Tonight in the middle of a marathon of shows I managed to finish up the first volume of the 1972 tokusatsu series, Kikaida (aka Kikaider.)

Kikaida is about a humanoid robot named Jiro who was created by Dr. Komyoji to fight against the evil Destructoids (evil robots) of the DARK organization that the doctor was forced to build. He goes around fighting a new monster each week while he and Dr. Komyoji's children seaarch for their lost father.

The show is really just another of the many Japanese live action shows for children made in the 1970s with one major exception, every character here is human sized. As is the case with these types of shows, everything is rather silly since the target audience was the under 10 year old male demographic so don't take it too seriously.

DARK is a strange organization lead by the sinister and somewhat eccentric Professor Gill. For whatever reason their main robots have names and characteristics consisting of a color and an animal. Their foot solders on the other hand look like luchadors from Mexican wrestling and they go around chanting "DARK" in a rather annoying fashion similar to the Miniblin from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Kikaida is a lot of fun but if I have to say anything bad about the release it's that it's rather expensive. I know that such niche shows are seldom cheap, though I have been spoiled by the releases of Iron King and Super Robot Red Baron as well as all the super cheap subtitled Godzilla and kaiju releases. I could definitely see myself picking up the rest of this show tomorrow if it averaged out to $1 or so an episode but for now I'll just keep watching the used bins, Amazon and eBay for the rest.

Labels: Japanese, Tokusatsu, TV Shows