The third clip in Cinebeats’ ongoing Battle Sequence Series is from Condorman : Symbol of Justice (Seigi no shinboru Kondoruman). Condorman was an entertaining action-packed tokuatsu series created by the great Kôhan Kawauchi (aka Yasunori Kawauchi), which aired on Japanese television in 1975. Kawauchi is responsible for creating the first Japanese superhero television show in 1958 known as Moonlight Mask (Gekko Kamen), which shares some obvious similarities with Condorman. The heroes of Kawauchi’s shows have a similar look and episodes often featured cliffhanger endings. They also both drove their own groovy vehicles. Moonlight Mask had a motorcycle and Condorman had his own special car called the Mach Condor.

Condorman starred a little known Japanese actor by the name of Hitoshi Sato who was a former race car driver. His driving skills gave him the ability to handle driving the Mach Condor on the show. As Condorman, Hitoshi Sato would fight evil monsters who disguised themselves as humans and were out to pollute planet earth’s water and air supply, among other things. Condorman was able to see through the monster’s human disguises with his “Condor Eye” and he used many special powers such as “Condor Thunder” and “Condor Hurricane” to stop them. Besides all the various monsters, Condorman also had to deal with their numerous henchmen who all looked like Nazis wearing Lucha Libre masks.

Just a small sampling of the strange monsters Condorman had to fight.

In some ways the important messages in Condorman that warned viewers about the negative effects of pollution, inflation and other ills made the show ahead of its time. Condorman also featured some spectacular action sequences, as well as colorful costumes and prop designs. The monsters he fought were often very unusual and included a sombrero wearing smog creature, a giant cockroach, a green-haired batgirl and strange robots.

Unfortunately Condorman never really caught on with kids or adults and the show stopped airing after only one season. Some episodes of the series were released on video in Japan and I believe the series was also made available on Laser Disc, but it has never been released on DVD. Information about the series is scarce and the show has never been subtitled, but I think some English dubbed episodes of Condorman aired on Hawaiian television in the late seventies.

The clip below features Condorman battling a robot-like monster called Sadora (aka Sadler), who was played by the Japanese actor and playwright Toshiaki Nishizawa. Sadora has help from his evil henchmen, but fortunately for Condorman, Sadora ends up killing many of his own men in the chaos that follows.

Fireman (aka Faiyâman/Magma Man) is an interesting tokusatsu series featuring a kyodai hero (giant hero) that aired in Japan on Nippon Television in 1973. It was made by Tsuburaya Productions, who was also responsible for the popular Ultraman series and Fireman had many things in common with that show.

In the series, the handsome Japanese actor Naoya Makoto (Goranger, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, etc.) plays the powerful hero Fireman. Fireman belongs to a race of unusual beings that live deep inside the earth. When earth is attacked by giant monster-like aliens (kaiju), Fireman rises to the surface, takes a human form and joins Japan’s Scientific Attack Force (S.A.F.) so he can help defeat the evil invaders. Much like Ultraman, Fireman is able to grow and become giant size in order to fight the various kaiju monsters he encounters. He also has many special powers and weapons.

Fireman was directed by Jun Oki and written by Bunkou Wakatsuki. Jun Oki had previously worked on various science fiction shows for Tsuburaya Productions such as Ultraseven (Urutora sebun, 1967), Ultraman Returns (Kaettekita Urutoraman, 1971) and the wonderful mystery/horror series Operation: Mystery! (Kaiki daisakusen, 1968), which I hope to write about in more detail soon. With Fireman, Oki was in control of the direction of the series as well as the special effects, which were often very impressive. Like Silver Kamen which I briefly reviewed here earlier, Fireman was a bit more adult than other similar shows that were airing in Japan at the time. The series often contained more mature stories and some unpredictable twists that were rather unusual for a show typically aimed at a young audience.

Fireman ran for 30 episodes and features a great soundtrack by Toru Fuyuki that was undoubtedly one of the Japanese composer’s best efforts. In the “Battle Sequence” featured in the clip below you can hear some of the terrific music that Toru Fuyuki composed for the series while Fireman fights a kaiju monster called Dorigoras. You’ll cheer, you’ll laugh, and you might even cry, but whatever your expectations are, few things can prepare for you for the action-packed wonder that is Fireman!

Begining this week, I’ll be welcoming a new regular contributor to Cinebeats who calls himself T3rtiumQuid. T3rtiumQuid will be sharing short “Battle Sequence” clips from rare and hard-to-see Japanese tokusatsu television shows and films produced during the ’60s and ’70s, and I’ll be writing about them. Most of the shows and movies featured in these clips are not available outside of Japan and should appeal to anyone who enjoys vintage Japanese science fiction and fantasy.

The first Battle Sequence is taken from the Sun-Hong/TBS produced superhero series Silver Kamen (or Shiruba Kamen / Silver Mask) which aired in Japan from November 1971 to May 1972. There is basically no English information readily available about the show that I’m aware of, but I can tell you that early episodes of Silver Kamen are credited to the acclaimed Japanese director Akio Jissoji and his cinematographer Masao Nakabori. Akio Jissoji passed away in 2006 and his last film was a modern remake of Silver Kamen that was released in Japan a month after he died.

In many ways the original Silver Kamen series is typical of lots of other Japanese superhero shows. It featured a masked hero who does battle with various evil kaijin (monsters or space aliens) in an effort to save humanity and he has many unusual powers and gadgets. The difference between Silver Kamen and other superhero shows that were airing in Japan at the time, such as Ultraman and Mirrorman (or Mirror Mask), was the dark edge that the show had. The early episodes of Silver Kamen were also creatively shot and in some ways more adult then a lot of similar shows that were airing on Japanese television at the time. After 11 episodes, Silver Kamen started to loose it’s edge and it took a new and more “positive” direction. The Silver Kamen series was transformed into Silver Kamen Giant, but it still didn’t really find an audience and the series finally came to an end after 26 epsiodes.

In the following clip, the original Silver Kamen (played by Toshio Shiba) fights it out with a nasty kaijin called Tigris. If you pay attention to the clip, you’ll notice that Tigris’ costume catches on fire during the battle. I’m unclear on all the details, but it seems that Tigris’ costume caught fire prematurely and the actor playing Tigris was almost seriously burned during the fight. Thankfully for viewers the show must go on, and it did!