Discotek releasing Legend of Dinosaurs a Space Sheriff Gavan

[DannyBeane]

https://twitter.com/discotekmedia/status/1553551845200605185?t=WzhqtiONLlRHgBY9476hhQ&s=19

I'm super stoked for this as I missed og Media Blasters DVD of Legen of the Dinosaurs and Monster Birds and it's one of my favorite Tokusatsu films with it's insane story and jazzy soundtrack! Also being released in Blu ray is the series Space Sheriff Gavan which has been on my watch list for a while, especially after watching Juspion!

[lhb412]

Very exciting! Not just for these two releases (especially Gavan), but also for the fact they're officially giving tokusatsu it's own sublabel: Toku Time. This is in addition to Nihon Nights, their recently announced live action horror and action sublabel which just released the Uzumaki movie and is about to put out Shogun's Samurai!

And Gavan will be in true HD as well! Dig their SD on Blu-ray stuff for convenience, but this is awesome.

Also dig their commitment to including special features! Arrow is great with this, of course, but I look at Mill Creek and Shout Factory's toku releases and wish we had a but of something, you know? In their defense, there have been a rumblings here and there that Mill Creek is assembling some extras for a special edition release of the original Ultraman but won't pull the trigger until they have the complete English dub in as good quality as they can manage.

[Benjamin Haines]

This is fantastic! Space Sheriff Gavan is one of my favorites of the tokusatsu series that I've watched. It's packed with varied and colorful action, the music is awesome and lead actor Kenji Ohba carries the show. If you like Return of Ultraman, Super Robot Red Baron and/or the original Himitsu Sentai Goranger, all of which likewise had Shozo Uehara as head writer, then you'll dig Space Sheriff Gavan.

I'm really curious about the feature-length interview with lead actor Kenji Ohba and director Osamu Kaneda, who directed the 2012 reboot film but didn't work on the original series. Was that interview newly produced for this release or is it a Japanese port from around the time that movie was released?

It's also great that Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds is getting a BRD release. I'll definitely pick that up too, even though I've watched the Media Blasters DVD probably fewer than five times in the past 15 years. It's an amusingly bizarre Jaws knockoff but it doesn't have much replay value. I'm just glad that Discotek has created this new Toku Time label and I'll happily support this endeavor. I hope they go on to fill a niche similar to that of Media Blasters' Tokyo Shock label in the mid-2000s. I still have Discotek's DVD of The War In Space from 2006.

[lhb412]

Oooh, Uehara is head writer for Gavan? Neat.

[Benjamin Haines]

Looking at the writers behind the various toku series episodes, Shozo Uehara was absolutely prolific. He went from writing or co-writing two episodes apiece for Ultra Q and Ultraman to twelve episodes for UltraSeven. Then he got promoted to head writer on Return of Ultraman and he scripted 20 of the show's 51 episodes on his own, including the first seven episodes, all of the two-parters and the final episode.

From what I've gathered, Uehara wrote all of his scripts solo since then, and while he contributed seven scripts for the first half of Ultraman Ace and a two-parter for Ultraman Taro, it didn't take him long to start writing for other shows outside of Tsuburaya Productions. He wrote the fourth episode of Zone Fighter for Toho, which was the first one to feature Godzilla and was also directed by Ishiro Honda with special effects by Koichi Kawakita. For Senkosha Productions from 1971 to 1975, Uehara wrote half the episodes of Silver Kamen, nearly two-thirds of Super Robot Red Baron and more than two-thirds of Super Robot Mach Baron. For Toei from 1975 to 1982, he was the head writer on all of the first five Super Sentai shows as well as their Spider-Man series. In 1987, he was the head writer for Kamen Rider Black's first cours of episodes. In the 1990s and 2000s, he wrote seven episodes of Choriki Sentai Ohranger, one episode each of Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna, four episodes of Ultra Q Dark Fantasy, and two episodes of Ultraman Max.

The first five shows in Toei’s Metal Hero franchise were almost completely written by Uehara. From 1982 to 1987, he wrote 37 out of 44 episodes of Space Sheriff Gavan, then 41 out of 51 episodes of Space Sheriff Sharivan, then ALL 49 episodes of Space Sheriff Shaider, then 42 out of 46 episodes of Megabeast Investigator Juspion, and then 38 out of 44 episodes of Space-Time Warrior Spielvan.

No matter which series he was writing for, Uehara really understood the importance of offering something different to viewers in every episode as much as possible within the framework of each show's formula. I think that makes shows like Return of Ultraman, Himitsu Sentai Goranger and Space Sheriff Gavan a lot less repetitious and more entertaining than something like the original Kamen Rider.

[Benjamin Haines]

My copy of Space Sheriff Gavan arrived today. I watched the first episode and the picture looks terrific. The subtitles are really well done too. This show rocks!

I also went ahead and got Discotek's 2019 release of the fourth Metal Hero series, Megabeast Investigator Juspion, which has all 46 episodes in standard definition on a single blu-ray disc. I'll watch it after Space Sheriff Shaider, which I'm currently 18 episodes through.

...And my package from RightStuf also included my pre-ordered Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds, weeks ahead of its November 29 street date!