When You Believe in the Star of Ultra

 

When my family was in Japan in the '80s, there wasn't a new Ultraman on the air. But Ultraman is such a giant figure in pop-culture that the franchise's presence could still be felt -- in commercials, in toy stores, in variety shows. The shows are always being rerun. He's Japan's biggest superhero, there's no escaping him.

While I was a Sentai Kid, I also watched Metal Heroes and what I could of Kamen Rider Black. I had some episodes and merch of funky shows like Morimori Bokkun (aka "the fat robot guy"), Hadogumi (aka "the gold mask guy") and Maringumi (not important enough to get a nickname, but it was obvious he was Gold Guy's successor). But despite not seeing a show, I still had some Ultraman stuff -- soft vinyls of the Ultra Brothers, an Ultraman 80 book. I remember him in commercials, and not even in just commercials related to plugging his own merchandise or toku, but ramen. One commercial which stuck out was for the Ultraman video game, which showed fight scene clips from the original series.

I knew who Ultraman was, but I didn't know what he was about. That Ultraman 80 book, these fight scene clips, I had created a kind of scenario in my head of what it could all be about. I pictured some big, epic space adventure show. So imagine my surprise when I finally do check out an Ultraman and find that it's really locked down in what it wants to do and is so Earthbound. There's really yet to be an Ultraman show which matches what I had pictured in my head, which is something that prevented me from getting into the franchise. More on that in a second...

I think the first full episodes I ever saw ended up being some Ultrase7en on TNT. Despite its age, I remember thinking it seemed cool, but I was more fascinated by the idea of one of these Japanese hero shows being right there on an ordinary American channel. When I got full blown back into toku in the late '90s is when I made a real effort to always catch the show on TNT, which by then had been relegated to being a late night time slot filler. But it was always fun to stay up late watching MonsterVision and then wait around for some Ultrase7en. (I type it that way because people like to distinguish the dub by calling it Ultra 7, and it cracks me up to mock David Fincher's overrated Se7en by merging it with a '60s superhero show he'd no doubt look down on.)

I've always hated dubs and think they're goofy -- words never matching a mouth, half-interested voice-over performers sleepwalking through their job, often laying on thick, racist accents. But the Cinar dub always seemed decent to me -- they had performers who matched the characters well. I enjoyed the show a lot and attribute it to one of the reasons I'm still fond of Ultraseven and consider it my favorite of the franchise.

After that, I'd dabble in shows. I'd take a liking to some, like Tiga, and I'd enjoy what I'd see of other Showa Ultras like Ace and Leo. I'd like some of the movies, but for the most part I couldn't get into the franchise as much as I could Super Sentai or Kamen Rider. I'd blame the lighter tone, the format. The tone I'd always dismiss as being overly cheerful and goody-goody when I'm such a grumpy bastard. The format, I always felt like there was a disconnect between the giant battles and the rest of the show. The way they approached depicting the Ultraman...

With Sentai or Rider, it's a character donning armor or mutating into their battle form. The good shows went to great lengths in order to get you to believe the actor -- the same character -- was the one in suit. It was a bit of an obstacle for me to get to the point of buying into the Ultraman way of things, where the Ultra is merged with the host and the Ultra is the one that takes over during battle. Because the Ultra shows tended to use martial-artists or athletic guys first to play the Ultraman, there's rarely an attempt at turning it into a performance, making you see the host character within. (Even when the host WAS the Ultra in disguise and not just the human he happened upon and joined with; there's no real match between Koji Moritsugu's Dan and Koji Uenishi's Seven, for example, despite being one and the same.)

The Ultra suit actors care more about how cool they look, how they present themselves and how they fight. It's typically another voice-actor voicing the Ultra and not the guy who plays the host. This goes into how the shows want to present the Ultra -- the Ultra takes over, he's his own character, an entity of few words who's supposed to be a bit mysterious, a bit god-like. It's an approach you just have to go with, but when you've spent so much time with Super Sentai and Kamen Rider is just such a different approach and something you have to overcome. (Heck, I reached a point where I felt like there are some Ultraman shows where the Ultra seems so much cooler than the show's star that I'll be like "He shouldn't even have a host. Leave him be the Intergalactic Man of Mystery he is.")

