Trivia / Spider-Man (Japan)

• Approval of God: Stan Lee, no less, loved this series.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: "The Emissary from Hell, Spider-Man!" is treated as if it’s this incarnation’s catchphrase, even though he only says it once, in the first episode. Takuya actually uses a variety of epithets, with the most frequent being "The Iron Cross killer, Spider-Man!".
• Conclusion in Another Medium: Vault of Spiders #1, part of the Spider-Geddon storyline, seems to give the series an ending.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The original plan was that it was going to be more true to the comics, but Bandai wanted him to be a Henshin Hero complete with Humongous Mecha because kids in Japan at the time love those things, right?
  • Other Toei toku heroes would have appeared in episodes of the show, but the sponsors producing the series didn't like the idea.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The show had a DVD release in Japan in 2005. It soon went out of print, making it rare and expensive.
• Off-the-Shelf FX: Leopardon's transformation scenes were achieved by using the official Leopardon toy that Popy (later Bandai) was selling at the time.
• The Other Darrin: The actress who portrayed Bella Army changed between Episodes 38 and 39.
• Referenced by...:
  • Leopardon plays an important part in Ready Player One, where Wade/Parzival gets his hands on it after clearing the second gate. He uses it in the climax to travel to Chthonia, and take on Sorrento's Mechagodzilla, but the mech is destroyed in the battle. The film version replaced Leopardon with a Gundam.
  • The mainstream Marvel comic books has a Show Within a Show version of itself that publishes "true stories" of heroes with public identities within the Marvel universe itself. Since Peter Parker’s identity is secret they can’t fill in biographical information, only Spider-Man’s public appearances. When there are glimpses of the in-universe comics they generally appear to be references to this Japanese series, positing that Spider-Man is the exiled prince of Planet Spider.
  • One of the mini bosses in No More Heroes III is named Leopardon.
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series threw in a reference to Leopardon in its two-part Grand Finale. One of Spider-Man's Alternate Universe counterparts has an assortment of technology, including a giant robot that responds to voice commands. We briefly see the robot in the second part of the story, where Spider-Carnage tries to command it to kill our Spidey. The conflicting orders from the two Spider-Men cause the robot to short out.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: Spider-Man ran for one season (41 episodes and one movie) but introduced Humongous Mecha into the Toku genre for years, where they remain a franchise staple to this day.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: For the longest time, it was rumored that the Leopardon suit was stolen so the production had to use stock footage to represent the later mech battles. This is not the case, they still had the suit. In fact, they later modified it into the Daidenzin from Denshi Sentai Denziman. The real reason for the heavy amount of stock footage was simply it was cheaper to do.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Regarding its follow-ups. What was conceived as a Japanese Captain America became Battle Fever J, the revival of Super Sentai. After Battle Fever J, adaptations using the Hulk and/or the Silver Surfer were considered but dropped in favor of continuing Sentai with Denshi Sentai Denziman. Rumors in Japan say that the Silver Surfer series eventually became Space Sheriff Gavan.
  • The original plan was for Battle Fever J to be broadcast on TV Tokyo as a follow-up to Spider-Man, rather than Goranger and J.A.K.Q.'s home on TV Asahi (formerly NET) which Super Sentai holds to this day. Sticking to TV Asahi allowed Battle Fever to premiere over a month before Spider-Man itself concluded, whilst its place as follow-up to the latter was taken by the anime series Future Robot Daltanious.
  • Guest heroes from Toei's other tokusatsu shows were meant to appear in early plans but the sponsors for the show had the idea axed. Rumor has it that Go Tachibana played by Hiroshi Miyauchi was originally written to be the titular character of Kaiketsu Zubat.

---