Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake!
I have finally crossed an item off my bucket list, watching the Japanese live action Spider-Man
show from the 70s!
And it is like my new favorite thing and I HAVE to share it with the world!
So, buckle in guys, this is going to be fun!
Clips of this show have made their way around the internet for years, but this gem inside
of the vast history of Marvel Comics is something truly special in that it actually influenced
another one of the biggest multimedia franchises of all time, but let’s start at the beginning.
Supaidāman was released in Japan in 1978 as a result of an official licensing partnership
between Marvel Comics and the Toei Company.
However, while Toei used the Spider-Man license one hundred percent legally, the end result
was something that barely resembled the source material in a delightfully strange way that
you tend to only get from unlicensed bootlegs.
~Yeah yeah yeah, wow!
Biru no tanima no kurayami ni.
(Spiderman!)~
Supaidāman takes place on Earth-51778 and follows the life of Takuya Yamashiro, a twenty
two year old motocross racer, who is trying to avenge the death of his father and mentor
who were both killed by an interplanetary organization called the Iron Cross Army led
by the immortal alien mastermind, Professor Monster, along with his main henchwoman, Amazoness.
Yeah, now you see what I mean.
This show was actually pretty well received over in Japan totaling in at forty one episodes
and a movie in addition to multiple manga adaptations that I wasn’t able to find English
translations of because of course.
Outside of being a collaboration with Marvel, Supaidāman is an official part of one of
Toei’s biggest properties, the Super Sentai series.
This franchise and it’s highly popular American adaptation/spin-off, Power Rangers, are notorious
for having their heroes face off against creatures that massively grow in size, requiring the
use of a mech to take them on.
Believe it or not, this show about SPIDER-MAN is what started this trend for the Sentai
shows all thanks to his ship, The Marveller, which transforms into the mech, Leopardon.
Because Japan.
Ordinarily, that’s where many spotlights on this show end, but here on Comic Drake,
we do our best to go above and beyond so I watched through the entire series, the movie
included, in order to truly immerse myself in the subject matter.
So let’s get into the actual details!
Takuya’s father and younger sister, Shinko, work as astro-archaeologists and they discovered
The Marveller’s arrival on Earth, but Professor Monster wants it for himself!
While his father and sister were out exploring the spacecraft’s landing site, Takuya started
seeing spider related visions accompanied by a mysterious telepathic voice.
By following this call, Takuya finds his father in critical condition after apparently tangling
with the Iron Cross Army, ultimately dying in his son’s arms.
There’s no talk of power or responsibility, only revenge.
Oh don’t worry, it’s not that intense.
In fact, Takuya’s crying face is somehow even better than Tobey Maguire’s.
Before he has a chance to mourn too much, Takuya is jumped by the Iron Cross Army, causing
him to fall inside of a cave where he discovers the man that was telepathically reaching out
to him.
This is Garia, the sole survivor of… wait for it…
Planer Spider.
Four hundred years ago, Garia was locked in battle with Professor Monster as he tried
to defend his planet, but ended up getting trapped on Earth.
Garia had tried to use his psychic powers to connect with someone to carry on the legacy
of the defender of Planet Spider, the Spider-Man.
However, despite reaching out for centuries, only Takuya was able to hear the call.
In fact, this psychic connection is also what called the the Marveller to Earth which was
Garia’s own creation.
After this exposition dump, the damage Takuya sustained in the ambush caught up with him
an he nearly died!
Thankfully though, Garia was able to save his life with a device called the Spider Bracelet.
This injected Takuya with the Spider Extract A.K.A. literally just Garia’s blood.
This endowed the Earthling with the powers of a being from Planet Spider including enhanced
strength, wall crawling, a healing factor, and the ability to talk to spiders.
Not only that, but Takuya also received Spider Senses PLURAL including a heightened sense
of smell, x-ray vision, night vision, telepathic enhanced hearing, and miscellaneous psychic
abilities including the power to see the future!
After passing down the mantle, Garia promptly sheds his human form, turns into a literal
spider, and steps into a mentor role by telepathically communicating with the new Spider-Man like
creepy crawly Obi Wan.
Well, at least for one episode since he dies in episode two…
However, Takuya would need more than just powers to be Spider-Man.
Thankfully, the Spider Bracelet is more than equipped for the job as it contains his uniform,
the Spider Protector.
It’s also able to fire two types of webbing.
There’s the Spider String, a thick rope that can sometimes fire multiple shots through
the same nozzle simultaneously, and the Spider Net which is literally just a net.
Let’s also not forget that the Spider Bracelet can also be used to unlock anything and contains
the Spider Detector, a location device that harnesses ultrasonic waves.
The most important feature of the Spider Bracelet though is the ability to call Spider-Man’s
two primary vehicles.
First up is the Spider-Machine GP7, a flying car with guns and missiles.
The other is the aforementioned Marveller.
While Spider-Man will sometimes utilize the Marveller’s on board cannons, he mostly
transforms it into its mech form, Leopardon.
