#supidaman

In the late 70s, Toei got Marvel to let them make a live-action show based on Spider-Man. By this point, Spidey was pretty well-established in the comics. He had a good-sized supporting cast and a spread of villains he faced. Naturally, Toei's production used none of those characters. And his origin story was totally different. And he was totally different in his civilian identity. And he had a flying car and a spaceship that became a giant robot with a sword in its leg armor. And sweet merciful shit was it AWESOME. Spider-Man was Takuya Yamashiro, a motorcycle racer. He got his powers from an alien blood transfusion from the last survivor of the planet Spider. THE PLANET SPIDER. That's also where he got the clunky metal bracelet that contains his suit, and also acts as a comm-controller-thing for his flying car and spaceship/robot. He has basically the same powers, though he yells "SPIDAH STRINGU" and "SPIDAH NETTO" when throwing webs around. His movements are actually fairly spider-like, and the wallclimbing effects are good wirework for the 70s. I think. The villains are pretty... uh... Toei-ish. The big bad is PROFESSOR MONSTER, with his henchwoman Amazoness (who has a fake human identity as Takuya's girlfriend's boss); they send out their mooks, the Niders along with a different Machine Bem (i.e. monster of the week) each episode or so. Professor Monster is actually kind of a horrendous dick, and his plans start constantly ruining families (especially separating the father from the mother and kid[s]) about halfway through, whether that was his intention or not. Dude just hates families, man. This series may be completely and utterly ludicrous, but it's genuinely awesome. The theme song and end theme are really great, the soundtrack in general is very stirring, and one episode has a rock band playing a song called "Spiderman Boogie" and it's just fucking glorious (the first lines translate to "Shaking his bum, climbing up walls/jumping like Tarzan from building to building"). In short, Toei Spider-Man is very fun to watch--and free on Marvel's website, all 41 episodes and the theatrical episode that comes between 10 and 11. SPIDAMAN BOOGIE.