The Dorkside Chronicles

  It's late 1991. Your big trilogy of Metal Hero Rescue shows for the kids is starting to dwindle in terms of ratings and toy sales. Your attempts at leaning into drama and moral conflicts didn't exactly hit it off and your budget is being dialed back substantially. You might as well wrap things up with one last shot to your franchise before changing gears again. And to top things off, the man who handled your last two shows, Noboru Sugimura, is going over to do the Super Sentai entry about guys in dinosaur costumes (one that surely would just be another entry in the franchise and not the start to a worldwide 90's phenomenon). What do you do? For Junichi Miyashita and the team working on 1992's Special Rescue Exceedraft , the answer was "make it exciting." They just didn't worry about how the plot would unfold in order to make the thrills happen. Boy did they whip something up.

Sequels are a tricky thing. You're often faced with some lofty expectations and new challenges at following up a previous story with something that's both new and refreshing while also not alienating everyone who you brought on board for that first work. If you play it too safe, you'll bore everyone, but if you go too wild then you risk completely isolating your audience. It's a tough tightrope to walk on, and Toei was faced with that challenge in 1991 when following up on the success of Special Rescue Police Winspector .  The result was a show that tried to amp up the budget and details and special effects thrills of the previous show while injecting a heavier dose of procedural drama and emotional conflicts into its storytelling. A show that was focused on heroes don't just save lives, but save souls as well. That show is Super Rescue Solbrain , and it's a prime example of just how tricky that sequel dilemma can be.

Sometimes, you just get an odd hankering to pop in a Japanese superhero show from 1990 and gun it. You just want a show full of shiny costumes, excessive pyrotechnics, a surprising bit of heart and drama, and a sprinkle of vintage fashion. It’s the reason I love the tokusatsu medium, and specifically the henshin hero subgenre of transforming superhero action from Japan. Needless to say, I went into Special Rescue Police Winspector with all that on my mind. I’d been meaning to watch this installment in the defunct Metal Hero series of tokusatsu hero programs for a while now, and I ended up popping it in on a whim back in December. I took my time with it: Sometimes watching in chunks, other times just putting on an episode after work, but always finding myself going “wow, that was a wild time” by the end credits. Now that I’m all done with it, I can say that this 34-year-old show has plenty in it worth looking at today. Set in the far-flung year of 1999, Winspector presents an image of ...