I'm to tired to think of a witty title for this. Deal with it.

I've just finished watching Iron King. This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about the whole experience. My thoughts and impressions. This is, it has to be said, not always as easy as one might think. And this is one of those times. I suppose the best place to start will be with the fundemental dichotomy at the heart of the show, which is a fairly straightforward question.

Simply, how can a show be so utterly generic yet startlingly original AT THE SAME TIME?

So, basics. We have a 70's Tokusatsu show, transforming hero, giant monsters, sinister organisations with hordes of disposable minions, the full works. The titular giant hero is liveried in a familiar red and silver style.

Which when you compare it do the Ultraman who debuted just prior to this series airing....

 

Well, you can see what I mean. However this is where things get weird. Because whilst we have what amounts to tokustasu by numbers, right down to the thinly veiled Ultraman clone, we also find a show with many unique merits of it's own. For a start there's the question of the lead hero. Shizuka Gentaro is everything a leading man should be, handsome, deadly, dressed as a cowboy. However he's not Iron King. It's the comedy relief sidekick Kirishima Goro who actually does the transforming bit. This is actually really effective. For all I love Ultraman it does have to be said that Hayata doesn't really get much to do except transform at the appropriate juncture. But here we have a hero who's running around doing hero stuff and fighting giant monsters on his own. This leads into the second point: for most of the series Iron King DOESN'T defeat the monsters. It's only through the combined efforts of both Gentaro and Iron King together that victory is achieved. This removes the whole deus ex machina part of the transforming hero genre in one fell swoop. Indeed, for the first part of the series Iron King himself is actually a bit useless, having no beams or special moves. There's a lot of him desperately grappling with this weeks threat whilst Gentaro gets his shit together enough to put a stop to things.

Now, it's going to be hard to continue to address the series at all without mentioning the rather startling tonal break two thirds of the way in. Simply, this is when the excutives in charge decided things needed to move in a more overtly Ultraman direction. So instead of political insurgents the bad guys became aliens, Iron King started to exhibit strange new powers and Gentaro started to share in the comedy. Prior to this things are actually much darker. Gentaro in particular is a very serious figure, not above exploiting people to fulfill his mission. He has that whole big picture thing going on that makes some people regard him as quite callous. Then ratings drop and suddenly him and Goro start slacking off and mercilessly tormenting their new female lead. It's quite bizarre.

I want to mention the fight scenes as well. It's not all giant robot wrestling, there's always a horde of lackeys for Gentaro to slice through as well. So far so standard. But theres a real sense of effort here as well, that their always trying to make each episodes fights DIFFERENT somehow. Trying new things, new locations and the like. It's really good, and does keep things interesting.

The bad guys themselves take the form of 3 distinct factions, each neutralised over the course of about 10 episodes or so. First up is the Shiranui Clan and their Giant Robots, then the Phantom Militia with their Giant Robot Monsters, before finally the Titanians show up, who ARE Giant Monsters. Having these story arcs works quite well, as things don't get too stretched out, and there is some sense of moving forwards. Even the minions get some story to themselves, with a few episodes featuring family members trying to find them or whatever. Whilst this never ends particularly well for any involved it's fantastic to actually see this plot thread used.

So what we have is a series that is firmly entrenched in the tropes of it's genre, but is exploring those tropes in it's own way and producing something quite unique within those boundaries. It has it's limitations and weakness', but then so do all series. If there's a show that really deserves a dark and gritty reboot it's got to be Iron King. Get the guys who worked on GARO and Ultraseven X and put together a mini series based on this. You could ramp up all the elements that they slowly stripped out of the series towards the end and make something quite adult and sophisticated. 

An oddity no doubt, but certainly an entertaining one. The simple fact that there exists an english subtitlted release of this show is reason enough to buy it. Treats like this are few and far between.