Click on the highlighted names to see the pics.

Kikaida / Kikaida 01 (click on the title to see what it means) was a popular Tokusatsu show in the '70s in Japan (Kikaida, 1972 and Kikaida 01, 1973). You could get the non-subbed video tapes available at some stores in North America (see my Other Links page). Hawaiians were lucky enough to get Kikaida TV series at around the same time and many kids grew up watching them. It was so big there that the Governor of Hawaii at the time had shown up shaking his hand. The show is another creation of the late famous Ishinomori Shoutarou .

The stories of the Kikaida show are mediocre compared with many other popular Tokusatsu shows (Kamen Riders , etc) at the time. The stories are almost always the same until near the end of the series, thanks for the introduction of another polpular andriod Hakaida. His human form is Saburo. He posed as the ultimate weapon against Kikaida. Although Kikaida is almost invincible, he has one fatal weakness, his creator did not finish the work and left him without the "Conscience Circuit" which made him vulnerable when Gill played his flute. When Kikaida was not in combat, he transformed into his human form, Jiro (meaning the younger one in Japanese). Yea, he walked around with his guitar and he did play a bit. The flute does not work for some reason when Jiro is in Kikaida form!!!!

The story of Kikaida begins with Dr. Koumyouji (the one in the middle) trying to escape from the evil hand of Professor Gill, an evil scientist heading the Dark Demolition Corp. Komyoji was working for Gill before he realised his ultimate goal was to conquer the world with the evil robots. Somehow, Dr. Koumyouji lost his memory during his escape. Strangely enough he still pocessed his expertise in Robotics. Fortunately, he had constructed Kikaida before this happened.

From then on, the storyline is almost identical in each episode. The PhD was still running and his children, Masaru and his older sister Mitsuko were looking for him. When they were just about to catch him, evil robot turned up and tried to kidnap Dr. Koumyouji; and almost at the same time in every episode, a light sound of guitar was being heard and Jiro was there. And before he could turn into Kikaida to fight the evil robot, Gill played his flute and rendered Kikaida powerless. At the point when Kikaida was in so much danger, there was always some loud sound near by that covered the flute sound and Jiro used this opportunity to transform into Kikaida, well the rest is quite simple, the evil rebots got their butt kicked!

Yeap, the show had simple plots and attracted millions and I have to admit the sounds and the themes in the show are wicked, so 70's, sometimes I found myself humming or even singing these songs even though I don't know Japanese that much. Ok, in a shower or somewhere alone.