Here There Be Tygers

In anticipation of the upcoming discussion on Kikaidablog, Here's my off-twitter "more than 40 letters" musing.

Growing up in the Tokusatsu world  of Hawaii in the 70’s, the three Superhero shows we had were Kikaida, Rainbow Man, and Kamen Rider V3. Out of all of them, V3 was the most intriguing to us kids because of its epic backstory. Just from watching V3, we learned that there were two Kamen Riders that preceded him, and when other kids would bring in picture books and posters of that first series, we would look at them in awe as if we were seeing historical evidence of Japan!

We would frequently lament the fact that Hawaii never got that first series, and in fact, would always wonder WHY KIKU never picked it up. It was only YEARS later during a Generation Kikaida Special interview with KIKU’s Joanne Ninomiya that we found out- She said that she WAS offered the original Kamen Rider Series, but thought the monsters would be too scary for kids, so she passed on it.

My friend Jas, who was always angry that we never got to see the original series as kids, said, “Did You hear what that lady from KIKU said?  She coulda frickin’ brought that show in, but she thought we would be scared! That’s DUMB! She should brought it in! Nobody woulda been scared!”

Oh, how I would have loved to agree with him. However, I knew better. For though I loved Kamen Rider and all that wonderful Tokusatsu in general, I will NEVER forget the trauma of being a 2^nd Grade boy and watching Episode #13 of Kikaida featuring the terrifying Dark Monster PINK TIGER.

Creeping out of the darkness onto the screen like a satanic Felix the Cat, I was INSTANTLY on alert watching that night's episode, as this was the SPOOKIEST thing I’d ever seen! Watching him gleefully killing people left and right was bad enough, but Pink Tiger had easily the most sinister and evil laugh ever put into a Dark Android’s voice box, one that brought forth images of Halloween Jack O Lanterns laughing with each other at midnight (and don't think I haven't noticed that they chose Bad Luck Magic Number 13 as the episode to debut Pink Tiger, either!)

You have to understand, this was only the third episode of Kikaida that I watched, and when you consider that Gold Wolf was my first, I still hadn’t quite gotten a grasp of the show’s “formula”, so to speak. And having this CRAZY SCARY monster abusing some old Clown robot and watching his body parts fall off…well, at one point in the show, I quietly got up and began walking out of the living room…

My Mother said, “Where are you going? Are you scared?” I said No, I was just tired. But CRAP, for many nights, I couldn’t get that image of Pink Tiger and that robot's arm falling off. Things might have seemed grim for my future as a Tokusatsu aficionado, but fortunately the next episode was the Silver Tortoise episode where they revived all previous monsters, and as any kid will tell you, THAT WAS FRICKIN COOL! I was back in the game, and never looked back!

As an adult, looking over at those diabolical SHOKKA monsters, I realize that Joanne Ninomiya knew what she was doing…THOSE MONSTERS WERE EFFIN’ SCARY AS HELL!!!!! These weren’t like the Kikaida Monsters which looked like buffaloes, monkeys or ants…these were Kaiju that looked like fungus, moldy trees and OBAKEMONO all mixed into ANDROID INCARNATIONS of CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARES! O thank you Ninomiya-san for protecting my 2^nd grade sanity!