Japanese Spider-Man Episode 11 Recap – A Bridge Too Far

Welcome back readers to my midweek recap series, chronicling the insanity that is the legendary Toei series Japanese Spider-Man! Or, Supaidāman, if you’re feeling phonetic.

This week starts off with a title card that really pumps up for a hell of a show ahead. Seriously, the name of this episode is Professor Monster’s Ultra Poison Assassination. This episode is promising us Ultra Poison people! Let’s see if it lives up to the hype!

Okay a little kid walking across a wood bridge. Not… not exactly the thrilling start I was hoping for.

Actually it’s Ichiro! And I really won’t blame you for forgetting who this kid is because this is one of the first signs that Japanese Spider-Man may even have the loosest since of continuity. Ichiro is that kid who Spider-Man saved with his magic Spider-Blood, and then shipped off to live in an orphanage for no really adequately explained reason! Ichiro just wrote a letter for Takuya and apparently had to actually cross a chasm to deliver it. Seriously Spider-Man what kind of orphanage did you send this kid to?

Takuya takes a break from… playing with his transistor radio… to read the letter, and he does so by imaging Ichiro in a blank space just telling him everything he’s reading. But not everything he’s reading is good!

Takuya, of course, immediately suspects the Iron Cross Army. He’s got the relative jumping to conclusions powers of a Spider!

Takuya rushes off on his bike to visit Izu and the narrator gives us a recap of what happened. That Ichiro stumbled on the stolen missile plot and might still be a target for the Iron Cross Army. But the narrator fails to mention that since everyone just forgot about those missiles by the end of the episode it probably wasn’t a big deal in the long run. Also once he gets to Izu Takuya is just… just obscenely happy to see him. It’s like kind of sweet and kind of creepy how gigantic his grin is.

Ichiro tells Takuya he didn’t believe he’d ever seen him again, and Takuya feels no need to correct him on that fact. Apparently if Ichiro’s life hadn’t been in danger Takuya was going to make no plans ever to visit the kid he had ‘sworn the oath of brotherhood’ with. Of course knowing how big a jerk Takuya is to the rest of his family that all isn’t much of a surprise.

All Takuya cares about is who Ichiro thinks is after him but, surprise, it turns out that Ichiro was just lying because he thought it was the only way he could get Takuya to come visit! Takuya is pretty miffed but thankfully decides against actually getting angry (though the narrator does let us know he was at least trying to get angry at the lonely orphan boy), and decides that since he drove all the way out there the least he can do is spend the day hanging out with the kid.

Hanging out of course means playing on the beach in a fun montage! There’s motorcycle riding in the waves, swimming, and soccer! There’s even a goofy freeze frame shot when they both fall in the sand!

You can just taste the hi-jinks! But while these two brothers are out having wacky fun montage times, there’s evil afoot as Professor Monster is cooking up his latest scheme. His latest… Ultra Poison scheme perhaps?

Alright first things first, Professor Monster just reaches up to the ceiling and pulls that snake down out of it. Like… it was just hanging up there for him to do his little demonstration, which is absolutely amazing. He seriously takes some time to prepare his props. They show a shot of a completely different looking snake actually swimming around underwater, and then Professor Monster tells them that he’s taken the snake venom and used it to make a super potent Spider Poison. So once again Professor Monster is counting on Spider-Man having the weaknesses of a spider despite, you know, his powers actually coming from an alien planet.

But hey it’s worked for him so far so I guess I can’t say it’s not a good strategy. He squirts some of the poison on a few spiders in a jar and then after a few seconds they die, and Amazoness thinks this is just the most amazing thing ever. I mean Professor Monster basically just reinvented Raid but whatever dudes gotta have something to do to keep him busy. Also kind of great is that he orders his troops to go find Spider-Man and all the Ninders in the room just kind of stand around for a few seconds before Amazoness gives them the stink eye and they take the hint to go off running.

Ichiro is having a happy dream that night where it just literally replays most of the montage from earlier, until he’s woken up by a knock on the door and a call of his name. He goes out to check on it only to be grabbed by the disguised Ninders!

