I am now 11 episodes into Blue SWAT.

Fun fact, Souji Masaki who played Shou went on to play the goat-themed Sazer Tragos in Gransazer and had guest roles in episode 6 of Robocon and episode 33 of Ultraman Cosmos. Kou Domon who played Sig previously played Masaru/Kamen Rider ZO.

I think the main strength of this series is that it really understands that it is a fun adventure tale and doesn't try to be anything more. Well, the space sailboat is very beautiful.

As of yesterday, I am now officially halfway through Blue SWAT.

I finished Janperson yesterday and I thought it was an enjoyable show! While I'm familiar with robot heroes like Bichael and Walter in Winspector, I think Janperson as a protagonist and Gun Gibson as his "Secondary Rider" archetype provide an even thorougher exploration of the theme of how robots can co-exist with humans, as the weekly conflict often relates to their own problems. Feels like Zero One may have taken some inspiration from this, but I must conclude that overall, Janperson does it better.

Here's my updated Metal Hero Ranking:

1) Jiban
2) Janperson
3) Spielvan
4) Sekai Ninja Sen
5) Winspector
6) Battle Cop

Next in the franchise, I'm thinking of continuing the Rescue Hero Trilogy, with Solbrain. But before that, I intend to focus on Sentai.

Started watching Tomica hero rescue force. A nice light show that is greatly helped by its focus on rescue missions. Perhaps without them I would have found it too repetitive. And even though I am mostly indifferent to technology, I like the characters, the general atmosphere and the message.
https://tokuzl.net/wp-content/upload...e-force-01.jpg

I'm really glad you liked Janperson. This show is vastly underrated and like I said earlier, it is a Toku series everyone should check out at least once. You even give the show the same ranking, along with Spielban, as me. :)

And yes, I am planning to do my ranking list for all of the Metal Heroes series I have watched so far once I finished up on Blue SWAT since I am down to that show's final five episodes and I would also, more or less, be halfway through the Metal Heroes franchise as a whole, incidentally. Anyway, what would you say is your favorite episode(s) of Janperson?

Thanks. I think Metal Heroes in general is underrated compared to its more successful yet more formulaic older siblings.

For my favorite episodes, I guess I'd have to go with 21-22 for the robot prison arc and 38 for the dramatic showdown between Gun Gibson and Makabe. I also enjoyed the MX-A1 arc as a major turning point, showing Janperson's serious human-like fear and anger for the first time.

Rescue Force is definitely a show that makes up for its numerous shortfalls by simply being unique. I did find I liked Rescue Fire quite a bit more. It was more of the same in many ways, but I was much more fond of the cast in that one and it had better episodes overall.

I have just finished Blue SWAT and I am finally about to start watching Juukou B-Fighter for the first time. The following is my current rankings of every Metal Heroes series I have watched in their entirety so far and it is subject to change:

1. Metalder
2. Janperson
3. Spielban
4. Blue SWAT
5. Jiban
6. Sharivan
7. Gavan
8. Shaider

Ah, yes. The show where Kamen Rider Birth is squad leader, his senpai was Ryuranger, and one of their superiors who wears a fedora is Ichigo. :lolol
Theme songs were nice. The movie had a surprise cameo at the end iirc which was totally out of the blue but a nice surprise.

I have just finished episode 18 of Juukou B-Fighter and I have officially reached the point where Black Beet makes his first official appearance in the series. Things should be getting a bit more interesting from here.

Wasn't it the movie that strongly implied that both series were connected and within continuity with Ryukendo?

Yes, which in retrospect I should've known it was bound to happen since both aired on TV Tokyo. What surprised and delighted me was that all three of the actors came back to reprise their roles, and Ryujinoh was the one out of the three going what's up. :lolol

I am now officially halfway through Juukou B-Fighter.

For those that have seen it, what are your thoughts regarding the first B-Fighter series as a whole and how does it compare to the Metal Heroes shows that have before it and its sequel/followup series, Kabuto, afterwards?

Just finished few more episodes of Juukou B-Fighter and I am now officially down to the show’s final quarter.

Currently, I am slowly but surely watching the remaining episodes of Juukou B-Fighter.

I am once again continuing right where I left off of Juukou B-Fighter. Only three episodes to go including its two-part crossover the show has with Janperson and Blue SWAT. I should be able to finish this series either today or tomorrow.

EDIT: Just finished the series. Now this just leaves B-Fighter Kabuto, the Rescue Police trilogy, Juspion, and Jiraiya in terms of the (fully subbed) Metal Heroes series that remained unaccounted for.

I have just started watching B-Fighter Kabuto today.

