Then, to quote another ninja, I would get fired up!

And in one episode, out of the blue, they introduce the American Ninja, a New Yorker who eats pizza and learned the "hidden" Turtle style of Shaolin kung fu from a former Shaolin monk who immigrated to Staten Island and runs a matcha latte cafe. :lolol

I've just started up watching Specail Rescue Exceedraft since my copy arrived recently. I've really enjoyed this era of Metal Heroes. I'm a few episodes into Exceedraft and digging it.

I am currently up to episode 20 of Spectreman.

Kanutack and Robotack
 

New to watching the Metal Heroes shows. Started with Gavan and loving it so far. Pretty much have found everything subtitled except for Kabutack and Robotack. Do those exist somewhere?

Maybe, someday they will appear. Alternatively, modern technology allows you to create subtitles yourself, even without knowing the language. I watched the Chinese Balala the Fairies that way.

I finished up Exceedraft today. It wasn't bad but it's notably worse than both Winspector and Solbrain in most respects. The show carries forward the human crime oriented angle of its predecessors and has far less video and sound editing jank, but it suffers a lot from feeling like the show just didn't have anything to say. Winspector is about the importance of saving every life possible and Solbrain takes on the challenging idea of saving the hearts of people, but Exceedraft is a cop drama that just says trite things about people and society. Another minus is that the suits aren't very good compared to its predecessors either (I LOVE the Solbrain suits). The show also tries to delve deeper into the team members as individual characters, but I didn't feel like it added much, and I feel like the characters involved in the crime of the week tended to get neglected instead. Hayato gets far less focus than Daiki or Ryoma did too, so he wasn't much of a leader figure.

The further along the show goes, the more the rescue aspect starts to feel neglected, escalating into the characters getting combat oriented suit upgrades and... peaking when the show features a war between the biblical God and Devil where humanity is nearly wiped out by God's judgement for the finale? Did Exceedraft just get revived from death by aborting the child of God?! After a certain point I just had no idea what the show was even about anymore.

Largely unremarkable, but with occasional good episodes. Then the show loses its mind. Definitely the weakest 90s Metal Hero I have seen so far, but it DID make me appreciate Winspector and Solbrain even more than I already did. I guess things just weren't the same without Noboru Sugimura as head writer.

PS: I added a Metal Hero tier list to my signature recently! If Sentai is ending and I have a list for that, I think Metal Hero deserves one too.

Just finished episodes 43-47 of Jiraiya. Only three episodes to go and I will not only finish this series as of this week, I will also have completed all of the Metal Heroes shows of the Showa Era and yes, I will do a ranking list for them accordingly.

Aaaand, Toei Spider-Man has also been completed! I swear I didn't binge the entire show in one day after Exceedraft, I've been watching it slowly for months with a friend and just happened to finish both within a short time of each other. :lol

I of course came at the show from the perspective of a tokusatsu fan with some minor knowledge of Spider-Man, while my friend came at it from the perspective of a Spider-Man fan with some knowledge of tokusatsu. Neither of us really expected much of the show going into it, but both of us actually came away from it really impressed! It's a show that really respects the "vibe" and powers of the source material it was working with, while also putting a uniquely Japanese spin on things. It's can be hilarious, it can be thought-provoking, and was just all around excellent.

Takuya is also a very fun protagonist, he feels like an average Joe in a lot of ways what with his jock-ish personality and mundane interactions with his family and girlfriend. However, he also shows remarkable growth as a hero, becoming less motivated by personal revenge over time and more motivated by his desire to save people from suffering the way he has. Of course, he also gets to have one final, cathartic, revenge motivated smackdown against the villains in the final episode to round things out too. The villains were also quite fun and hammy. The Ninders in particular might be my new favorite mooks in a tokusatsu. They're so utterly hapless and useless that they wrap right back around into being irresistible.

Something that I think really enhances the show is that it has a really strong narrative motif later on in the show, where it focuses on family relationships, particularly parent child ones that tie back in to Takuya's own situation and his grief over the death of his father. There was also an excellent balance of stories that had happy and tragic endings. It's not common for Showa tokusatsu to have such an explicit slant to the story like that.

Supaidaman is definitely a show worth watching. The musical theme alone is worth it, incredibly catchy! And I'm also amazed that they thought to make the plot where Takuya starts working with an Interpol agent a movie, and not part of a series. It's a pretty important plot point. And Doctor Miracle is such an interesting villain that if I were Marvel, I would consider adding her counterpart to the official Spiderman.