Yes, we’re back! Back with a friend too! This show has always been on the fansubbing shortlist for both bluephlash and I, so when Gust uploaded rips of the DVDs late last year, we started this collab release! This was one of the collaborations he was referring to when he made the post announcing his retirement from fansubbing.

This show is probably the black sheep of Toei’s 1976 tokusatsu offerings. That year had the back half of Goranger, Ninja Captor, Kyodyne, and Bibyun. With the exception of Captor, the “Sentai that’s not a Sentai”, all of those are Ishinomori shows.

These 12 episodes don’t provide much of a story arc. There’s no main villain, the villains of the week are a parade of goths and furries, and it’s very much like a Silver Age comic book in the design work and plotting. The show starts with an interesting aspect: The superheroes are separate entities from the main characters. Mostly. It seems only one or two of the writers on the show were aware of this fact. Kyodyne did a similar thing in its first cour, before changing into standard henshin hero fare. The next batch sees a major shift in focus, with the introduction of Doctor Satan!

Just a few localization notes before we go:

• Kageo and Suzuko’s names are puns. “Kageo” contains 影, the kanji for “Shadow”, and “Suzuko” contains 鈴, the kanji for “Bell”.
• Given Suzuko’s name and the fact that she has a bracelet full of bells, her superhero identity would be written “Bellstar”. Both bluephlash and I agree that this name is stupid and dumb and awful, so we’ve opted for “Bellestar”, which incorporates the French word “belle”.
• Their airship is called the “Kagebōshī”, which is a play on the Japanese word for “Shadow Puppet”. We’ve opted to use “Silhouette” as the name.
• The heroes’ motorcycles are called the “Kagerocar” and “Bellecar”, despite being, you know, motorcycles. This is apparently a result of the late 70’s Supercar Boom causing “car” pronounced in English to become a trendy word in Japan.

We’ll be doing the show in 3 batches: 1-12, 13-23 and the movie, and 24-34.

Here’s the team:
Translator – bluephlash
Timer – Nemet
Typesetter/Editor – Tokugami
Raws – GuSTaVauM

Read the other release post at Metallic Fansubs, and download the episodes at the Releases Page!