YMMV / Spider-Man (Japan)

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• Anti-Climax Boss: The final battle between Spider-Man and Professor Monster in the final episode feels very rushed and anti-climatic, with Monster doing barley any damage to Spider-Man's robot Leopardon and being defeated with ONE attack.
• Awesome Music:
  • The opening theme, "Kakero! Spiderman" by Yuki Hide is a stirring, triumphant tune urging our favourite web-slinger to fight on to victory, even as it laments the sacrifices and suffering he endures to continue his battle against the forces of evil, making it a very on-point song that perfectly captures the spirit of all Spider-men.
    • Made even better when, following the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, one intrepid AMV maker pointed out how well the song applies to the three-live action film Spider-Men!
  • The ending theme, "Chikai no Ballad" also by Yuki Hide is a great way to wind down from the actions and adventures of Spider-Man.
• Critical Backlash: A weird example. Very few people would call the show bad, but thanks to a large portion of people who only watch clips of it online, many think the show is just stupid slack. Many, especially in the Toku fan community have tried to push back on this perception. Despite all the goofiness it is a well written show that understand Spider-Man's character, and core themes.
• Complete Monster:
  • Professor Monster is the alien leader of the Iron Cross Army, leading them on a crusade of death and terror throughout the galaxy that led to the destruction of Planet Spider and all the misery in the show that follows in his subsequent schemes to take over Earth. Monster creates Machine BEMs by having innocents kidnapped and transformed into monsters which kill dozens, even unleashing some on their loved ones, while enforcing a no-witness policy that kills dozens more, Takuya Yamashiro's father included. Throughout the series, Monster attempts to create an army of modified humans by subjecting countless people to torturous experiments, resurrecting those who die numerous times; attempts to annihilate all the major cities in Japan with missiles, and separately attempts to annihilate Tokyo simply as his four-hundredth "anniversary" on Earth; reveals he maintains his immortality by harvesting and drinking the blood of countless people; attempts to unleash a lethal nerve gas on the Interpol building, having it tested on people the Iron Cross has trapped in debt slavery; tortures and abuses his minions, even sacrificing a base full of them; and finally attempts to wipe out every major city in the world to take over whatever remains, even murdering his commander Amazoness for having failed him.
  • The Amazoness is the savage right-hand of Professor Monster and a brutal, unforgiving woman who embodies a Child Hater killer. Carrying out Professor Monster's wicked demands, Amazoness leads attacks to kill countless civilians and murder the innocent while setting up a cult to sacrifice others to Professor Monster. When Takuya begins getting involved with helping children, Amazoness is always there to try to murder them, starting with her attempt to gouge out a little girl's eyes, attempting to use nerve gas on a little boy after practicing its use on adults, trying to burn a child alive, and trying to blow up a packed amusement park and leading terrorist attacks through Tokyo while gloating one targeted building has eight thousand people in it. Amazoness is also fond of torture on captives, while later capturing martial artists to fight death matches to determine who will be turned into Professor Monster's machine slaves, with her greatest ambition being to assist in utterly annihilating humanity for the Iron Cross army to rule the remainder.
• Colbert Bump: Most comic book readers are aware of this series because the character appears in Spider-Verse and Spider-Geddon (and, in-story, a Spider-Man with a giant mecha provides an edge that most Spider people lack). Other people may have become aware of it thanks to the Honest Trailers video (and the usual Pandering to the Base section came up empty, they admitted that nobody really asked for that video, but rather they made it by their own initiative).
• Fair for Its Day: For a Showa-Era Tokusatsu made in the 1970s, Supaidaman was also remarkably ahead of the curve in showing various competent women as both villains and friends, with few, if any, getting Stuffed in the Fridge.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The series is commonly referred to as Supaidaman by English-speaking audiences, both to differentiate it from other Spider-Man projects and because it sounds cool.
  • Meanwhile, this version of Spider-Man is occasionally referred to as "Toei Spider-Man" to differentiate him from other versions.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Episode 5 has a plot point of Spider-Man performing a blood transfusion to save someone's life.
  • He introduces himself as "The emissary of Hell, Spider-Man!" This was over 25 years before One More Day.
  • This incarnation of Spider-Man so far is the only one with a Spider Mobile called Spider-Machine. The PlayStation 5 game Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has Peter suggesting getting a Spider Mobile after a random crime is thwarted by both him and Miles.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "The emissary of Hell, Spider-Man!"^Explanation Takuya's Catchphrase, usually used to highlight just how different the series is from the mainline title.
