Post by RedKing on May 11, 2007 8:13:28 GMT -8
I just finished watching this neat 13 episode series. It takes place in feudal era Japan and makes a nice companion series to Daiei's Yokai movies as the villians are all Yokai of different types. Instead of one single enemy each episode there is a group of 5 or 6 of the same Yokai to deal with. The show tells the story of a certain lord who seems to be a beneificent ruler and his struggle with an evil demon lord who sends groups of Yokai to terrorize and attack the ruler's lands. Acting as chief Yokai fighter is a young samurai who uses his magic sai to transform into Shiro Shishi Kamen- a masked white haired samurai being. He is aided in battle by the ruler himself, a young geisha who throws a deadly knife and the absolute worst comic relief ever-2 idiots , one fat the other skinny9how funny) who go into the worst mugging and "funny" cowardice as soon as anything remotely threatening happens.The fat guy is always going on about how he'll smash the next yokai that appears just to faint or otherwise make ridiculous faces when it does, and the skinny guy always has a slack jawed cross eyed expression and a grating squeeky voice. Now usually, i like the comic relief guys, but these two morons nearly sank the show for me-they reminded me of the similar idiots that were on the first seasons of Power Rangers, that's seriously how bad these guys are! The yokai are usually just simple masks or costumes but they are still rather well done. Some of them I knew, others I didn't. Familiar yokai included Kappa, Karakasa (the one eyed long tongued umbrella men-my favorite yokai),Bakeneko(cat women), Fox Women, cyclops, wolf men haunted samurai armor and batmen. There were 3 eyed men, men with no faces and these weird guys with gold scally bodies(or clothes) and heads that looked like multi-colored raspberries! The final episode has the wolfman,kappa,karakasa,batmen and cyclops brought back to life. I don't want to give away any spoilers here but the show really was not conventional in it's ending. The series music, which is quite good, is done by Kenjiro Hirose who also scored Gamera's DESTROY ALL PLANETS. Like DEMON HUNTER MITSURUGI this series was produced by an small or unknown company, not any of the major TV tokusatsu suspects like Toei,Tsuburaya or P Productions. It was produced by Yamato Planning and aired from April 4-June 27, 1973on the NTV network.