And then there's the feeling that the attack teams didn't hold up their end -- I always felt that it made so much of the episode seem like a waste, you're spending time with these characters who are just killing time to end up taking the backseat for the Ultra in the last minute of the episode. ("You have to wait until the end of the episode for superhero action!?" was another reaction of mine which prevented me from getting into the franchise. If Super Sentai were just five unpowered schmoes who were running around until the last minute of the episode in order to call the mecha, I wouldn't like that franchise as much, let me tell you.) It's another frustrating nitpick you have to let go of if you want to buy into this franchise -- you can't help but go "Wow! So much damage could have been prevented if the Ultra showed up sooner rather than letting the puny humans attempt to save the town, when they were obviously outmatched." But the point IS that the Ultra is meant to be a last resort, that the intent is to let the humans accomplish all they can before stepping in. And also because of his time limit, he can't just always be hanging around. (Although the time limit is there for the writer's convenience; they don't always adhere to the rules.) So you just have to buy into the idea that the teams are doing their best...even when they seem lazy and incompetent and totally dependent on the Ultra, like ZAT. (For the record, I like Taro and ZAT, but...I wouldn't want to ever depend on ZAT.)

Now further add to all of THAT the way I feel like giant battles are made in a way that feels so disconnected from the rest of the show. You have the rest of the show taking place on ground, in the real world, but all of the big, fancy toku action is cordoned off on a soundstage, with a lot of miniatures conveying the action and damage done. With something like Sentai or Rider, the heroes get to share the screen and interact with other people, or there will be ground fights with villains or monsters interacting with citizens to help sell the illusion. Most of the time, the Ultra is isolated with just a giant monster and the miniature ships, and it's a style and conceit you have to totally buy into. That was an obstacle (and misconception) of mine, not really feeling like the human characters played much part in the bigger action, and it would sometimes feel to me like the gigantic Ultra action was like cutting to a different show. I'm not a mecha fan, but at least in Sentai you're getting the shots of the team in the cockpit. They're there in the battle, a part of it, they see the battle to its conclusion, they're finishing the fight with a creature that gave them trouble on the ground, too. (To be honest, as a mecha hater, I tend to just view the monster's death-by-cannon its actual defeat, with the mecha a pointless exercise in commerce.) In Ultraman, the science team's mech tends to get shot down immediately, and then they're on the ground, fellow spectators alongside us to the Ultraman battle. I just didn't see the point to this set up, especially when the franchise can be so rigid and stuck in its way. (It's only in the lesser shows that the attack teams seem lesser or like an afterthought...)

And that's not even getting into the fact, coming from being a Sentai and Rider fan, that I'm used to regular villains with agendas, and with Ultra's mostly one-shot villains and individual storylines, THAT can also take some getting used to.

Is this what Ultraman was all about? Although I've come to really like the original series over time, when I first saw it in full, I couldn't help but feel disappointed by it. Not only in comparison to Ultraseven, but because it didn't live up to that pretend show I built up in my head as a kid. (I really have to wonder if I did manage to see some Ultraman reruns as a kid, or even just a retrospective, because I really doubt I could have built so much up based off a freakin' commercial and book. I love the imagery and iconography of the original series, that has to come from seeing more of the show than I'm aware of.) The show uses strong space-age imagery, where's the scale, where's the alienness and galactic backdrop it should have? There's some poster art for Ultraman Powered that I love -- that piece by Noriyoshi Ohrai -- which is Ultraman standing, looking to the cosmos as all of his famous kaijuu opponents fill the galaxy and futuristic jets zoom past him. That piece comes close to capturing the image, the feel I had as a kid when I wondered what Ultraman was about.

