Viral Spider-Man Clip May Prove The Worst On-Screen Spidey Ever
Warning: This article contains discussions of suicide.
Spider-Man can't always rescue everyone, but at least he always tries. Or at least most versions of the hero always try, and that's probably why the internet is flaming Japanese Spider-Man so hard right now. On X (formerly Twitter), @vidsthatgohard shared a clip from "Spider-Man," a 1978 Japanese television series that loosely adapts Marvel's friendly neighborhood wallcrawler. The scene in question shows Takuya Yamashiro (Shinji Tōdō), aka Supaidāman, pleading with a young woman standing on the ledge of a tall building. She rebuffs his efforts to talk her down, apologizes, and then jumps. It's a dramatic moment that's immediately undercut by Japanese Spider-Man, who does the most Un-Spider-Man thing and takes the stairs.
Okay, so the clip doesn't actually show Supaidāman taking the stairs, but he clearly doesn't jump after her. Instead, audiences see him rounding the corner of the building on foot, sprinting toward the fallen woman while maintaining the half-crouching posture of a man who desperately needs to be socially perceived as a spider. Combine this with his hilariously ill-fitting suit; of course, the internet is making fun of him.
One fan, @MegaDriv3, joked that maybe he's an underfunded hero, saying that "web fluid is expensive." Meanwhile, @Vampyrgaming suggested that "Jumping didn't work for Andrew [Garfield]. He had to try something else." On Reddit, u/Cool_Guy_fellow found the hero's decision questionable because of where the series goes later. "Isn't this the [same] Spider-Man that fights like Gundams and Megazords and Godzilla?"
Japanese Spider-Man isn't ridiculous, he's just bad at his job
Every few years, the internet remembers just how delightfully bonkers the Japanese "Spider-Man" television series is. Yes, it's an adaptation of Marvel's most popular superhero, but only in name. During the show's 41-episode run, the hero mans towering mechs — an arachnid-themed humanoid robot named Leopardon, no seriously — and battles literal Kaiju, just like Reddit mentioned. If that doesn't sound like a major deviation, know that Takuya Yamashiro gets his spider powers from the last surviving member of an intelligent species from Planet Spider and that his super suit is contained within a fancy bangle. Stan Lee adored Toei Company's version of Spider-Man, by the way.
Before Sony released "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" and brought the concept of Spider-Man variants to the forefront of public consciousness, Japanese Spider-Man might have felt more bizarre, more out of place, but Spider-Ham (John Mulaney) and Spiders-Man (google at your own risk) are commonplace names among movie-going Marvel fans, now. The idea of a Spider-Man who acts like a Power Ranger isn't that abnormal. But the idea of a Spider-Man who just watches when a person willingly plummets to their death? That's still weird, that's still questionable, and that's still worthy of some light internet bullying as a treat.