Merrick here...


This news was initially posted a week or two ago in Scott Green's anime column (HERE). But...based on e-mails we've been receiving...many readers seem to have missed it, so we wanted to call this to your attention once more.

For many years, a TV series commonly and simply referred to as "JAPANESE SPIDER-MAN" could chiefly be found for download on the Net (provided you knew where to look & had the patience to endure the slow transfer), through back-alley video dealers, etc.

Now, while everyone's waiting for SPIDER-MAN 4 to get its shit together, Marvel is hosting subtitled, streaming feeds of JAPANESE SPIDER-MAN on its website. Looks like an installment a week, perhaps?

You can see the currently posted episodes (eps 1 and 2 of the series) via the embeds below, which originate HERE.

This version of the famous web-slinging hero was part of a deal that Marvel made with Toei, namely that for a four-year period, Toei could use Marvel's characters in any way they saw fit.

...says THIS WIKI ENTRY.

In short: this is Spider-Man by way of all things that make Japanese entertainment great: men-in-suit monsters, flying techno-mega-fortress-robot-things, and lines like "lately there's been a lot of activity from a group that's secretly invading the Earth". This is essentially SPIDER-MAN by way of POWER RANGERS.

So, have fun with this! For my money, even though this clearly isn't true to SPIDER-MAN's characters and mythology, this is much more entertaining than anything we got in SPIDER-MAN 3.

Take a look...

And a special shout out to The Reluctant Austinite for making sure we knew...