Spectreman

One of the wonders of Japanese television. Spectreman was the creation of P Productions, a low-end children's programming company. Their previous shows were animation and the Tezuka created live action Commander Magma which was released here as "Space Giants". This show is a combination of both of their departments.

Much cheaper than the similar Ultraman series, Spectreman was populated with wacky monsters, and a chief villain blue ape on the level of a Halloween rubber mask. Laser beams, rays, and other similar special effects were accomplished by animating over still photographs of the characters! The cheapness was offset by the sheer energy of the show. They kept it moving and fun.

The show was originally presented as three separate series ending up with 63 episodes. It starts as a traditional monster of the week program but it changed into a Kamden Rider / Power Rangers type format with legions of strange fighting aliens battling the hero and his friends in extended martial art battles. The giant monsters never disappear. The design is just bizarre. It's hard to tell if the monsters are lumpy and misshapen on purpose or they just didn't know how to make the suits.

Great fun but somewhat obscure now, that's too bad.

I have always liked this series. The hero Spectreman is so cool. The villains which are gorilla like but they are some time very funny. The monsters are neat and the action is very good. Back years ago it was somewhat easy to find videos of this good show but now its a different story. I really liked Spectreman and hopefully one day some company will re-release it soon!

I blind bought this series a few years ago from a bootleg seller on ebay. It wasn't much of a risk since Ultraman is one of the earliest show I remember watching and this is a pretty good knockoff. Oddly, I now find this show a slightly more entertaining watch than Ultraman. All the shows have a environmental theme and the creatures are often hilarious! I love how the female character changes often. It's like they keep upgrading her. Heh! But I can't recommend this enough to fans. I paid about $50 for it. That's a lot, but I wasn't disappointed. Maybe BCI will release this like they did Ultraman. If the quality is equal to that release, I'd upgrade my bootlegs in a minute.

I really really liked this show growing up. the video store next to my house only had two episodes and i always used to rent them. I thought i was the only person outside of japan to see this show but now i know that there are others. I want to buy some videos or dvd of the shows if i ever find them. Hey if you bought a few videos dont be shy please let me know where you bought them.

At first I really did not like this show; it took about 10 or 15 episodes for it to really grow on me though. Once it got going and the characters were established (other than the women, who switch every 15 episodes or so) it was actually really fun.

Some of the later episodes are actually better than a lot of regular "Ultraman" shows and near the last quarter of the series, it becomes a hybrid of "Kamen Rider" and "Ultraman" which is kinda cool to see.

Karras is easily one of the best villains in any of these shows so far and even though you can only watch the English dub now, it still holds up as one of the greats; knock-off or not.