Fun fact. Naohisa Adachi who played Kengo/Kuwagar is the older brother of Sotaro Yasuda who played Ken/Geki Chopper and Jabel in real life. Also, watch out for a young Reuben Langdon, Hidenori Tokuyama, aka Go-On Gold and Kickhopper, and Seiji Takaiwa. I won't spoil it for you unless you're aware but you'll know what I mean as the show goes on. :rock:

It has been quite a long while but I am finally back to watching MegaBeast Investigator Juspion and I am already three episodes away until I have reached the show’s halfway point and the show itself finally starts picking itself up right around a quarter through it. I did like space opera elements from the first four episodes though.

I have watched some more of Juspion over the last week or so with only 16 episodes remaining. The show definitely gets a lot better as it goes along. Although, as of right now I am currently taking a bit of a break from it for a little while.

I am finally back to watching Juspion and I am already 10 episodes away from finishing the series. I am planning to rewatch both Spielban and Metalder after that before finally jumping into Jiraiya and thus completing the Showa era portion of the Metal Heroes franchise and will, one day, do the same for the Heisei era side of things as well.

I watched the three Daimajin films! They're pretty much the same concept done in slightly different ways each time. Evil feudal lord does bad stuff in a samurai film until eventually Daimajin gets really mad and tears a path of absolutely spectacular destruction to take vengeance on them. Still, there aren't any OTHER films that can claim to be quite like that, and I found myself quite taken with Daimajin's unbridled divine fury. I mean, c'mon, he pulls the metal spike the warlord's minions drove into his head out and uses it to impale the villain through his chest, affixing him to a crucifix shaped bit of shattered timber left from him rampage. That's AWESOME. I think the first film was the best, with lots of stark, moody lighting, but I also kinda liked the shlocky elements of the third film with the awkward child actors and the way it flip-flopped between slapstick and tragedy. Good fun!

Agree. Films about Daimajin are a very interesting and unusual example of the intersection of genres. Although, it’s understandable why the studio limited itself to these three: the concept does not promote diversity, and filming was expensive. In any case, I personally am very glad that these films exist.

It has been quite a while but I am finally a little more than halfway through Android Kikaider. I am even close to being a quarter through B-Fighter Kabuto and the show itself is just okay so far. I also have six episodes left on Juspion.

Hurricane Polymar is like a buddy cop movie if it was also a faux-edgy tokusatsu. Not that I'm knocking the film! In fact, it might be peak. Flashy Sakamoto action, guys spinning around like tops, decent characters. I might call it the best of both worlds!

As of yesterday, I am finally finished with Juspion. I also just ordered my copy of the Space Sheriff Sharivan Blu-Ray series set as released by Discotek Media on Amazon a couple of hours ago.

I watched Mobile Cop Jiban. This is yet another Metal Hero show that is mildly enjoyable, but not much to write home about. A few things stuck out about it to me though. First of all, the show doesn't really explain its premise for quite a while, leaving the viewer wondering why the heck this Naoto guy is some kind of android cop working with a little girl. In addition, these early episodes tend to be very silly, while later episodes have a better balance of weird old toku moments combined with seriousness. The show also does not feel like something from 1989-1990, it feels more like an early 80s or late 70s tokusatsu to me. I think the biggest plus for this show is that the main cop trio are all surprisingly charismatic, and I liked watching all of them. In the end, I think I had a bit more fun with the unmitigated trippiness of Sharivan though.

So... it was a perfectly okay experience!

Considering that the origin of the hero also is not revealed for a long time in Janperson, I think this is due to the commercial failure of the first Metal Hero show with the robot MC - Metalder. Apparently, Toei decided that the hero's introduction to the world and the inevitable making of mistakes is not very suitable for the tokusatsu genre and therefore subsequent shows began with fully prepared heroes. And their origin was revealed later, when the viewer had already fallen in love with them and therefore assessed them less critically.
P.S. I hope I haven't wandered into spoiler territory. If anything happens, I apologize and cover what is needed.

I started watching the second season of Sukeban Deka. And even though I’m only at the beginning of this show, I already like it even more than the previous one. The budget has grown noticeably, the battles have become better and more varied, and the arsenal of techniques for both the MC and her opponents has increased. Mass fights are one step away from being called battle scenes. The new heroine is cute and intriguing, and she's similar enough to the original Saki to not turn off fans, but different enough to not look like a copy with a different appearance. And the introduction of girlfriends who are capable of not only supporting, but also participating on equal terms in battles adds variety and spice to the show.
If there is one thing I can nitpick about, I thought the show was too fast-paced. In the first episode, Yoko becomes Sukeban Deka; in the second, she teams up with her first friend, in the third, she meets the second, and in the fourth, they already help her on a mission. Somehow all this is too hasty, especially in comparison with the original, which, being almost half as long, spent the first ten episodes on fillers. But the thought that there are still 38 episodes of this story ahead makes me squeal with delight. I recommend it.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...qcGc@._V1_.jpg

Add another thing to the list of vague things I have heard about Metalder that intrigue me to no end. Greatly looking forward to watching it at some point.

