Shin Super Robot Sunday: Mirrorman

By 1971, tokusatsu was firmly entrenched as a genre. The consistent success of Ultraman led to competitors and imitators. Shotaro Ishinomori's Kamen Rider, which debuted in April of 1971, was about a masked, motorcycle riding crusader of justice with a grasshopper themed costume, and would spawn its own massive franchise as a result. However, Kamen Rider is regular sized, and it will be a while before one of those series gets the spotlight on Shin Super Robot Sunday. 

In December of 1971, Tsuburaya Productions would debut a spinoff of Ultraman, which was based off a manga from 1969. More serious in tone than (most) of the Ultra series, Mirrorman, told the story of Kyôtarô Kagami, a photojournalist who learns he's the half-human son of a fallen hero from the 2nd Dimension: Mirrorman. Set in the 1980s, this new Mirrorman must grapple with his destiny as Earth's only hope against a hostile alien race known as The Invaders.

     

Mirrorman takes place in its own self-contained universe, and wasn't part of the Ultra franchise per se. Armed with powers similar to Ultraman's, but with the ability to reflect attacks, travel through mirrors, and other light and mirror themed abilities. He doesn't fly, but he can run at the speed of light. Fighting alongside the Science Guard, the first half of the series focuses more on investigations and serious storytelling. 

Much like Mighty Jack, the ratings began slipping, partly due to a boom in other superhero shows like Silver Mask, which was a direct competitor for viewers. The course of the show was changed to a more traditional tokusatsu show with fewer recurring monsters, stronger themes of good vs. evil, and Mirrorman himself got an equivalent of an Ultraman's color timer; meaning he had an operational time of three minutes before a bomb implanted in his superhero body would explode. 

Alongside an array of giant monsters that challenged Mirrorman, there was also the robot kaiju, Noah. A female robot disguised as a human to infiltrate and brainwash a marching band into being agents of the Invaders. Naturally, she can transform into a giant robotic beast form standing 45 meters (146 ft) tall that can shoot missiles and energy beams.

     

Mirrorman would run for a very respectable total of 51 episodes, but it didn't catch on like Ultraman, and the character wouldn't be revisited until 2005, with a three episode direct-to-video miniseries called Mirrorman REFLEX (which was later edited into a movie). This series had a brand new Mirrorman with a design closer to the manga's and a darker tone similar to the first half of the show's. The series taps into Japanese mythology, so no giant robots, but it was worth mentioning because he looks damn cool. 

Mirrorman would get revisited yet again, but we'll get to that when we get to that. 

Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: Tsuburaya plays an Ace. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorman

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Mirrorman_(character)

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9F%E3%83%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E3%83%B3

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Noah

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Mirrorman_REFLEX_(film)

Shin Super Robot Sunday: Return of Ultraman

Eiji Tsuburaya may have passed away in 1970, but the production company he founded continued on under the leadership of his son, Hajime Tsuburaya. Ultra Seven was intended to be the last of the Ultra series, but the young franchise's popularity ensured that it would be revisited, and on April 2, 1971, that took the form of Return of Ultraman (Kaettekita Urutoraman).

Originally planned to focus around the return of the original 1966 Ultraman, it was decided early in the production for the main character to be a New Ultraman, just one with a very similarly designed costume. He would eventually get the official name “Ultraman Jack” in 1984 for licensing and merchandising reasons. He's not referred to as Jack in the series itself, but that's what I'll be using for simplicity's sake. 

It begins simply enough: giant monsters emerge and start fighting each other, and young race car driver Hideki Goh sacrifices his life saving a kid and a dog from falling wreckage. Touched by his heroics, Ultraman Jack bonds with the dead man, reviving him in a manner similar to the first Ultraman. Together, they join the Monster Attack Team (MAT) dedicated to protecting the Earth from increasing kaiju attacks. 

Able to transform into Jack by sheer force of will instead of a talismanic device like the previous Ultras. Armed with a similarly large set of powers and abilities, this new Ultraman would also be the first one to interact with Ultras from the previous series, officially unifying the franchise. Ultraseven would even give Jack his signature piece of equipment, the Ultra Bracelet, which could produce a variety of specialized weapons such as shields, spears, whips, bombs, boomerangs, and a cross (remember that Eiji Tsuburaya was a devout Catholic).

        

While not as robot heavy as Ultra Seven, this show did add one new giant robot to the franchise: Builgamo. 

