Shocking as it may sound, if one judges simply by the abundance of media, the Japanese may be more into superheroes than Americans can ever hope to match. Since the mid-1950s that small island nation has pumped out thousands of individual television series, movies, comics and, yes, even live-action stage performances on the subject of superpowered do-gooders.
Keeping track of it all for American audiences are two experts in the field, Patrick Macias, editor of Otaku USA magazine, and August Ragone, author of Eiji Tsubaraya: Master of Monsters. This past Friday, July 9, the super-knowledgable duo presented a brief history of Japanese superheros in the modern age at the state-of-the-art VIZ Theater in San Francisco Japantown's New People Building, which I was fortunate enough to swing a last-minute attendance.
== TEASER ==
There are four basic eras/categories of Japanese superhero media: masked heroes, riders, henshin metal hero and super sentai. Most drawing influence from American comics were the masked heroes, such as the above two examples that took cues from Superman and Batman, respectively, but also including the venerable Ultraman, whose franchise is seen as the pinnacle of that sub-genre. Prominent shows from the riders category include Kamen Rider and Kikaider, the latter of which enjoyed huge popularity in Hawaii (youth of the '70s in that state are referred to as "Generation Kikaider"). Perhaps least known in the West among these categories is the henshin ("transforming") metal hero era of the '80s that includes Space Sherrif Gavan and Juuko B-Fighter (a.k.a. Big Bad Beetleborgs). Last, but certainly not least, was the surge in the '90s of super sentai ("military unit") team shows. One needn't look any further than Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for a fine example of this group.
As the talk proceeded I couldn't help but feel a little sad for the progression of the tokusatsu genre as a whole. Whereas the fan demographic for American superheroes has gradually trended upwards over the past several decades, their Japanese counterparts have slid from all-ages viewerships in the '60s and '70s to mainly lowest common denominator childrens fare in recent times. The emphasis, of course, is to push as much tie-in merchandising as possible and if the story buckles under the weight of bi-weekly new characters and powers then so be it--there's always a new show just around the corner.
This dispensable quality of Japanese superheroes is perhaps one of the biggest differences between their larger-than-life defenders of justice and ours and a major part of the story in each of their respective universes. This is their take on the notion that no amount of evil can ever triumph because for every hero knocked down another, probably stronger one, will just rise up in their place--and that's a concept that translates well no matter which language it's expressed in.
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