With Jiban though, I kind of feel like they went too far in the opposite direction though. The show takes so long to establish what the backstory even was that it was hard to get invested for a while, simply because I was too distracted trying to work out what the show was even about and why everything was happening!

Metalder is a fantastic show, some of the best MotWs of all time.

Metalder is great and looks original even now, but in some ways I understand why it failed. There are many reasons, including those not related to the show itself:
https://image.civitai.com/xG1nkqKTMz...ac65bbcd9.jpeg
But if you are looking for the main thing, then it is the lack of direction. The show threw in a lot of creative solutions that didn't really want to add up to a cohesive picture. It seems that Metalder was inventing new tricks, waiting for what would hook the viewer, but it never found the right one.

I watched... Kaiju Mono! This is a giant monster film where a guy turns into a giant wrestler to battle the titular kaiju. It is full of Ultraman references and cameos, but is also of course something of a genre parody. In that respect it is sort of like Death Kappa, but while that film relishes in being as unhinged and slapdash as possible, this is a slightly more serious attempt. That being said, I kind of felt like it lacked a good sense of comedic timing or truly absurd content, which sort of undermined the whole movie for me.

I did realize after watching this that the maker of this film also made something called Crab Goalkeeper though, which the Wikipedia article cites the creator as describing as "like Forrest Gump, but with a crab". Sounds awesome.

Agree. I'll have to take a look sometime.

Hiroshi Fujioka aka Takeshi Hongo/Kamen Rider Ichigo and Naoto Takenaka aka the hermit from Kamen Rider Ghost seem to play major roles. Also seems to have Arthur Kuroda aka Itsuro/Kamen Rider Verde from the Ryuki 13 Riders special and Nao Oikawa aka Kegalesia from Go-Onger as part of the cast.

Then it's even more worth watching.

I gave the two Zebraman movies a shot. Still kind of reeling from the... well... I'll get into that shortly.

The first film has a pretty simple premise. The protagonist is a teacher who is unpopular with his students and family, whose only form of release is trying to cosplay as Zebraman, the hero from a 70s tokusatsu that was cancelled after only a few episodes due to low ratings. However, her slowly starts to actually become a superhero and ends up fighting an alien menace. It's overall comical, but also surreal and has some very serious moments too. Some parts of the story were a bit odd or rushed, but it was overall quite charming. Probably my favorite part was how much effort they put into creating the old, failed 70s toku for Zebraman.

The sequel is probably one of the most ill-advised things I've seen in a while. Both films were directed by Takashi Miike and written by Kankuro Kudo, but the second film definitely felt like the both of them has been allowed to cut loose. Gone is oddly down to earth setting of the prior film, replaced with a bombastic Hollywood-esque superhero film. The new story follows the same protagonist, who wakes up with no memory 15 years later in Tokyo, now renamed Zebra City. A new law has been enacted that lets the police and politicians commit any crimes they want for 10 minutes a day, which lowers the crime rate somehow. Turns out our hero had been strapped into a centrifuge for 5 years, which split him into his good side and also a sexy, evil woman (whom the film will thirst wildly over). Lots of stuff happens, the alien menace returns and a conflict between the white and black zebras ensues. The film ends with the protagonist having sex with the evil woman version of himself, recombining them. Then he throws a box of condoms on the ground as the words "stop AIDS" flash on the screen?! Then he defeats a giant alien by eating it in some kind of weird fetish vore scene before his bloated body floats off into space?! WHAT?! The film was a total critical failure, since it's doubtful most of the people who enjoyed the first film would be receptive to... whatever this is. We really do need editors in this world.

Also in the second film Zebraman got a rebooted TV series in the interim years in-universe, but it was done in more of the style of an 80s or early 90s tokusatsu instead of something more modern that would have fit the time period. Terrible research failure, 0/10 film. :p

The second Zebraman really went too far. Considering the differences between the parts and the time travel motif, it seems to me that Miike and Kudo were taking cues from Evil Dead and this was their Army of Darkness. But in the process, it all became, "Let's put every crazy thing they'll let us on screen!"