[skids]
[man] In the '70s, everybody wanted something new and exciting,
and this was it.
[in Japanese]
[man] We made Japanese Spider-Man,
and it is totally different from the original Spider-Man.
[screams]
[monster shouts in Japanese]
[man] There's no Aunt May. There's no Peter Parker.
There's a robot.
[grunts]
There's cars.
There's people jumping and flying around and battering the hell out of each other.
And it had very little to do with the actual Spider-Man.
I remember Marvel saying, "We don't let this out of Japan.
Just limit everything to Japan only."
For the next 30 years,
you never heard of or even saw the Japanese Spider-Man in America.
This is the real story of Japanese Spider-Man.
[screams]
There were three people, brought me to Japan.
A woman, Stan Lee and Spider-Man.
The woman was my wife. She was from Japan.
I met her in school in America,
and in the '70s, I used to take trips over to Japan.
Now, when I was in Japan,
I used to see a tremendous number of Japanese comics.
Everywhere I went, there was what they call "manga," Japanese comics,
and everybody was reading them.
I remember looking around, and I saw no American comics,
and I started wondering why.
And I was an old comic books buff.
I liked the Marvel stuff.
Stan Lee was a hero of mine.
So I called up Marvel, and I said,
"Hey look, you guys have your comics all over the world and all over America,
but the biggest comic book country in the world is Japan,
and you guys have nothing out there."
They said, "Well, we used to ship a bunch of comics over,
and somehow half of them would come back. They would never sell."
I said, "Hey, I tell you what. You want a chance to make some big money?
I think that there's an audience here that would go for you guys
if it was presented properly.
Give me a chance. I'll go over there, and I'll figure out what's wrong,
and I'll come back to you with a deal."
Luckily, Stan Lee agreed with me.
I came to Japan as a publisher.
Every publisher in town knew that, "Hey, there's this funny gaijin--"
Gaijin is an outsider in Japanese--
"running around with Marvel comic rights. Maybe we should talk to him."
And I figured out why American comics were failing here in Japan.
An American comic book is meant to be read.
A Japanese comic is meant to be looked at.
An American comic is like an illustrated book.
You have to read three or four word balloons in every picture.
You look at a Japanese manga and they have action in it.
You can feel the action like a storyboard.
The Japanese manga audience simply wanted to be entertained
in the way that they wanted to be entertained.
[shouts]
[Pelc] While I was sitting here in Japan, I'd brought my young son with me,
and he and a lot of his friends watched these shows on Japanese TV,
things like Kamen Rider,
and kids loved it, even though they didn't understand what was being said.
They loved the action. They loved the music.
There was a driving force behind them.
And one of the companies behind those shows was named Toei.
Toei was one of the big powerhouse studios here in Japan at the time.
So I made a call, and I was lucky enough to get an interview with the president.
His name was Watanabe.
I said, "Look, you guys got all the shows and all these superheroes,
and I represent Marvel."
Mr. Watanabe was known as the king of the Ginza at the time,
which meant that after work every night you went out to bars together.
It was the way of doing business at the time.
That's where you made your contracts in Japan.
You didn't make them with a lawyer on paper.
You made them over drinks and a handshake, which you can never tear up.
You can't tear up a handshake.
And I sat down, and I negotiated a deal
in which Marvel would be able to pick up all the Toei superheroes
and Toei could pick up all the Marvel superheroes.
We made a deal.
I sent the contract to Marvel. Marvel accepted it.
They said, "Okay, run with it." So I said to Toei, "Okay, we got a deal."
Stan Lee was the guiding genius in comic books,
and he had the sense of what people liked and what they didn't like.
So Stan needed to like what he saw.
The first show that was produced by Toei was Spider-Man
'cause that was Marvel's bread-and-butter character.
Mr. Watanabe said, "What do you think of Spider-Man?
What do you think of it, Gene?" I said, "I think it's great."
And he said, "Okay, I believe in it. I think this is good.
I've got my best people working on it."
We were approved for almost 50 episodes.
Marvel just considered Japan a territory in and unto itself.
I remember Marvel saying to Toei, "Just limit the territory to Japan.
We don't let this out of Japan." And then they said, "Go for it."
Nobody's gonna care over here in America 'cause they're not gonna see it.
As long as it works and we make money, that's fine.
That was the key.
Frankly speaking, these superhero shows that were being made by Toei
were commercials to sell toys.
The sponsors were all toy companies,
and they all were making these fantastic metal toys.
Robots and cars and stuff that were incredibly intricate, beautiful toys.
Basically, we needed toys to fund this entire project.
So we started sitting and looking at the plots
of the American Spider-Man and said, "We don't have any of this stuff."
So I said, "Let's put 'em in. We need a robot."
[man 2 in Japanese]
[interviewer in Japanese]
[Pelc] So we put in a robot called Marveller,
and Popy became the sponsor of the show,
and we were on the way.
There was a few things that I insisted upon.
Because of copyright, the costume had to be perfectly Spider-Man, which it was.
And he had to have Spider-Man action.
Shoot webs, which he did, crawl on walls, crawl on ceilings.