And yes, 8 dudes in military fatigues break into a gated orphanage, drag a yelling and fighting kid through the halls and escape without anyone in the entire place noticing. Obviously. Masters of stealth there.

Takuya is apparently back home that night (which means he can get out to Izu and back from his place in under a day, so he has almost no excuse for not visiting this kid ever so often), when he is awakened by the radio he was playing with, with a familiar voice on the other end!

Oh man, all the continuity, it’s Mamiya Juzo! What’s that, you don’t remember him either? Well don’t feel left out! See I didn’t cover the ‘episode’ he shows up in, because he isn’t introduced in an episode but in a ‘movie’. A twenty two minute movie practically indistinguishable from an episode of the show that was made for a film festival. To answer your immediate question yes I will review that episode, but after the rest of the series because I’d decided previously I would only look through all the episodes of a series straight through.

So that means if you were just watching this show on TV, yes… you would definitely just assume you had missed an episode where they introduced Juzo. I mean they even have a flashback to some of the movie events where he meets him! Basically all you need to know is Mamiya is an Interpol agent on a super secret crime task force dedicated to stopping the Iron Cross Army, and Spider-Man has been recruited as an agent of theirs. Seems kind of important to just drop on the majority of your audience huh?

Mamiya and Takuya meet up in person where we get another flashback (man there’s a lot in this episode) to when Takuya’s blood saved Ichiro, and we learn that the Iron Cross Army has kidnapped him. I think it’s kind of great that Mamiya knew this and instead of telling Spider-Man over the radio he waited until they could meet up, and it seems like it wasn’t until the next day. I kind of think Ichiro’s safety may not be Mamiya’s top concern. While they’re chatting Mamiya reveals he’s got men on the case, and then he gets a call on the 70’s-ist of cell phone like gadget radios!

Where does he get all those wonderful toys?

Anyway, it turns out that Mamiya’s men have located Ichiro, and not a moment too soon as Amazoness is in the process of torturing the boy to try and find out the identity of Spider-Man. She has him locked up in a temperature controlled warehouse set to a deep freeze and has a Machine Bem… um…

You get your minds out of the gutter this instant! It’s some kind of… white sticky freezing spray that the Machine Bem is shooting on the kid! Ichiro is holding on strong but Amazoness is pretty confident that this torture will murder him if she keeps it up long enough.

Not to fear though, as apparently wherever he was being held was a pretty short distance away from Takuya as he shows up already changed into his Spider-duds. He spies a few human guards at the place and looks down at his Spider-Bracelet which makes them temporarily appear as Ninders (which is a power he sometimes has), and then is immediately spotted leading to a usual combination chase and fight scene. The definite highlight of this one is at one point one of the Ninders is chasing him and Spider-Man ducks to hide for a second before jumping up in surprise in front of the guy and it causes him to freeze in shock for a moment.

They stand there like that for a few seconds, it even zooms in to an extreme close up! Then Spider-Man, of course, knocks the guy out. It was a fight full of great moments though, including a point when three of the Ninders swing swords at Spider-Man and when he ducks they all hit each other, and one where a guy chasing Spider-Man overshoots his run and just runs straight off a bridge.

Sometimes I wonder if Professor Monster could do with some more competent lackeys.

After beating up a few more goons in the warehouse Spider-Man is able to free Ichiro, but he soon gets white gunked by this weeks still unnamed Machine Bem.

Why yes, it does sort of look like a muscular naked dude. That isn’t making his attack any more suggestive at all! When Spider-Man tries to flee the Machine Bem throws his spear at our hero, and after it hits Amazoness is kind enough to explain to Spider-Man that it has been coated in that super spider killing poison they developed earlier so he is definitely going to die. I bet her telling him about the poison will in no way come back to bite her in the butt.

Spider-Man manages to escape out of a convenient window and then we cut to a truly incomprehensible scene where Professor Monster is surprised to learn that Spider-Man has been poisoned.

Seriously Amazoness has to explain to him about the poison that HE DEVELOPED. I want to stress that his tone of voice here is actual shock and surprise, it really reads like he completely forgot about the plan that he came up with this week and needed a reminder on it. Well I mean we know he’s very old, maybe he has memory problems. That would actually explain so much about his plans, really it would.

