#mantis mutant

I love praying mantis monsters.  They are my favorite insect and seeing them done as monsters makes me smile. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by Monster Movies and I used to check out a series of books from the library from a company called Crestwood House.  They were little orange spined volumes with black and white pictures on the front about famous monsters and monster movies.

One of those books was for a movie called The Deadly Mantis.

That was the book from that series I checked out second most of all (the first place slot there goes to the Godzilla one). I didn’t get to see the movie for years after but that image of a huge mantis with those wicked forelimbs stuck with me.  I thought it was just so cool when I was in grade school and I still do.

So, when I see a mantis monsters in tokusatsu, it makes me smile.

Some great examples are:

The Kamakiri Yummy from the first episode of Kamen Rider OOOs

Mantis Mozoo from Dai Sentai Goggle-V

Mantis Mutant from Kamen Rider Black

Evolved Mantis

And for a bonus, Green Mantis from Android Kikaider!