And, again, factor into this my love for Super Sentai and Kamen Rider. (I'll throw you in, too, Metal Heroes. I loved Spielban as a kid.) Those were what I wanted out of superhero entertainment in tokusatsu. I'm a big, big fan of the Japan Action Club, who work primarily on Toei shows, who are dedicated ACTORS in addition to stunt performers. I liked the Toei method and style of doing things. I considered myself loyal to Toei and felt like getting into the rival franchise by the rival studio would be like betraying Toei and the Japan Action Club I held in such high regard. Silly? Maybe. I don't know. People get nuttier about sports team loyalty or choosing a side between Marvel and DC. Joke is, Toei betrayed ME by starting to make a bunch of unbearably terrible shows. Even the JAC (sorry, JAE) has gone down in quality -- the shows don't make it about action or suit-acting anymore, they're just good for standing around in CGI, goofing off and fiddling with Bandai's latest ugly contraption.

And then, a few years ago, I was rewatching Flashman and preparing to blog about it. I noted down similarities and homages I thought it obviously made to the Ultra franchise, because it was a heavily sci-fi toku series that happened to air on the anniversary of the first Ultraman's show, the show which made all of this possible. I had already taken note of the Ultraseven inspirations in Changeman, when I covered that show for its 30th anniversary. And I sort of had the thought, "These are my two top favorite toku shows and they're taking inspiration from Ultraman, paying homage and tribute. There's no divide here, but a respect and love for Ultra. Some old Ultra staff members, like Shouhei Toujou, started working on Toei's shows in the '80s. How can I love these two shows so much and basically be prejudiced against the Ultra franchise?"

And that was the big thing that led me to have an insanely massive Ultra marathon. It started out small, but I ended up diving deep, man. I rewatched some favorites (like TOS, Tiga, and Nexus) finished shows I never completed (like 80 or the overly long Cosmos), watched a couple I had never seen (like Max) or given a fair chance (like Dyna). I watched or rewatched just about mostly everything up until Mebius, which I wanted to be the big cap-off of this marathon. (Honestly, I haven't liked much of the Ultra shows post-Mebius that I've sampled. Maybe I'll try them again at some point, but for this big dive of a marathon, I needed that finish line.)

I wanted to keep an open mind. I wanted to let go of hang-ups and misconceptions. I wanted a new area of tokusatsu to explore -- to be honest, I felt a little O.D.'d and exhausted by just Sentai and Rider, and I've watched pretty much every non-franchise toku I'm interested in. At the time, things were very stressful in my personal life, to say the least, and I think that played a part in why I felt so much more receptive to the franchise during that marathon. It felt different enough to me to fill that requirement, but there's also just that joyful, fun, heartfelt, warm and earnest feel the shows often have. The Ultras are transportive, which I think is important, but they also have a certain pace that I found myself appreciating and enjoying more than I ever had, and it helped me relax and get wrapped up in the shows and get my mind off of things and I just ended up having a lot of fun watching them. That goody-goody, wholesome tone I always mocked? It kinda helped me out at the time. I found a new appreciation and respect for the franchise. Part of the appeal and charm of the franchise, what makes them have that emotional quality and lived-in feel and comfortable pace is that a lot of the shows are made with such care and love. Ultraman's a pop-culture giant and Tsuburaya's always tried to cultivate more passion for it; it's a big family endeavor and there are things that they want to keep preserved about it. It wants to appeal to anyone who's ever liked an Ultraman show before, be welcoming and familiar to fans old and new, and does it all in a really uncynical way. (Well, that's the way it seems at least up through Mebius. It seems it's gotten as hollow, corporate, toyetic and assembly-line as the other toku franchises now.)