A 55 meter (180 ft) combining, piloted robot, it was used by Alien Baltan Jr., the son of a Baltan alien who was killed by the original Ultraman. Builgamo was disguised as a building before beginning its assault, and was able to fight Jack until the MAT team members inside the robot were able to escape. The robot could fly, shoot destructive beams from its antennae, but by far its most useful feature was its incredibly tough armor.

         

Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: Tsuburaya holds a mirror up to Ultraman.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Ultraman

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Return_of_Ultraman

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Ultraman_Jack

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Hideki_Goh

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Builgamo

Shin Super Robot Sunday: The Flying Phantom Ship

By 1969, Japan had advanced quite far in terms of animation. Especially when a studio would put real effort behind a project, such as when Toei Animation released Sora Tobu Yuureisen in July of that year. Known in English as The Flying Phantom Ship or The Flying Ghost Ship, the film is a 60 minute full-color adventure into suspense, conspiracies, and super science with a few important creators involved. 

Like most anime of the era, it was an adaptation of a manga. In this case, the 1960 manga of the same name by Shotaro Ishinomori. Ishinomori began his career in the 1950s and was an assistant of Osamu Tezuka's for a time before establishing a name for himself in the 60s and 70s with Cyborg 009, Kikaider, Skull Man (which was a one-shot comic that got heavily reworked into Kamen Rider), and the original Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, the first of the long-running Super Sentai series. The director was Hiroshi Ikeda, who was an anime director in the 60s and 70s, but also had a long career as a show writer as well. It also featured the work of a little-known key animator named Hayao Miyazaki.

 

The plot itself revolves around Hayato, an adventurous young boy with a loving family who, along with his father, rescues his dad's boss and wife from a car crash and take them to a spooky mansion to avoid the rain. There, they encounter a mysterious skeletal sea captain and his flying dutchman, who's looking for revenge against the people who betrayed him and killed his family. 

After being rescued by the authorities, a giant robot attacks the city proclaiming itself to be a golem, the messenger of the Ghost Ship, and destroys large chunks of the city. Hayato's parents are killed in the destruction, but not before his father tells him they're not his real parents. 

After a mourning period, Hayato wants revenge, and accidentally uncovers corporate and government conspiracies, underwater bases, a plot to take over the world, giant talking robot crabs, the truth behind the mysterious sea captain and his flying Ghost Ship, and the sinister truth behind soda. Its all very Deus Ex, only wrapped up within the trappings of 60s super science fiction. As a curious footnote, the movie was one of the first anime to be dubbed in Russian and shown in the Soviet Union. 

The Flying Phantom Ship is a mix of horror, mad science, secret societies, and a ghost ship that gets into an aerial battle with a giant robot. The robot itself is merely a step on the ever escalating weirdness of the plot, but it shows the capability to fly, smash buildings, fire missiles, and broadcast threats. Its far, far, far from the weirdest thing in the movie (that would be a giant crab trash talking a guy before dissolving him with soda). 

Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: Ultraman Returns 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Phantom_Ship

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotaro_Ishinomori

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065021/

Shin Super Robot Sunday: Mighty Jack

Tsuburaya Productions' next series would be a significant departure from the Ultraman format. Eschewing the giant monster format, Mighty Jack would be about an elite team of superspies called Mighty Jack and their giant flying battleship/submarine Mighty/Mighty-Gō and assorted smaller specialist ships. Mighty Jack does battle with the evil secret organization Q, which is bent on world domination. Eiji Tsuburaya himself was apparently quite proud of the show because it focused on the human characters instead of weekly giant monsters. Aimed at an older audience than the Ultraman series and drawing heavy inspiration from Thunderbirds, Mighty Jack began airing in April of 1968.

   

The Mighty itself is a 235 meter (771 ft) long and 41 meter (135 ft) tall behemoth that can fly at Mach 2.8, powered by a mix of nuclear and solar plasma engines and a bunch of conventional and super science weapons. It does not, however, transform into a giant robot.  

Originally planned as a 26 episode series, poor ratings led to its cancellation after 13 of the 45 minute long episodes aired.

That wasn't the end of the show, though. Staff and cast were changed, and the show's format was radically changed. Mighty Jack was still an organization that fought against Q, but the target audience was now younger kids, and this time, there would be giant monsters and a generally lighter tone. The show would be reborn as Fight! Mighty Jack and picked up immediately after Mighty Jack ended. Episodes were shortened to 24 minutes, but this revamped version of the show successfully ran for 26 episodes, wrapping up in December of 1968. 

