There is really one, main, villainous organization that is the cause of most of the strife for Supaidaman and the Interpol Intelligence Department - The Iron Cross Army. I will discuss them in a further post, likely to be entitled "A thing or two about the Institutions represented in the show..." or something like that. What I really want to get into here is a quick(ish) discussion of the two main villainous characters - Amazoness and Sea Devil. I have to admit that, when I watched the show for the first time, I was really unimpressed by these characters. They just weren't that exciting to me. But... when I delved into researching both these characters, I was surprised to find some significant depth in terms of symbolism and plain old amusingness.
Let's start with Amazoness, or Amazonesu. Pronounced A-Ma-Zon-Ess-Ugh. She's your typical villainess - she wears an odd bathing suit, heavy boots and is almost always angry. She doesn't exactly look scary, but weird. And I don't think I'd want to meet her in person. She's also a master of disguise... sort of. When you are a crazy super-villainess, you don't need to change your face... just change from your weird bathing suit into civilian clothes and you are completely unrecognizable. Anyway, she does this and it works. But none of this was what I was thinking of when I watched Supaidaman Episode 0 for the first time. It was her name that caught my attention. At first, I thought the subtitles were incorrect, and that it should simply have read, "Amazon," not "Amazoness." We all know that Amazons are women. I assumed that (as is true with many Japanese words that come from English) amazonesu is the direct translation of amazon and that it only sounds strange because it has been Japanesisized. Well, that ain't the case, man. "Amazonesu" literally means "Amazoness." According to one online reference that I was able to find, the suffix "esu" changes a word to make it feminine. So then I thought, well, maybe amazons just aren't that common in Japanese media and, therefore, they need the "esu" otherwise they wouldn't know implicitly that it must be a woman. Well, man, this ain't the case neither. I was able to find several references to "Amazonesu" in Japanese popular media including several Manga and Anime characters. I don't know about anyone else, but I really had a hard time wrapping my head around this concept. I wonder what Wonder Woman would have to say about it...
By a long-shot, the more interesting of the two villains is the Sea Devil. Again, I wasn't super impressed but the Sea Devil after watching the episode for the first time. His costume (a grey body-suite with fake, foam muscles and a mask that kind of resembled a shark with a long, serrated snout) didn't scare me, and I didn't think it was all that cool. Oh, and he shoots torpedoes out of his mouth - I wasn't really sure if I liked this or just thought it was completely lame... I tried to force myself to remember that this show was produced in the 70s and that it was meant for kids, but it didn't help. I was a little disappointed at the way he died, too. These things, I eventually realized, are problems with the production of the show and the genre itself... and not the character himself. I vowed to give Sea Devil the benefit of the doubt and typed his name into Google...
Holy Crap! What references, what diversity! Well, maybe I exaggerate some, but there are a couple that really seem to fit the story. What doesn't fit is the true sea devil... the Manta Ray. Most things that are named sea devil in this world are named after this, largest of the Rays. But our Sea Devil has a shark's head... so he's definitely not named after the manta ray. There must be something else - perhaps one of the many things named after the manta ray, but perhaps something else... I wasn't sure. Then I cam across a reference from Japan. Not quite the Sea Devil, but there's a little something known as the "Pacific Bermuda Triangle." Also known as the "Devil's Sea," this is an area that has seen many a sailing vessel disappear over the years. The "Sea Devil" in our story has a penchant for destroying sea vessels and, when they sink, they essentially disappear. After I finished reading all about the Devil's Sea I was almost completely convinced that this was where out Sea Devil got his moniker - but something bothered me. It seams that the "Devil's Sea" is not a direct translation from the Japanese. In fact the Japanese, Ma no Umi, translates as roughly Sea's Space or Space in the Sea... or something along those lines (I remembered "Ma" from Hitomi Sakuma so I looked up "no Umi"). This started to seem far fetched, so I searched further.
Finally, after much digging, I hit on what I believe is the real symbol (whether a conscious reference or not) of the "Sea Devil." That happens to be a WWII era US submarine. A Balao class sub by the name of USS Sea Devil. This vessel was named after the Manta Ray. This vessel saw action during the second world war. This vessel saw action in the Pacific during the second world war. the "Sea Devil" from Supaidaman looks nothing like a manta ray, but he is the same colour as a submarine. And he shoots torpedoes... much like a submarine. This was intriguing to me, so I read on. As it turns out, the USS Sea Devil saw a decent amount of action during the war while it was PATROLLING THE SHIPPING LANES NEAR JAPAN AND CHINA! What?! Yes. The USS Sea Devil participated many attacks on Japanese vessels during the war and, as far as I can tell, sank at least one (probably more) Japanese cargo vessel. Well, the "Sea Devil" also loves to attack cargo vessels. With torpedoes. Destroying them. Hmmm.
I think this must be it. Solved.
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