’t seen it, these are the credits for a 1978 TV show for kids in Japan. I kinda like the theme song. 

It’s 1978, BTW.

I’ve seen several episodes for this Toei series (including the final episode), and while it has deviated from the original material (Producers Tooru Hirayama and Susumu Yoshikawa wanted to do something closer to the original Marvel comics, but Bandai, their sponsor, told them to add a giant robot, so they reluctantly had to rewrite Spidey’s mythos to shoehorn the robot into the story), it’s still a treat for Spidey fans!  Visually, this is the most accurate portrayal before the movies with Tobey Maguire.

Also, Spider-Man was the first superhero in Japan to ride a giant robot (as opposed to just a costumed/uniformed pilot in older shows)!  And without this series, the Super Sentai Series wouldn’t have a giant robot (BATTLE FEVER J, the third Super Sentai Series, and the first to have a robot, premiered the next year).

Posted by John Cassidy  on  01/20  at  02:12 AM

I used to have a bunch on VHS, but a friend just sent me a bootleg DVD of a bunch of episodes. I like the energy of those Japanese kids shows.

Posted by James Hudnall  on  01/20  at  10:45 AM

The whole first episode is on YouTube here, but the subtitles are fake and not very funny.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwe4wmAdVZw

Not faithful to the original at all, but the action and costumes are nice. 

Ironically, the Toei show is what got me into the US Spiderman (well, that and the publication of Marvel’s ESSENTIAL collections, enabling me to read the story from the Ditko days onward in cheap B&W;).

Posted by Leopardon  on  01/20  at  11:01 AM
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