What makes this entire show relevant to this project is one of the monsters from Fight! Mighty Jack was the Big Q (or Big Queen) from episode 22. A 55 meter (180 ft) tall silver robot with super strength and a big pair of floodlights on its head. Built by the widows of Q agents who were killed by Mighty Jack (I'm working from a translation of the Japanese Wiki page, so some of the details might be off), the plan was to stomp around the city and plant a white flag on the top of Tokyo Tower to signal Mighty Jack to surrender. It was eventually blown up in battle. 

 American audiences will be more familiar with the 1986 adaptation by Sandy Frank Productions. Frank, a veteran sales executive who had worked for Paramount and NBC, was also responsible for bringing Science Ninja Team Gatchaman to the US as Battle of the Planets in 1977. His company has multiple licensing deals for localizing Japanese movies in the United States, most notably the Gamera series. 

The Mighty Jack “movie” was one of the company's lesser efforts. It took the first and sixth episodes and slapped them together with little context, poor pacing, and bad dubbing. This would be prime fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the show was riffed twice, first in 1989 on KTMA (during “Season 0” and next in 1991 during Season Three of the show proper. 

Mighty Jack would be one of studio founder Eiji Tsuburaya's final projects, and the last one covered by the scope of this project. He would pass away in 1970 at the age of 68. 

 Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: A Flying Dutchman and her ghost captain.

 Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mighty_Jack

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Mighty_Jack_(series)

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9E%E3%82%A4%E3%83%86%E3%82%A3%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Q

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Frank

https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/MST3K_314_-_Mighty_Jack

Shin Super Robot Sunday: Ultra Seven

Eiji Tsuburaya has come up a few times already for his work with Toho Studios as a special effects director with a long and storied career that began in the 1920s. Arguably most famous for his work on the original Godzilla films and his pioneering work in “Suitmation” (the technique of putting an actor in a monster costume and destroying a miniature set), he was a mainstay at Toho during the company's rise in the 50s and 60s. In 1963, he founded his own visual effects studio, Tsuburaya Productions. While still continuing his work with Toho, the new studio would release Ultra Q, a black-and-white 28 episode long horror series in the vein of The Twilight Zone (with a significant presence of monster costumes), which led directly to Ultraman, released that same year.

Ultraman ran for 39 episodes (40 when factoring in a pilot episode) and was in color. Wildly successful, the show featured an extraterrestrial giant merging with a human to save his life, who could then transform into the giant superhero Ultraman to defend Earth from giant monster threats.

In October of 1967, the sequel series to Ultraman would air: Ultra Seven. Originally intended as a standalone show, it was folded into the Ultra series in pre-production and featured suit and monster designs by Tohl/Tohru Narita, who worked with Tsuburaya during the late 60s.

The plot is similar, but different from the original Ultraman. Instead of merging with a human host, this show's Ultraman came to Earth from the Land of Light in Nebula M78 (an actual nebula and part of the Orion constellation) and rescued a guy, then took his form and calling himself “Dan Moroboshi” joined the Ultra Garrison, an organization dedicated to defending the planet from alien invaders as its sixth major member. Using an eyepiece called the Ultra Eye, he can transform into his true form, a 40 meter (131 ft) tall red and silver giant superhero dubbed Ultraseven because he was the unofficial “seventh member” of the Ultra Garrison. Equipped with a staggering array of special attacks and abilities typical for a tokusatsu superhero, the show was an even bigger success than Ultraman. It ran for 49 episodes and featured even better ratings than the previous series. Ultraseven is one of the most popular characters of the entire Ultraman metaseries, and holds a high rank as one of the Ultra Brothers. Dan Moroboshi's actor, Kohji Moritsugu is still active and frequently reprised the role in more recent Ultra shows.

Cool guy status notwithstanding, Ultraseven is like all the other Ultras: a giant dude, not a robot. Unlike the original Ultraman, Ultra Seven introduced giant robots into the mix.

Nurse, or Narse, is a giant robotic space dragon that serves Alien Wild, a collector of human souls. The dragon can transform in a flying saucer form, but was ultimately ripped to pieces by Seven.

Crazygon is an asymmetrical scavenger robot built by the Alien Banda race to collect machinery. In practical terms, the robot rampages around a city and puts cars into its torso with a giant claw arm.