After the explanation (again of his own plan), Professor Monster does have a good laugh at Spider-Man’s expense, and man can I just not stay peeved at a guy with such a charming smile.

Oh Professor Monster, don’t you ever change.

After the commercial break in the very first scene we’re back at Takuya is in a hospital (Mamiya apparently took him there according to the announcer), and the poison has already been neutralized by an antidote the doctors already had access to. So yes we’ve already lost all possible drama in this episode as Professor Monster’s plan has been completely thwarted less than a minute after it’s gone into action. And it wasn’t even difficult! Apparently this ‘ultra poison’ was something that was common enough that a regular hospital just had an antidote to it lying around.

Takuya’s family and Hitomi meet up and wonder where he went off to but are immediately distracted by the song ‘Monster’ on the radio. I choose to assume that Amazoness used her apparent control over the top 40 charts in Japan that was demonstrated a few weeks ago to make ‘Monster’ a hit as some kind of ode to her boss. Sadly it’s no ‘Spider-Man Boogie’ though… The best part of the scene is just his family all going ‘Ah I’m sure he’s fine’ right before the announcer cuts in to tell us that Takuya’s condition is getting worse and he’s dying.

‘But I thought you said he got an antidote!’ I hear you saying. Well yes, but apparently he lost a lot of blood. Despite… not really having a big wound from the speartip that hit him, and having super healing powers… look maybe the poison just… I don’t know he’s low on blood okay! The show said he was!

Ichiro prays to God to save Takuya’s life and in a great show of the knowledge our narrator possesses the narrator cuts in to inform us that God has forsaken Ichiro.

I like that the narrator basically confirms that God exists in this universe, but that he’s not listening to Ichiro’s whims. God cares not for your misery Ichiro!

Ichiro stops Mamiya in the hallway and demands they take out ‘all of his blood’ to save Takuya. The narrator helpfully informs us that Mamiya knows all about the secret super powered alien blood, and so he immediately agrees to the young boys request. They kind of imply that it’s going to be dangerous to do the transfusion at first but that quickly goes by the wayside and they just go through with it. All that really happens is Takuya has a flashback to when Garia gave him the Spider-Bracelet and then Takuya wakes up all healed.

He gets a call from Mamiya explaining that Ichiro was the one who gave him the blood transfusion and that Ichiro is already headed back to Izu under Interpol escort. Kind of weird that they didn’t let the kid stick around to see if Takuya was going to make it or not, but pretty hilariously Spider-Man immediately has a ‘premonition’ that Ichiro is in danger (said premonition is probably otherwise just called ‘common sense.’) And wouldn’t you know it immediately after that we see Ichiro’s two guards get shot and then transform into dummies as they’re tossed off that bridge he was walking on earlier.

It turns out that it was Amazoness in disguise with the gun! She wants to question Ichiro whether Spider-Man is still alive or not, but when Ichiro just affirms that Spider-Man will never die she lets the Machine Bem knock Ichiro off the bridge in another ridiculously terrible dummy shot.

I really hope that’s the rest of this episode. Just… just dozens of people getting flung off of the bridge with ever more increasingly unrealistic dummy shots. Please just give me that Japanese Spider-Man!

But no, because while tumbling to his imminent death Spider-Man arrives on the scene just in time (man that was a quick drive from Izu), leaping out to catch Ichiro and save the young lad! Spider-Man thanks Ichiro for saving his life and then hides the boy while he goes to take on Amazoness and her crew. And since the ‘Yeah yeah yeah wow!’ kicks in you can be pretty sure this is a fight he’s going to win.

However this fight is pretty impressive for some of the stunt work involved, which I’ve got to say is very nice. They don’t do much special but you have to hand it to them when they take this shot…

And zoom it straight out to this one.

Yeah they are totally doing all of their practical stunts on a real bridge over a rocky ravine. I have to give the show a lot of credit here, that is one way to really get the most out of your practical effects budget! I tried watching this scene a few times and I can’t even be sure they have a safety belt harness stuck to him. A lot of times they do that for the climbing stunt work on this show but for all the shots it really looks like he’s just shimmying along that cable while the Iron Cross Army jumps around on top of him.