This mech is Spidey’s ace in the hole and has lots of offensive capabilities including
arm rockets, Fluoroscopic Ray beams that shoot out of its eyes, its own version of the Spider
String in the form of a cable that shoots out of its chest, the Arc Turn which launches
the crest on its helmet, and of course, a sword.
The Sword Vigor is the strongest move in Leopardon’s arsenal, causing any creature that it’s
thrown at to explode, making it Spider-Man’s finishing move when dealing with any large
creature.
Even at the end of the series, one hit with the Sword Vigor was enough to take down the
big bad himself, Professor Monster, just as easily as any of his goons.
So, now that we’re done with that aside into Spider-Man’s powers and gadgets, let’s
get back to the plot.
Which… there isn’t much of one.
Supaidāman mostly focuses on episodic monster of the week style storytelling.
Generally, an episode’s monster is an unholy abomination that fuses organic life with machinery
created by Professor Monster that he calls Machine Bems.
These monster plots usually tie into shenanigans that Takuya gets wrapped up in regarding his
younger siblings or his freelance photographer girlfriend, Hitomi.
Other times, the monster plots revolve around one off characters, usually children with
a minimum of one dead or missing parent.
This can be EXTREMELY awkward since really short shorts were in fashion for children
in the 70s.
It also doesn’t help that the stuntman inside the Spider-Man suit almost always seems to
have at least a half chub going on.
The show tries to have a little bit of plot advancement by making Spider-Man an honorary
member of Interpol during the movie which takes place between episodes ten and eleven,
but the general storylines revolve around the Iron Cross Army, some sad person needing
the help of Takuya’s civilian and/or Spider-Man personas, fighting generic henchmen, constantly
zooming in, repeating shots multiple times, awkward cuts, half assed Naruto running, climbing
up things to almost immediately climb down, fighting the monster of the week, the monster
growing, summoning the mech, throwing the sword, and rolling the credits.
Like I mentioned earlier, even the final confrontation with Professor Monster is half assed, leading
to a VERY anti-climatic ending to the series.
Yet a lot of this can be chocked up to the Leopardon suit being stolen during the later
half of the show’s production and the team being unable to replicate it leading to an
even heavier reliance on recycling past footage.
For the most part, Supaidāman fell into relative obscurity, only ever really being talked about
as a joke or weird tidbit.
Interest slightly picked up in 2011 though since Leopardon played a significant role
in Ernest Cline’s best selling novel Ready Player One.
Yeah, for those of you that only saw the movie, THAT was supposed to be Wade’s mech instead
of the Iron Giant.
Officially, Takuya was brought into Marvel Comics canon with the massive universe hopping
event, Spider-Verse, in 2014.
This ambitious story had Spider-People from all across the Marvel multiverse facing off
against the Inheritors who are basically multiversal vampires.
Takuya was brought in as a trump card for the spiders by summoning Leopardon, but the
mech was taken down by one of the Inheritors in the very next page before it even managed
to draw its sword which WE KNOW would have instantly saved the day, I mean, come on.
Thankfully, Spider-Man 2099 and Lady Spider were able to repair Leopardon with a mix of
future and steampunk technology which helped cement a victory for the spiders!
As of the time of this recording, that is the last time that we’d see Takuya and Leopardon,
but I’m seriously hoping that they’ll make a return sometime soon because my god,
we need more of THIS in comics.
In fact, in celebration of this show, here’s a rapid fire list of some of my favorite things
about it.
Gambling on chicken races.
This dog named John.
This guitar playing, gun slinging, cowboy narcotics detective.
Amazoness’ random unexplained costume change.
Going back to black hair that was equally unexplained.
Shinko is cute as hell.
The fact that I genuinely have no idea how they did some of these wall crawling stunts
with their obviously low budget.
The way Spider-Man screams to summon The Marveller every single time.
These two white women that are supposed to be ancient mummies from the Amazon that were
resurrected by Professor Monster in Japan.
The fact his bracket literally says Spider-Man on it and his identity is still somehow a
secret.
Professor Monster’s silly pink shoes.
And my personal favorite… the Spider-Man Boogie.
Supaidāman is a REALLY bad show, but it is super endearing at the same time.
It’s the kind of so bad it’s good that can only come out of a bunch of people trying
to make something of quality, and by watching through it you can tell that this show has
a lot of heart behind it.
And, I’m really glad that I got to take this little bit of a diversion from my normal
April Fools Day content in order to finally watch through it and appreciate it.
So thank you so much for joining me on this and I hope you learned at least a little something
new in the process.
But if you liked this video, then why not consider subscribing or even watching another
one.
In fact, if you liked Spider-Man and the specials that we do on this channel, I actually did
a 420 special where i covered the time that Spider-Man took on marijuana.
It was a really interesting video and something that isn’t really talked about in the comic
book community, so anyway, hope you enjoyed that and hopefully I’ll see you next time.