Japanese Spider-Man Episode 0 - Part One: Intro & Initial Thoughts

Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow! Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow! Clearly I was never going to not like this show. It has so many of my favourite elements; Martial Arts action & Japaneseness in general, coupled with a mainstream comics motif (ie Spider-Man), mixed with a general helping of absurd weirdness & awesome sound-effects. It's really the perfect combination of things for me. Almost. I have a little trouble with the Leopardon (I never really got into the Power Rangers-esque vibe), but that can be dealt with... and I'll discuss it in more detail later.

First, by way of preface; This is by no means an academic article. There is no thesis and there is nothing to really prove. As such I will not be providing citations if and when something is quoted. I have reviewed a number of sources in order to pull together the information I needed to fully understand Supaidaman Episode Zero - and believe me, there's a lot more depth here than you might expect. At the outset I have no intention of quoting any of these sources directly. My goal here is to analysis a specific episode of a TV series, not to analyze the sources of data that are providing substance to that analysis. These sources are as follow (and there's not a lot of detail here that's worth giving so I'll be brief):

- Several Wikipedia pages;
- Onmark Productions website (www.onmarkproductions.com);
- The Interpol website;
- A few Japanese-English translation websites;
- 2 Japanese-English Print Dictionaries;
- Marvel Comics Website;
- marvel.wikia.com;
- and the essay/article, "Rising Sun, Iron Cross - Military Germany in Japanese Popular Culture" by Matthew Penney (2005).

There are five areas that are worth discussing when considering this show, and specifically this episode (since, so far I have only watched the one). They might end up blurring into each other, but they are (in no specific order) the characters (heroes/villains), the institutions, the costumes, the genre, and some of the significant or interesting scenes. It may not split out like that by the time I'm done, but that's basically what you'll be reading about in the next few posts. By the end, I should have determined whether or not I intend to watch episode 1. Apparently Stan Lee liked it, I hope I do too!