[Mesnick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoldenXtreme

The thing I always remember hearing about this one is the out-of-place kaiju that shows up.

As far as I remember, this kaiju was removed from the American version. A terrible decision, because that?s what people watch movies like this for!

[GoldenXtreme]

You know, I think sometimes we tokusatsu fans forget just how GOOD we have it. Then you watch something like Giant Saver, which really puts things into perspective.

Since this series is super obscure I think a little bit of background is required. Giant Saver is a tokusatsu TV show from mainland China, which shared one of it's production companies with the maker of China's Armor Hero series. Giant Saver takes it's inspiration from Sentai, with a team of transforming heroes and their assortment of combiner mechs for when the monsters get big, to the point it might be more accurate to call the series a knockoff of Sentai rather than inspired by it. Notably, it has action done by Takanori Shibahara's Wild Stunts company!

One of the first things that immediately struck me about the show was the veneer of jank on pretty much every aspect of it. The stunts, while occasionally busting out cool moves, were generally a bit slow and clumsy. The camera work was truly awful, many shaky handheld shots and often they ended up with this vaguely nauseating distortion of the background in scenes. Episodes regularly end extremely abruptly. Heck, even the final episode pretty much did a smash cut from finishing off the final enemy to a 45 second epilogue. The show has a real bad case of adult actors badly pretending to be teenagers (especially Windy). The subtitles were just TERRIBLE. And yet... there was an earnest effort to add in overarching characterization and plot points, which actually shocked me. Sometimes a character would get injured and it would persist over several episodes or incidents from the past would get brought up. Really jarring that they actually tried on that front, as imperfect as it was.

Occasionally really unhinged episodes would come up, like the one where the team kidnaps a magical fishman doctor to force him to heal someone, getting said doctor killed in the process. Or... the episode with the monster that gives people intellectual disabilities, which is handled with even less tact than you are imagining. The plot overall was two-parter monster of the week fare. Fight the Super Elf (or occasional other monster), get the item, repeat. I think the story was at it's best when it came to episodes focused on winning new members over to fight on the team, which were usually quite fun. As far as the characters go, the cast was generally charming but lacking in substance. I felt like Zoe in particular got the short end of the stick when it came to focus.

There were a few interesting cultural things that got my attention during the show. Being filmed in China it was interesting to take in the scenery. Much of what I saw seemed nothing like Japan, and actually reminded me more of what you might see in the US, which really surprised me! Another thing, and one I personally found very funny, is how the actors were all very touchy with each other, which makes a very amusing contrast to the slightly aloof impression a lot of Japanese actors give off. Finally... I learned something really unusual about a lot of Chinese TV shows from this. Most shows aired in mainland China are required to have the dialogue be in Putonghua, the "standard" form of Chinese. However, most actors have strong regional accents in one form or another, so it's standard practice to redub live action shows with voice actors with a more "normal" accent, and Giant Saver is no exception. As someone who isn't used to watching Chinese TV, this creates a slightly uncanny effect where the voices feel slightly off all the time. In my mind, this is sort of like if the US redubbed anyone with an accent to sound like a New Yorker.

So... it was just kind of a disaster! We eat so good most of the time that sometimes we forget that tokusatsu can be really janky. I did find the show had a certain charm to it though, I'd legitimately be curious to try the other two entries in the series if they had subs, see if they were more polished and all that.

[Mesnick]

There is also such an interesting thing from Chinese tokusatsu as Metal Kaiser 2007. Essentially, he is a Chinese Ultraman with a mystical background. If we put aside the fact that this is not a film, but three episodes of a show that they decided not to continue, then the thing seemed to me of quite high quality. The characters are fleshed out, the action is multi-layered and the finisher is simply awesome. And the most successful Chinese tokusatsu franchises are the Armor Heroes and Balala the Fairies for fans of magical girls.

[GoldenXtreme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mesnick

There is also such an interesting thing from Chinese tokusatsu as Metal Kaiser 2007. Essentially, he is a Chinese Ultraman with a mystical background. If we put aside the fact that this is not a film, but three episodes of a show that they decided not to continue, then the thing seemed to me of quite high quality. The characters are fleshed out, the action is multi-layered and the finisher is simply awesome. And the most successful Chinese tokusatsu franchises are the Armor Heroes and Balala the Fairies for fans of magical girls.

Metal Kaiser sounds really interesting since it has that direct Tsuburaya connection! I'm hoping to try out some more Chinese tokusatsu in the future, it's a shame so little of it is available in English.

[Mesnick]

I started watching Kikaider 01 and I already regret that the series didn’t last a little longer so that the androids could assemble their own orchestra.

[GoldenXtreme]

I watched Space Sheriff Gavan.

My only prior experience with the Metal Hero series was Juspion and after watching Gavan I understand how the series caught on a lot more. The two best aspects of the show for me have to be the large amount of quality and creative out-of-suit action scenes along with Retsu himself, who pulls off an excellent combination of 80s coolness and being adorably endearing. Like, I kept thinking as I watched the show that if Brazil had gotten this instead of Juspion it would have even MORE popularity.

Overall though, while not a terrible experience, I came away feeling like the show was utterly sauceless. The show tends to include a lot of extremely chaotic camera cuts that really took me out of the experience. Sure, the Makuu Space battles are wacky, but I can't really enjoy a cool fight when the camera is cutting away to some new nonsense every few seconds! The show also tended to reuse a lot of footage unfortunately. As far as the story goes, while there are some highlights such as Voicer's tragic end, tended to just not make much sense. I love a silly Showa tokusatsu plot as much as the next person, but they tended to be too serious to really enjoy on that level, while too also silly to take seriously. Really think the show would have benefited from moving a bit further in one direction or the other. Between the visuals and the narrative style the show could barely hold my attention most of the time.

I dunno, it's a show where I finished it and didn't feel sad or excited, just kind of tired. Really hope I find at least one MH entry I love down the line somewhere.

[Mesnick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoldenXtreme

I dunno, it's a show where I finished it and didn't feel sad or excited, just kind of tired. Really hope I find at least one MH entry I love down the line somewhere.

Well, Sharivan in a way corrected what you didn't like about Gavan by going completely crazy in the second half. And so, taking into account the claims, I can recommend Metalder. There are several factions of villains competing with each other and, due to the shortened number of episodes, the show is much less repetitive than most of its peers.

[GoldenXtreme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mesnick

Well, Sharivan in a way corrected what you didn't like about Gavan by going completely crazy in the second half. And so, taking into account the claims, I can recommend Metalder. There are several factions of villains competing with each other and, due to the shortened number of episodes, the show is much less repetitive than most of its peers.

Sharivan going completely off the rails sounds like a fun time if nothing else! I'm also really intrigued by Metalder, I'd seen other people suggest it too and Kikaider is a great show to take inspiration from. Some of the other shows in the series have also caught my eye, Jiraiya sounds pretty unusual with its battles against global ninja masters and I'm always really fascinated by tokusatsu shows with a focus on rescue such as Winspector too.

[Switchblade]

Metalder is a great show and the only Metal Heroes series I could get into of the ones I've tried. I find that a lot of the other shows just have really messed up pacing and editing, which makes them feel like individual episodes are disconnected and hard to follow.

[GuardianAngel87]

There is a reason why Metalder, at least for now, still remains the sole Metal Heroes representation of my own personal list of top favorite Toku Shows of all time which, incidentally, is currently a work in progress.