A race of near-humans called the Alien Salome built an imitation robot Ultraseven in their scheme to conquer Earth. Eventually the real Seven would escape captivity and defeat the robot with the help of Agira, a capsule monster ally.

What's a capsule monster? In the show, its a series of three artificial monsters that Seven can summon from a capsule to help him fight. Two of them, Agira and Miclas, are more bestial in form, while Windom is a more obviously robotic creation. Windom was reprogrammed by the Alien Kanan race into fighting Seven before being rescued, and then later fell in another battle. The entire concept of monsters that could be miniaturized in a portable storage device and then deployed to fight on behalf of the owner would be one of the major influences on Pokemon years later.

Lastly, and probably the most iconic of Ultra Seven's giant robots is King Joe. Deployed by the warlike Alien Pedan race in an attempt to conquer Earth, King Joe was deployed as four piloted ships that could combine into a 55 meter (180 ft) tall mecha that trounced Seven in their first fight until it was knocked over and unable to get back up, like a turtle, and transformed into flight mode to get away, like a different turtle, until eventually being defeated by Seven in a harbor. The robot's odd name was in reference to the lead writer of Ultraman and Ultra Seven, Tetsuo Kinjo.

Originally planned as the final Ultra series, Seven's success guaranteed that another show would get made, but it would be several years before another Ultraman series would air.

Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: He tried to kill me with a forklift!

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiji_Tsuburaya

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Ultra_Q

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Ultraman_(series)

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Tohl_Narita

https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Ultraseven_(series)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Seven

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_78

Shin Super Robot Sunday: King Kong Escapes

The road to 1967's King Kong Escapes is a curious and twisting one. The original 1933 King Kong is a certified masterpiece of special effects and adventure. In the early 1960s, King Kong's original animator, Willis O'Brien, outlined a Kong sequel where the giant ape fights a Frankenstein's Monster in San Francisco. A film producer by the name of John Beck got a scriptwriter, George Worthing Yates, turn it into a script, then shopped it around. Toho Studios bought the script, then had Shinichi Sekizawa (a Toho regular who would write several kaiju films for the studio) re-write the script, and Frankenstein was replaced with Godzilla. Original King Kong co-director Merian C. Cooper evidently tried to sue to stop the production (and felt insulted that Kong would be portrayed by a man in a suit instead of as a stop motion puppet), but the movie went ahead anyway, and 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla (from director Ishirō Honda and special effects supervisor Eiji Tsuburaya) would become the third entry in the Godzilla franchise, the first in color, and a smashing success that revitalized Godzilla into an entertainment powerhouse.

This begat a 25 episode 1966 television series co-produced by Videocraft (the original name of Rankin/Bass Productions. Yes, the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer people) and Toei Animation called The King Kong Show, where a friendly Kong teams up with kid hero Bobby Bond, and they have adventures where they thwart the machinations of the evil Dr. Who (no relation).

What matters here is that one of Dr. Who's attempts to defeat King Kong takes the form of Mechani-Kong, a piloted giant robot.

This then leads to the main event of this post: King Kong Escapes. Released in Japan in 1967 and 1968 in the U.S., it was co-produced by Toho and Rankin-Bass, directed by Ishirō Honda with Tsuburaya as special effects supervisor again.

The movie completely eschews the boy adventurer plotline in favor of a more traditional mad scientist kaiju storyline. Dr. Who is the mad scientist in question, who is digging up the highly radioactive Element X at the North Pole and is using the gigantic Mechani-Kong to do the work, but the radiation is too much and the robot Kong breaks down. With his financier Madame Piranha breathing down his neck to get results, Who manages to get to Mondo Island where the real King Kong is chilling out and fighting dinosaurs, and hypnotizes Kong to bring him back to the North Pole to dig up Element X.

Through the intervention of a joint US-Japan task force, the plot is uncovered and King Kong escapes and swims to Japan, where he and the repaired Mechani-Kong 2.0 have a final showdown at the Tokyo Tower while a beautiful young woman's life hangs in the balance because that's what you do with King Kong stories.

The movie version of Mechani-Kong is a great design. Measuring 20 meters (65.62 ft) tall and a solid gunmetal gray instead of brown, this version possesses great strength, a belt of large grenades intended for digging but also useful for destroying other stuff, and bright lights in the head that can either blind or hypnotize the real Kong.

