Cliff MacMillan has authorized the announcement of the first of their three new tokusatsu (visual effects) titles, which will see release before the previously-announced SUPER ROBOT: RED BARON!



IRON KING Coming to R1 DVD from BCI/Ronin Entertainment!

Senko Planning's second visual effects series, IRON KING (1972), a 26-episode action-packed superhero series featuring the serio-comic adventures of secret agent Gentaro Shizuka and his sidekick Goro Kirishima, as they travel across Japan seeking out terrorists who threaten to overthrow the government. When danger strikes, Goro transforms into the hydrogen-powered cyborg Iron King to confront the villains’ giant robot monsters in hand-to-hand combat. IRON KING features eye-popping visual effects from the team who brought you Ultraman, complimented by a driving score from Shunsuke “Dragon Ball Z” Kikuchi.

Tapped as a consultant, I heartily recommended IRON KING (and the other two series in the pipeline) to Cliff MacMillan of BCI/Ronin Entertainment, and was subsequently contracted to prepare the written supplementary materials for all three series, as well as editing the English subtitle scripts. Uncut and fully subtitled in English, IRON KING is the first of three releases by Ronin Entertainment from the Senko Planning catalogue, including SUPER ROBOT: RED BARON. IRON KING will be available in a complete series collection, set for nationwide release on November 6, 2007.



Jigoku-no soko-kara yomigaeru
Akuma-no keshin doku-no hana
Tatakae bokura-no Aian Kingu
Mamore midori-no kono daichi
Shokku, Shokku, Aian Shokku
Kiri-no naka-kara Aian Kingu

This is great news, August! Do you know if any of the new series you are announcing will be English dubbed? My son and I have been working through the ULTRAMAN DVDs and having a great time with them -- something we both can enjoy, unlike, say, POWER RANGERS. Subs-only would be a deal breaker for us for now, at least until he's a few years older.

-- Peter

Unfortunately, these shows were never dubbed into English (to the best of my knowledge), so there are no English language tracks available. Sorry. Dubbing a 26 to 39-episode series would be cost prohibitive and well as not fit in with BCI's release schedule—they just signed the contracts last month, and IRON KING will be out in four months! So fast, my head is spinning! But, if they come across a show that was dubbed, they will license those tracks as well.

I have show similar subtitled shows to my Nephew and Niece, such as JN Productions' release of KIKAIDA, when they were five and four, and they were entranced, despite the language barrier—by the second day, they were trying to sing the theme song! Needless to say, they watched all 43 episodes without understanding much—and wanted to watch them over and over—its the visuals that will lock them in. I've seen it happen to the kids of friends as well; one of their sons can't get enough of the old Japanese only versions of the Super Sentai series right now (he's watching ULTRAMAN, too).

Speaking of kids and sentai...when "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" first appeared, I managed to get tapes of "Zyuranger" (Japanese-only, no subs.), the sentai show that supplied MMPR with its action and effects footage, and I showed them to my daughter, nieces, nephews, neighbor kids, etc. so they could see what the original looked like. And they were intrigued. One of them even wondered why they didn't just dub the original into English. One neighbor boy declared, "My friends aren't going to believe me when I tell them I saw this." And he was right, they didn't. All except one girl in his class who'd noticed that the Yellow Ranger's uniform in MMPR didn't have a skirt like the Pink Ranger's, which bore up my neighbor's report to them that in the original, the Yellow Ranger was male, not female.

A couple of years later, when my daughter's younger half-brother, then about 4, showed some interest I lent him a bunch of tapes and my daughter would report that he'd run around their house singing the Zyuranger theme song.

I wouldn't dream of asking for NEW dubs -- which are usually quite atrocious -- but was just curious if old dubs existed. Too bad there weren't any. Still, I suppose I might have to pick these sets up anyway, and just save them for a later date/watch them myself, especially if they are priced comparably to the Ultraman sets. From the early seventies, they ought to be entertaining.

In the meantime, I've just discovered that netflix is offering the entire run of JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT as streaming video as part of their new view on demand service! Still hoping for a nice DVD release of this series, but in the meantime, what a treat!

-- Peter

FYI, JOHNNY SOKKO has also been available for download for quite some time via Amazon.com

Here's a first look at the cover art for BCI/Ronin's release of IRON KING (this is not the final art):

Deep Discount has "IRON KING the Complete Series" for $22.11! (Original MSRP: $39.95):
http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewproduct.ht...4&extid=df00033

Here's a preview of the 20-page booklet I wrote (designed Dan Wheelan):

Here is the official press release for BCI's Iron King. This looks like its going to be a great set especially with the involvement of August Ragone.

http://hkfilmnews.blogspot.com/2007/10/iro...ck-ass-and.html