What's this about?

Lately, it seems like many of the movies/shows are just a rehash or reboot of things that have already been done. And so I started to dive into the past. It's been fun, but I find myself losing track of which ones I’ve seen and whether or not I enjoyed them. Sometimes the titles themselves just don't tell me enough to remember.

I wouldn’t have voluntarily watched a lot of these movies when I was younger. It’s strange how interests change. That goes for what I read, too. I have another blog that explores books. I’m mostly reading older fiction and memoirs, and some of the books have led me to movies/shows and vice versa. In those cases, I may post the book review over here as well.

There will be spoilers, which is different than my book reviews. That’s mostly because I want to have enough information to help me remember what I’ve seen. I’m getting older. The brain doesn’t cooperate like it used to. What can I say? The gray hairs are catching up with me!

Sunday, August 23, 2026

Gridman the Hyper Agent - 1993-1994

This was a TV series that ran in Japan in the early 90's. It's about a superhero and three foul-mouthed teenagers who fight against Kahn Digifer, who lives in the Computer World. He's aided by Takeshi, another teen and one of the most pathetic characters ever put on screen. Over the course of 39 episodes, these children fight against each other in some very strange scenes.

I don't even know where to start with this one. For the first couple episodes, Naoto does a trust fall when he goes into the computer. This quickly ended, and soon after, we didn't see him fly through the air to merge with Gridman. That came back in a couple episodes, but it just wasn't the same without the trust fall.

Takeshi is pathetic for a number of reasons. The main one is that he gets upset for the stupidest reasons. Not every time. Just most of the time. Let's take the most memorable. Takeshi has a crush on Yuka, the somewhat bossy girl in the group. He gets mad because she "didn't take his letter." But he didn't talk to her or even get the letter out of his pocket! 

I don't know if it was the person doing the captioning or if everyone in this show decided to curse all the time. It was just a bit jarring, especially when the smaller children did it.

We all loved this show, and we're sad it's over. They took most of the fight footage and turned it into a really terrible American version called Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad. The one episode we watched made zero sense, and we were upset about the reused footage. 

My favorite character was Ippei. He was misunderstood and given way too much crap. Some of the episodes were more unkind to him than others (I'm looking at you episode 16!), and I just liked the way he handled things.

I would definitely watch this show again. I don't know what it is about these old superhero shows, but I love them. Gridman has given us a lot of laughs, and I believe he deserves a place in our Cinematic Universe. Great Show!

P.S. Gridman shares a few things with Ultraman. We're currently watching the 1966 series.

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