And shortly after all of this happened, Tsuburaya finally got things straightened out and have made big advancements in releasing Ultraman in America. It felt like it was a good time to get into Ultra as Tsuburaya began to make progress getting the big guy out overseas. And I was actually excited about a lot of the Blu-ray releases  -- if they had started coming out even just five or so years ago, I don't think I would have bought many of them or even cared, and would have been grumbling that more Sentai needs released or something.

So after all of my complaining and mocking of Ultraman...I consider myself a fan now, and, yeah, I feel kind of guilty doing so. I like every show up through Mebius except for Return of Ultraman and Max. (I can pretty much guarantee that if you saw me Tweet anything negative about the franchise -- like "It's boring!" or "I need to stop giving Ultraman a chance" -- that I was attempting to finish Return of Ultraman. And that was at a time before my Ultra-Awakening. I've since re-watched it and still don't like it, so...)

Even when I wasn't big on the franchise, I still liked Ultraseven, so while I probably made some hyperbolic slams against it in favor of Super Sentai or Kamen Rider, I don't feel like I ever want on "Doug Walker-esque rants" about it. Being compared to that guy is probably the meanest thing someone has said about me on the internet. And I've received death threats!

Cybercop: Cops, Crooks and Special-Defects

 

The special effects in this show are atrocious. That's the first thing you're required to say about Dennou Keisatsu Cybercop. People like to poke fun at Toei's SFX from the same time, but they're nowhere near the level of what Cybercop tries to continuously serve you. The stuff in Cybercop is like the stuff any schlub can create for their goofy YouTube videos; it most likely looked bad even back in the day. It would be laughable if it weren't so horrifying. And they use the SFX for EVERYthing! Even things that don't require it! They're just shoving it in your face that they have these bad effects, like someone's being dared on just how crummy of an effect they can get past the directors.

The bad SFX is usually the first thing people notice about the show, and it's often the first thing that turns them off of it. My biggest experience with this show was having the first few episodes on VCD (yes, VCD) in the early '00s and just thinking it looked terrible -- effects, design, production -- and that I thought the idea of cops having a band on the side was one of the stupidest ideas imaginable. This was around when Toho had just debuted Gransazer, and a lot of old-time toku fans were acting like that show was a savior of the genre, when I thought it seemed just as cheap and schlocky as Cybercop. Neither had the style or polish that most Toei shows had -- I was a real Toei snob, and I didn't like many of the shows or works that are non-Toei. I've just always preferred the Toei Method, and one reason I thought they always had the upper hand was because they used the Japan Action Club.

Well, anyway, cut to now, where Toei's betrayed me by making unwatchable dreck for a decade (or more, depending on my mood). Letting go of that silly loyalty to Toei is what got me to be able to get more into the Ultraman franchise over the past few years, for example -- in case you were wondering about that. And so I finally decided to end up checking out that funky old Cybercop. (I made a jab at it on Twitter, and a couple of Brazilian fans were talking it up. Because I am the U.S.'s Changeman Ambassador, I feel a kinship with the Brazilian fan. I wanted to find out what it was they liked about this show. It also helped to know that Junki Takegami was main writer and showrunner, so I figured I'd give it another shot based on that. On a sidenote: WHAT DO YOU SEE IN JUSPION, BRAZIL, TO RATE IT OVER CHANGEMAN?!)

I really had to push past the horrendous special-effects. "Special-effects." There's nothing special about these effects, they're special-defects. Even just in the opening credits as I began the first episode I was like "No. No, I just...can't. I can't take this seriously," seeing those toy cars flip over, and I almost stopped it there. I don't consider myself an effects snob or anything -- million dollar CGI in Hollywood blockbusters can look like crap to me. Tokusatsu shows are low budget, you know this, and iffy effects can be part of the package. But Cybercop just flaunts it, there's no shame. They're almost dedicated to doing everything in the cheapest, lowest way possible, almost like they want to see what they can get away with. It's hilarious some of the ambition the show has in an action piece or effect -- using Tokyo Tower as a motorcycle ramp! -- when they know damn well the effects people aren't going to be able to come close to pulling it off. The show relies heavily on blue-screen for effects and locations. And if all that's not bad enough? The show is shot on video, which further lends just a cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, low down, ugly and scummy look. (So I'd just like to point out again: I first saw this show on awful VCD, which quadruples terrible filming quality, picture quality and effects.)