    • "The man who (insert activity here), Spider-Man!"^Explanation Takuya's more variable catchphrase, which can be snowcloned.
  • CHANGE LEOPARDON^Explanation The show's opening makes it seem like a Showa-era Japanese take of the original comics right up until the halfway point where this line hits and it's revealed that this Spider-Man has a giant robot, something that tends to throw those not expecting it for a loop.
  • The Megazord exists because of Spider-Man.^Explanation Due to Leopardon's popularity with audiences, when Toei created Battle Fever J, they decided to give the team a giant robot of their own. This trend would continue on for the rest of the franchise, with western audiences getting exposed to it when Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers debuted. Many discovering invoked"Supaidaman" for the first time are surprised to learn the trend started there.
  • The scene where Spider-Man picks up a machine gun and actually uses it is popular as both a reaction meme, and because of how absurd it is.
  • A scene of Spider-Man hitting the ground with a wrench became an object-labelling meme.
• Narm Charm: Par for the course with Showa-Era Tokusatsu, the show is kind of cheesy but it still works because of the awesome kaiju fights and this continuity's Spider-Man still being true to what the character is about.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Yukie Kagawa (Amazoness) would go on to play the similarly-named-but-unrelated villainess Amazon Killer in Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan.
  • Jun Tatara (Thief 107 in #25) went on to play Barza in Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger.
  • The young boy who gets a blood transfusion from Takuya Yamashiro went on to play Masaru in Battle Fever J.
• Signature Scene:
  • Takuya climbing the side of Tokyo Tower in the show's opening sequence. For bonus points, it was a stunt actually done live on location!
  • The very first instance Spider-Man refers to himself as "The emissary of Hell" in the show's premiere episode.
  • Spider-Man using a gun is an infamous example of a Spider-Man willing to use lethal force when necessary.
• So Bad, It's Good: Part of the show's appeal to fans is how hilariously hokey it can get at times. Also, unlike most adaptations of beloved properties, even the show's sharp deviations from the source material are widely considered part of its charm, precisely because of how ridiculous they tend to be. It helps that, despite how ridiculous and atypical the series is, Supaidaman captures the spirit of Spider-Man shockingly well.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some have cited Toei not using any established villains from the comics as wasted potential, especially since several of them (like Lizard, Rhino and Green Goblin) shouldn't be too hard to retool into monsters of the week. Especially Lizard, who in the comics is also a human turned into a monster; exactly the kind of plot this show frequently uses.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In one episode, Spider-Man has to give a kid a blood transfusion. The kid does not gain superpowers.
• Vindicated by History: In a way; while the show did quickly become a big hit in its native Japan, western viewers who even knew about its existence back in the day tended to regard it as a silly curiosity at best. However, the rise of the Internet has helped raise the show's profile tremendously in the West, especially after Marvel themselves began streaming the entire series on their website in 2009^note Unfortunately, the episodes were later taken down, due to presumably the same licensing issues that had made it difficult for Toei to re-release the show back in Japan, culminating in Takuya and Leopardon getting to appear in the actual comics alongside Marvel's main Spider-People (including Peter Parker himself).
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Yes, there's a lot of cheese, but the Spider-Man suit is pretty good, especially when you consider how bad the suit in The Amazing Spider-Man (1978) looked.
  • In general a great deal of effort was put into the series from the camera team and the stunt actors, resulting in some impressive actions scenes that have Spider-Man display exactly the kind of athleticism you might expect. There are even numerous scenes where he climbs on walls, which couldn't have been easy to do back in the Seventies.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: While it does work almost note-for-note like a typical tokusatsu series, Spider-Man contains some rather impressive violence for its time. There's blatant murder in the show (see Crying Wolf on the main page), shots of civilians being killed on-screen are commonplace, and one particular scene (used in the official YouTube trailer by MARVEL, no less) where a cat gets sliced in half (bloodlessly) with a katana. Notable is the fact that about halfway through, the episodes get noticeably lighter and focus more on Spider-Man helping out kids and less on the somewhat unnerving brutality of the earlier episodes—though this still didn't stop them from jacking up the willingness of secondary villain Amazoness to hurt children to startling levels.

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