This would be the final King Kong movie project from Toho Studios, but not for a lack of trying. The studio tried to get a remake of either of their King Kong movies off the ground in the 90s, but without the likeness rights it went nowhere. Mechani-Kong would, however, make an appearance in the 1992 manga series Godzilla, King of the Monsters from Kodansya Comics. There, Mechani-Kong teams up with MechaGodzilla in a two on one fight against Godzilla, but both are defeated.

Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: Seven, Seven, Seven, Seven.

Sources

https://infogalactic.com/info/King_Kong_vs._Godzilla

https://infogalactic.com/info/The_King_Kong_Show

https://infogalactic.com/info/King_Kong_Escapes

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061868/

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Mechani-Kong

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/Mechani-Kong

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/King_Kong_Escapes_(1967_film)

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/Godzilla,_King_of_the_Monsters_(Kodansya_Manga_Series)

Shin Super Robot Sunday: Giant Robo

Mitsuteru Yokoyama had fantastic success with Tetsujin 28-go, and with the manga and show wrapping up in 1966, a brand new manga series was produced in 1967: Giant Robo. Manga artist Satoru Ozawa (of Blue Submarine No. 6 fame) was a major collaborator on the first parts of the Giant Robo manga.

The story follows young Daisaku Kusama as he gets caught up in the schemes of the villainous organization Big Fire, where he subsequently escapes with a robot designated GR-1, more simply known as Giant Robo. Taking the fight to Big Fire, Daisaku and GR-1 battle other robots like the aquatic GR-2 and airborne GR-3. Notably, the GR-2 robot has an attack where it can fire its fists at an enemy, a milestone in the genre, and the Rocket Punch will become a big deal later on.

Giant Robo's design is evolved from the portly Tetsujin-28, featuring a fitter, more “chiseled” physique, and an Egyptian style head. The Japanese wiki mentions that Ultraman and Daimajin, both from 1966, were major influences on the design. In addition to flight and immense strength, Giant Robo was equipped with more ranged weapons than Tetsujin, including finger guns. Like Tetsujin, Giant Robo requires someone to control it from the outside. To avoid Tetsujin's problem of anyone in possession of the controller being able to operate the robot, Giant Robo is keyed to Daisaku's voice and will only obey him.

Now's a good time to briefly touch on a series that is extremely important to the development of super robots, especially live-action versions: Ultraman. The brainchild of Godzilla creator Eiji Tsuburaya, Ultraman took the concept of monsters running around wrecking miniature sets and applied superheroes to them. The result was 1966's Ultraman, a pseudo-spinoff of weird tales/sci-fi creature feature Ultra Q. Ultraman was a benevolent alien who came to protect the Earth from giant monsters (much like 50's heroes Super Giant and Prince of Space) and was assisted by a support team of heroic humans. Unlike mecha, Ultraman is not a robot but a dude who can grow to giant size to take the monsters on head-on, and the trappings of support teams and alien invasions would play a huge part in the evolution of Mecha. Ultraman also has a staggering number of entries in its series and a deep, deep lore that is outside the scope of this project, but it will touch on it occasionally, and soon.

As for Daimajin, that was a trilogy of period films produced in 1966 by Daiei (the Gamera studio) where a giant stone statue would come to life and wreak havoc on evil warlords and villages.

The manga series was successful enough to warrant a television adaptation, only instead of anime, it would be live-action, and it would shift away from the spy thriller aspects into a spy thriller with alien invasion elements.

Daisaku's plot is mostly the same, only now he joins a law enforcement group called Unicorn in order to fight Big Fire, which is now the brain child of the alien Emperor Guillotine, who naturally intends to conquer Earth. The show ran for 26 episodes from October 1967 to April 1968. Like Tetsujin-28 Go, Giant Robo would also get dubbed and broadcast in America, as Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot. After an initial broadcast in 1969, the show would be in American syndication into the 1980s. In 1970, a bunch of episodes of Johnny Sokko would be cut together into a TV movie called Voyage into Space. For the US release, Big Fire would be renamed to “The Gargoyle Gang,” along with all the other characters, but the plot is basically the same.

Whereas the ending of the manga is open-ended for further adventures, the show features a pretty definitive conclusion. Emperor Guillotine attempts to use his atomic body to destroy the Earth in final gambit, and Giant Robo defies Daisaku's commands in order to sacrifice himself to fly the emperor into space, where they collide with a meteor and explode.

Its only 1967, and the genre already has its first downer ending to a series. It won't be the last.

Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: The Eighth Wonder of the World.

Sources:

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%83%AD%E3%83%9C

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Robo_(TV_series)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0170962/