I see people liken this show to Kuuga. "It's a good show, just with bad SFX." I disagree. Kuuga's just all around a more solid and professional production (terrible Grongi acting excluded), but its worst effects are in things like the transforming or his bike transforming. Otherwise, the SFX in that show isn't as bad as the (new) legend says. Special effects go beyond just the digital; it encompasses practical effects, miniatures, make-up effects, pyrotechnics and so on. Kuuga's digital effects are wonky, but the show put the effort in other areas. If a building blew up in Kuuga, they blew something up. If a car crashed, they crashed a car. If they fight on the rooftop of a building, the suit actors are making the trek to fight on a rooftop. If Cybercop needs a building blown up, they draw some fire in Crayon over a photograph of a building. If a car crashes, it's a 1/6 scale model, which then explodes into cartoon fire. If they fight on a rooftop, they're fighting in a blue-screen-surrounded stage area that will be super imposed onto the image of a rooftop in post.

Reliance on iffy, burgeoning digital effects and being shot on video? Cybercop's more comparable to Changerion. But even Changerion managed its effects better, still relying on practical effects when needed. Both Kuuga and Changerion have far more style than Cybercop, and that goes a long way in making up for when they come up short in the SFX department. (Visually and budget-wise, and in terms of effects, Cybercop realllllly reminded me of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. I like that show -- and was even going to cover it on here at one time -- but that's not a compliment. Captain Power's budget was five dollars that they were able to double by shooting in Canada, which is the place to go for cheap genre television productions.)

Pushing past the SFX, the next obstacle: the designs. I don't mind Mars, Saturn or Mercury's designs -- they all remind me of a generic sort of "futuristic" design heroes or robotic characters from the 1980s were given -- but I don't like Jupiter's. He doesn't blend with the others, I don't like the kabuto-theme and it's pretty important that your main hero, especially if he's going to be the one to hog all of the glory like Jupiter, doesn't have an unpleasant or dull design. He doesn't look like he's part of the same team as the rest. (And, no, the difference isn't explained by his being from the future. They obviously wanted to have the main character, the "Red," stand out from the others. They just went about it in a bad way.) A huge problem I had with a lot of Toho's Chouseishin Series efforts was how mismatched a lot of the designs were to one another; there's always a fuggo sore-thumb who doesn't look like they belong on the same team as their comrades.

Pushing past THAT, let's judge the show for its material. What's it offer in terms of story and characters? The first thing I took notice of in this show is the cast. They're all fun and likable, even if...not the most memorable. This might not be a Toei production, but it's loaded with JAC -- all five transforming heroes were, at one time, JAC members (!), the action staff is JAC, the show's head action-director is Ryojiro Nishimoto (of Metalder fame) and there's guest appearances by JACtor heavyweights like Jun'ichi Haruta and Toshimichi Takahashi. So you're in for good action (when not bogged down in questionable effects, of course) and dedicated performers.

Either Noboru Sugimura or someone at Toei were big fans of the show; just a few episodes in, I thought "Wow, Toei was really like 'Hey, let's completely rip off of that show for our Metal Heroes.'" Winspector and its sequels owe quite a bit to this show. I won't call them rip-offs (I certainly prefer Winspector to Cybercop), but there's some Cybercop DNA in those shows. From trying to realistically depict the technological aspect of the heroes' arsenal to the focus on everyday police and rescue work to the villains being about technological threats... Cybercop also likes to film in Abandoned Factory #11, which the '90s Metal Heroes make their home.