So all of the action and powers that Peter Parker had
when he became Spider-Man,
we incorporated that into the Japanese Spider-Man.
[narrator] Spider-Man.
[in Japanese]
[Pelc] When it came to picking the actors and actresses,
that was left in Toei's hands.
They said "Look it, I have my people that are popular.
I know who's gonna work. I know who's not gonna work."
[man 3 in Japanese]
[voice in Japanese]
[Tôdô]
[narrator] ...the amazing Spider-Man.
[narrator] The most popular, most daring, most exciting superhero
in the entire world.
[in Japanese]
[Pelc] Stan Lee felt that the American Spider-Man movie
was not connecting with the audience.
It wasn't as good as it should have been.
Although it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Well, I won't ask if you had anything to do with it.
Well, I was supposedly the consultant,
but they really didn't listen to me that much.
The one thing I don't want to happen, I don't want the shows to be pedestrian.
These characters are too important to us, and I think the future ones--
Well, the beginning ones weren't bad.
I think the future ones will be much better.
[Pelc] So we knew that we had to do a good job, and if we don't do that,
I'm out of work and all the money and time that I put in to coming to Japan,
and gave up my job, and I've lost my house,
I've lost my business, if this goes to hell.
[voice]
[gasps]
[voice]
[growling]
[Tôdô]
[screams]
[Tôdô]
[screams]
[gasps]
[Tôdô]
[groans]
[in Japanese]
[Tôdô]
[in Japanese]
[woman in Japanese]
[Miura]
[Hitomi in Japanese]
[Miura]
[child]
[Miura]
[in Japanese]
[Miura]
[in Japanese]
[Garia in Japanese]
[Kaneda]
[in Japanese]
[Kaneda]
[Tôdô]
[in Japanese]
[Tôdô]
[Pelc] We gave Spider-Man a car called the GP-7.
Now GP... a lot of people would've thought of Grand Prix,
but here's the inside story.
[engine revs]
After work we used to always go out drinking together at night.
And after a bunch of drinks,
we're trying to think of a name for the car.
And I used to be a disc jockey in New York City.
I used to say, "GP, stay loose." It was my closing line.
So I said, "Why don't we use GP?"
And then somebody, I don't remember what, said,
"We need a number, and seven is a Japanese lucky number."
[interviewer in English]
I never got a real one so...
[in Japanese]
[Pelc] As far as creating their own villains,
they went back to some themes that come from Japanese cultural mythology.
A lot of Marvel comics comes from Norse and Greek mythology.
A lot of the Japanese stuff came from Japanese history.
So that would resonate more with the Japanese audience.
I said to Toei, "I don't know much about Japan,
but if you guys believe this is gonna work, well, let's go with it."
So I left it in their hands, and there was no decision to use a Green Goblin
or a Doc Ock or somebody like that.
[cawing]
[screams]
[Tôdô]
[Pelc] Professor Monster really sounds bad when you do Japanese to English,
but in Japanese it sounds good
'cause you combine a Japanese word with a American word,
and, at the time, that was cool.
So "Munsta," Monster is "Munsta," killed you.
It sounds cool to the kids.
It doesn't matter what it is. It sounds good.
[Spider-Man grunts]
[Pelc] Toei knew what turns on the Japanese audiences.
These guys have been making for years
extremely popular stuff that kids connect with.
[beeping]
[Pelc] The robot's not a character that was a problem with Marvel.
It doesn't really exist in America. Plus, it's a cool looking thing.
[Murakami]
[grunts]
[in Japanese]
[tires squealing]
[growling]
[Tôdô]
[yelps]
[monster grunts]
[Tôdô]
[in Japanese]
[voice yowls]
[Pelc] Japanese shows were being made
on what Americans would consider a shoestring budget.
And I remember a guy once said, "Gene, we dream of what we can afford to do."
And that I remember made an impression on me.
We dream what we can do.
[growling]
The limited budget was the king.
If you stepped beyond the budget, you were going to kill your future.
[in Japanese]
[Pelc] You had to stay within a tight budget, so you did the best you could.
You had to save money everywhere.
[speaking Japanese]
[Pelc] You'd always reuse scenes. Again, a budgetary thing, but it worked.
[monsters screaming, groaning]
-[growls] -[gasps]
[Kaneda]
[Koga]
[Pelc] For the opening, we decided to do a big stunt.
We spent some money to shoot in the heart of Tokyo,
at the Tokyo Tower.
[Koga]
I remember standing there with all the people watching him and saying,
"Don't fall. Don't fall."
He climbed that thing by himself.
[man singing in Japanese]
[creature] Hmm? Spider-Man!
[Kaneda]
[Pelc] A lot of these guys were Olympic level athletes in my mind.
And, you know, don't want to call them stuntmen, I'd rather call them athletes.
[Kaneda]
[Koga]
[tires squealing]
[in Japanese]
[grunts]
[gasping]
Most of the people were not getting paid a lot of money,
but they were happy to be in the shows.
So they were taking it very, very seriously.
On set, it was very much business-like, very unlike an American set. No joking.
Now in Japan, taking liberties is not considered good.
"This is what we told you to do, this is what you're getting paid to do. Do it."