And it’s not the only great stunt they use here! They also have him, no joke, just straight swinging through the forest!

And it looks like he’s really just holding onto that rope! Man, something is very off when the stunt work looks way more dangerous than any ‘Ultra Poison’ doesn’t it?

Eventually the fight takes the boring leap to the forest where there’s no chasms to threaten our stunt men with, and after Spider-Man takes out a few more Ninders he finally runs back into the Machine Bem with his clam hand. Only this time Spider-Man shoots a Spider-String around it and just straight rips it right off! I mean it was the thing he was using to shoot his… ahem… but I don’t think that was really a threat. He covered a small child in tons of the stuff and it didn’t negatively impact him at all other than likely psychologically!

Right after the Machine Bem decides since he’s growing a new hand he might as well grow giant size as well and introduce himself!

Things don’t go well for Machine Bem’s in general, but those that don’t even get their names dropped until the end of the episode really don’t have the best of track records. But maybe Shinkaioh will have some sort of trick up his sleeve. Ha ha, I’m kidding, he really doesn’t. He gets off one attack on Leopardon and it’s just a little Machine Gun thing that comes out of his hand somehow and does absolutely nothing.

But, and I don’t think I’ve noticed this before, when Spider-Man does the Arc Turn attack we get a closeup of the cockpit from an angle I don’t remember.

Is it sad that the most exciting part of the final giant robot fight is that I just realized Leopardon has a phone in it’s cockpit? Or is it AMAZING? Seriously who the heck is Spider-Man going to call from in there?

But yeah, a quick Sword Vigor and Shinkaioh is down. I feel kind of bad for him, but not all that bad. I mean sometimes I sympathize with the Machine Bem’s but he was barely even in the episode. He mostly existed so he could throw a poisoned spear at Spider-Man which seems like the kind of thing Amazoness could have done without him. Other than the completely ineffective poison all he had going for him was some kind of bubble stream launcher that couldn’t even really harm a child.

Speaking of Ichiro, Spider-Man and him hold hands looking at a sunset and both wishing they could vanish from the world together, which is… kind of creepy? I mean it’s sweet but… this scene is way too romantic in staging. Anyway it doesn’t really matter because Mamiya apparently set up some witness protection and Ichiro will never be heard from again!

A… happy ending, I guess?

So, Final Thoughts?

Okay this episode is sort of a reverse repeat of the one that introduced Ichiro, with his blood needed to save Takuya’s rather than vice versa, but this episode is kind of absurd by the way it goes about it.

The whole setup is that Professor Monster has developed some crazy new poison that will surely kill Spider-Man, and when Spider-Man is finally poisoned he’s cured of it immediately. They don’t even have some nonsense explanation about his super healing or Mamiya having access to Interpol resources or anything. Modern medical science is enough to get him right back on track. It’s just that he needed a bit more blood.

This is one of the weakest Professor Monster plans ever, but at least it was mostly there as an excuse to tell a different story so you can’t mind it too much. What you can complain about is Mamiya’s ‘introduction’. Having Spider-Man suddenly have an Interpol connection that’s never explained really properly in series is a pretty absurd way to go about bringing about a new character, and he doesn’t contribute all that much to the plot. He gives Spider-Man some information but considering Spider-Man has about ten different psychic powers it’s not like that was all that important a role.

I do kind of like that Ichiro was given something approaching a conclusion to Ichiro’s story but it’s not a great one. He and Spider-Man are still brothers but can never see one another again. Hooray, I guess? I mean he gets to live without the fear of being kidnapped anymore?

All in all, kind of a weak episode this week. Weird, but not as weird as you’d hope for an episode about ULTRA POISON. But hey, those bridge stunts were really awesome, right? Man, this episode really had more to do with that bridge than with the poison…

And now, on the next episode of Japanese Spider-Man!

Fashion models in bikinis! Spider-Man playing around on a construction site, and what looks to be some more fun stunt work with Spider-Man hanging off a moving car!

We’ll see how Spider-Man copes in an Ichiro-less world next week in Japanese Spider-Man Episode 12: Transformation to a Splendid Murder Machine!

Japanese Spider-Man is copyright Toei Company and Marvel Entertainment.