And not even just his Metal Heroes, but I feel like this show influences Sugimura's Sentai -- even the way the transforming-villain-turned-good-guy is depicted plays beat for beat like a lot of the initial sixth heroes of that type in Sentai at that time, especially Burai. And then the show is set in 1999, which was a good idea in the '80s, but a little pointless when Ohranger did it. See? Sugimura must have loved this show! (Or envied it.)

It might be too bad Masaru Yamashita didn't play Takeda instead of being Ryouma in Winspector... Yamashita wasn't JAC, but he was an action guy, and just a likable dude who held a lot of Winspector together. He seemed like a leader, the star of a show. Takeda/Jupiter has more going on as a character than Ryouma ever did, but I feel like actor Tomonori Yoshida is a little miscast. Takeda's supposed to be the brash guy who's led by his emotions, a mysterious rookie whose courage and dedication pulls the team together. Most of the show's focus goes to him and Yoshida's just not a strong lead. If you're looking at Cybercop like a Sentai, you'd cast someone like Yoshida as the youthful, screw-up Blue, he'd never cut it as a Red. He's not bad, but for as much as the show focuses on him, he needed to be a little stronger.

Takeda's story is what kept me interested in the show. An amnesiac with only memories of an apocalyptic wasteland, I thought from the hints early on that he might be one of the cyborgs or androids he hates so much. The show then settles into a mystery that he might have actually been an ally of the villains in the future, before backpedaling and chickening out of that story, resolving it in such an unsatisfying way that my interest in the show started to wane soon after.

My favorite of the heroes is probably Houjou/Mars. I like the no-nonsense characters in toku, but he also had a dark past they'd briefly allude to (he was Zero Cool), and it led to a later interesting development in him befriending the villainess Luna. He goes from being the all-business pro guy to opening himself up over the course of the series. I kept being reminded of Dekaranger's Houji, but I think Houjou is the more successful attempt at that character. Actor Shogo Shiotani can be about as stiff as Dekaranger's Tsuyoshi Hayashi, but he's good at the lighter moments, making it more believable he eventually respects Takeda and allowing himself to be more emotional around his teammates. (It was sad to look Shiotani up and read that he committed suicide in 2002, at age 35.)

Mouri/Saturn and Saionji/Mercury (or Marcury as the show says) -- I ain't gonna lie, it took me a dozen episodes or more to tell them apart. They're just mostly in the background and they're both the comedic guys of the team and are often paired with one another on missions. Both have backstories involving family members wanting them to quit and return home. (For one, it's a bunch of siblings and dead parents and for the other it's a parent and a dead sibling.) Saionji's actor, Ryuma Sasaki, it was pointed out to me by Ricardo Cerdeira, can be seen at the auditions for Kotaro Minami in the Kamen Rider Black special. Sasaki's a decent performer and skilled action actor, and deserved a little more than he got in Cybercop, but I can't see him working out as Kotaro. He has a much more old-fashioned vibe to him, and needed to be in a show that was a throwback.

Mika Chiba's pretty cool as Uesugi, the female ZAC field officer who, sadly, doesn't get to transform. The show addresses this, and they try to make up for it by pointing out all she offers the team. For some, it's a positive that she's so important to the team and that it's a point the show makes that she doesn't need to transform, but for me, it would be cooler if she got her own suit at some point. (If not just simply starting the show as the fully-transforming fifth member.) Chiba also provides the catchy ending theme. It would have been nice for her to have gone on to do more toku.

One thing that immediately grabbed me, though, were the villains, the Deathtrap. It was cool to see a villain group of seven who were all actors. I've always said that it's a shame toku doesn't have the schedule or budget to do prosthetics on actors for toku villains, but that doesn't stop Cybercop! Cybercop's dreaming bigger, even if its aspirations are out of its league and budget. Money's not going to stop it from doing an effect it shouldn't! So a couple of the regular villains have cheaply-made Klingon, scrunchy-forehead applications, and I appreciate the effort. It beats just having some masked villains. (If the villains were masked, they'd really suffer. The villains of the week are masked, and just a rotating roster of the same three designs -- something Blue SWAT goes on to do. The worst part is that they're all wearing repainted athletic gear, so...sticking to the cheap side.)

