Jikû senshi Spilban

Thanks to Brazil very serious tokusatsu fans, I've found a Blu-ray of Spielvan (with multiple dubs, including French).

I use to watch Spielvan on French television as a kid and somehow the design always stucked with me. Spielvan was more of a hero I was "attracted" to. His car, costume, moto, ships, everything, I remember taking it very seriously, feeling that Spielvan was way better than other tokusatsus, that it was more dramatic.

I'm into episode 5 (30 years have passed) and I still enjoy it. I think it is great fun and very well put together (Japanese were so much into entertainment back in the days, the level of work they must have put into it is insane).

Of course, at my age it is silly but still, my kid brain wants to see it through the end. Also, I did not really remember any plot points and discovering them again is fun.

Of course I'm referring, respectively, to Hiroshi Watari and Machiko Soga, who do their usual great job in this series, with the former becoming the facto my favourite tokusatsu male actor ever (eat your shorts Kenji Ohba fanatics!) thanks to his incredible manly charm akin to Clint Eastwood, Duke Nukem and Han Solo rolled into one single excellent performance. Unfortunately, some elements don't make this series as good as the masterful Space Sheriff Sharivan and in particular the presence of two women fighting in the Space Sheriff suit feels more like a gimmick than how the presence of lily felt in the entirety of the Space Sheriff Sharivan Show, but whatever this is a mainstream tokusatsu show and generally in those women are not particularly active to begin with (Machiko Soga excluded, of course). Still, this is a very good series nonetheless, recommended to metal heroes and Space Sheriff aficionados alike. As an ending note, thanks to Metallic Fansubs for fansubbing this in the first place.

P. S. The episode with the people being converted into trees reminding me of Emi Shinohara's performance in the Sailor Moon R movie was AWESOME, the best episode hands down of the entire series no questions attached.