So it's really the producer and director who decide what you're gonna do,
and I know that sounds, to an American, rather cold,
but this is the other side of the world.
[laughing]
We're producing film in Japan for the Japanese,
so you want something that works for them.
To me, it looks a little overplayed as a lot of Japanese actors tend to do,
-but that works here in Japan. -[laughing]
And we have to realize that there are many paths to the same end.
[Pelc] What they do in one culture and what's done in another culture,
you can't compare them.
[grunts]
[Tôdô]
[Pelc] Marvel trusted us and they really didn't communicate very much with us.
As long as the checks were coming in and people were happy with me,
everything was fine.
Whatever we wanted to do, they said, "If it works,
and it's popular and getting the ratings, what more do you need? Go for it."
[Koga]
[barking]
[groans]
A lot of times we had a lot of explosions
because explosions are exciting for kids and on TV.
[man singing in Japanese]
But because we had too much trouble with the police and the fire department,
we used to have to take the crews way out in the woods
and explode everything out there, where there'd be no danger to anything.
[creature grunting]
[Pelc] Marvel wanted to see what we were shooting.
So we cut a pilot.
We had the first one ready.
So Marvel flew a bunch of people out here,
Stan Lee, a bunch of other people who were from corporate.
So I remember sitting in the screening room, and here's all the corporate guys.
They're sitting there, the corporate people plus Stan.
I'm nervous as hell because if these guys don't like it, I'm out of work.
The thing comes on. We watch it.
[creature growling]
[whimpering]
[Spider-Man grunting]
[Pelc] It ends,
and all the people don't have a word to say.
And the corporate people look at me and they say,
"Gene, you've been in Japan too long.
Nobody's gonna want this. What the heck is this?
This is not Spider-Man. This is crazy stuff."
When the executives all start dissing this thing
because it's so silly-looking to them,
I'm scared because I'm about to lose years of work.
And then, suddenly, Stan Lee stood up applauding.
And he said, "This is great. This is a living comic book."
He said, "Adults will love it because it's camp.
Kids will love it 'cause the action's fantastic.
If this is what the audience wants, let's give it to 'em."
And at that point the executives looked at me and said, "Gene, what a great idea."
Stan has always had my back, but at this time,
when he saw what we actually produced and stood up and started clapping,
I felt so good.
I said, "Hey look, the king of comics is looking at what I've done
to his favorite character and his work, and he likes it."
And the rest is history.
[interviewer in Japanese]
[Pelc] Everybody loved what we did.
The merchandise, the toys, were selling like mad.
So that made everybody happy.
The toys are selling, the ratings are good, the money's coming in.
What more do you need?
[Murakami]
[pulsing]
[Miura]
-[screaming] -[creature growling]
[Tôdô]
[grunting]
[all in Japanese]
[Tôdô]
[cheering]
[Tôdô]
[Spider-Man]
[Tôdô]
[Spider-Man]
[Tôdô]
[Pelc] Spider-Man was such a popular show that all these similar shows were created.
In Japan, that type of TV show became the main style for kids' shows.
[Miura]
[Pelc] The Sentai series, which are these Japanese live-action superhero stuff,
did not have robots at the time.
The Spider-Man robot was such a big hit and a big seller
that for the next season they said, "Hey, we gotta have a robot."
Then Stan said, "You know, those robots are great characters.
Why don't we do something with the robots for the American comics?"
I said, "Well why don't we do a story with just all robots?"
So Stan helped me write the stories.
We did a comic book called Shogun Warriors.
And one of the robots that later got pulled out of it
was called The Transformers.
And The Transformers, as you know, became a big hit after that.
And frankly speaking,
to me, Japanese Spider-Man started the Power Rangers.
I'm proud of all the shows and all these superheroes,
because nobody else had ever done this before.
By the end of the shoot, the crew's connection was really amazing.
[Miura]
[Murakami]
[Pelc] If you enjoy what you're doing, it's not work.
It's pleasure, and that's the way to live your life,
and I enjoyed what I did with Stan and his wife, Joanie,
who once told him, "Write what you want to write,
and if your heart is in it, people will go for it,"
and that happened with me.
My wife said, "Gene, if you really feel you can make a success of it,"
she said, "I'm with you. Go for it."
And it worked, and I'm forever grateful for that.
We recently celebrated our 50th plus anniversary
on the road to forever together.
That came from Spider-Man. Thank you.
[Tôdô]
Spider-Man! Spider-Man.
Ah. My son. How are you?
Wow, it's great. Look at that.
Now, you ought to go like that too.
Oh, that's great.
Wait. Here we go.
-Thank you very much. It's great. -Thank you.
I enjoyed it very much.
Well, I liked the way they did it in a Japanese style.
It wasn't really like the American version.
It had its own flavor. And even the way he walked.
And the characters that they had, that they created,
which were different than our own characters,
were very colorful and very interesting.
I was very impressed with the action
because none of them were done by computer graphics,
but whatever you saw on the screen was really being done by human beings.
And when Spider-Man was climbing that building,
I thought it was wonderful the way they had him going up the wall.
It was so different than the way we do them in the United States
that it was fun 'cause I was looking at a totally different style and a good style.