The standout villain, for me, is Baron Kageyama -- a mysterious guy who's always just very chill, very reserved, but with authority, and you can tell he's operating on a whole 'nother level from his teammates. Kageyama's played coolly by Jinya Sato, who I can't believe is the same dude who played '70s hero Condorman. Too bad Sato never ended up playing a villain in one of the big franchises.

The Deathtrap being mad scientists with access to another dimension, wanting to replace humanity with computers, headed by a tech-obsessed fellow human who has android underlings, they're kind of the blueprint for what Takegami would do with the villains in his Megaranger. I wonder if he wanted the Nejirejia to be more like the Deathtrap, but didn't want to repeat himself. (A shame, since the Nejirejia end up being so under-utilized in the show, with any of the meaningful connections between the heroes and villains never really going anywhere, unlike in Cybercop. I'd really like to know how Megaranger would have turned out if it stayed on in the evening; I think Takegami would have felt a lot looser to push his ideas, and we would have had more seriousness, especially with the villains.) Stick the Deathtrap in Megaranger and we'd be cooking.

The show gets a Sixth Villain, Lucifer, who dons his own Cybercop-styled Bit Suit. They rush through his story of working with the Deathtrap and being antagonistic because he's been misled into believing Takeda/Jupiter betrayed him, and then after that becomes an ally for Cybercop, who's only used by the show as a Get Out of Any Jam Free card. It's really reminiscent of Burai's arc and how Zyuranger handles his character post-redemption by just pushing him to the periphery after focusing on him so heavily during his introduction. The prototype Sentai Sixth Hero was hinted at with Maskman, but the approach Toei would end up taking is found in this rival Toho series. (On a sidenote, I think actor Takashi Koura is far better at playing the heroic side of the character; he seems awkward when villainous, just as he was as Ultraman Tiga's big bad.)

There are moments of surprising maturity throughout the show, like what the show tries to do with its villains (from Baron Kageyama's betrayal to his underlings turning on him to what they try to do with Houjou and Luna) or Takeda's identity crisis when he thinks he could have evil origins or how the show tries to handle a potential Takeda and Uesugi romance. There are only about three episodes that fall into the "kids" category; the rest are surprisingly straight-forward, lesson-free, with not too many toys shoved down your throat. It was a nice change of pace for me, since the only toku I had been watching around the same point I watched this was modern shit that's stupid and all about shilling shit you don't want to buy. That's not to say the show takes itself too seriously or doesn't have humor -- this is Junki Takegami we're talking about, humor's not far behind him. (Especially humor that's self-aware of the genre it's in and its trappings, something he was ahead of the curve on.) But it's interesting to me that Toho's Cybercop doesn't feel so kid-friendly at a time when Toei had been forcing their darker shows to be lighter (Black, Metalder, Liveman) or making shows with more kid appeal (Jiraiya, Turboranger, RX, Jiban).

I think a lot of storylines in this show suffer from it being a short, 34-episode run. They take time establishing something and then rush through it once it's clear that the show's not making it to a full run. The show ends up committing one of my least favorite TV sins -- doing a whole reboot ten episodes away from the finale. (Surprise, surprise, that's where some of those standard, for-kids episodes fall.) Jupiter and Uesugi come to a decision in the finale that could have fueled a whole new series. The show's budget didn't match its dreams -- it had Ridley Scott taste on a Lloyd Kaufman budget.

So, I found myself surprised to enjoy as much of it as I did. I'm not saying it's a favorite or I'm buying any of its toys, I just think I happened to watch it at the right time when I was looking for something different in toku. (And it was interesting to see the way Toei just ripped it off in the '90s.) It made me consider giving Guyferd and Gransazer another shot. But, holy moly, are the special effects bad.