Screw Toby Maguire, Japanese Spider-Man Is The Real Deal: Backstory & New Clips Including Interview With Stan Lee!
Long time readers of TV in Japan know that I have a special place in my heart for Spider-Man. No, not the comic book character (although I did grow up reading three of the books) nor the movie series (which are mostly okay).
No, I mean the real Spider-Man, the Japanese TV character from 1978.
Of course, other than the suit, Japanese Spider-Man is an almost entirely different character than anything Marvel ever concocted. That’s because back in the swinging mid-70s, Marvel made a deal with Toei that allowed the Japanese Production Company to do pretty much whatever they wanted with the character. In today’s global marketplace, this might be called killing your brand. Back then, it was all fair game. Like giving him a giant robot to control.
There’s a lot more of the back story here at Stomp Tokyo. If you haven’t yet familiarized yourself with the show, do yourself a favor and take a look at the premier episode:
As you can tell, Japanese Spider-Man has a little more in common with the Power Rangers or Voltron then he does with his American self. In fact, much like those other shows, men-in-suit type monsters were often Japanese Spider-Man’s enemy and there were no shortage of them. Here’s a compilation (ten minutes worth) of Japanese Spider-Man confronting any number of these guys.
And finally, the Toei people recently released an 8 Disc DVD set of the show in Japan. While I’ve yet to get my hands on this cultural treasure, there are some pretty amazing extras that’ve been showing up online. Here’s a fantastic interview from the box set with Spider-Man creator Stan Lee about the Toei creation in which Lee professes his love for the series and then goes on to give a whole lot of background about the whole thing:
Thanks to one of my favorite Japanese blogs for reminding me about this whole phenomenon yet again.
And if you want to see more Japanese Spider-Man, check out my Mecha-Spider-Man category.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Action Packed!, Animation, Anime Inspired, Awesome Japan Links, Classic, Comedy, Culture, Giant Robots, Mecha Spider-Man!, Strange Hobbies, Technology, Toys, Truly Awesome, Weird. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Wiiguy May 8th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I never got why a ship from the planet SPIDER would be modeled after a large cat.