I love Christmas episodes of tokusatsu! Last year, I did a writeup of the the Christmas episode of my favorite Super Sentai series, Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. This year, I wanted to do another and sort of start a tradition of doing a fun little review of weird Holiday episodes. I think I found the perfect one.
First, a bit of setup before we get into the episode proper. Space Sheriff Shaider is the third show in the Metal Heroes series, it is also the third and last of the Space Sheriff series following both Space Sheriff Gavan from 1982 and Space Sheriff Sharivan from 1983. It tells the tale of intergalactic lawman Shaider (real name Dai Sawamura) and his partner Annie as they attempt to thwart the evil ambitions of the Fushigi World Fuuma, an evil cult that worships the giant Golden Head of Great Emperor Kublai.
These guys.
As in most tokusatsu shows, the Fuuma go about their business by creating a monster to carry out their wicked plans. In Shaider, these monsters of the week come from an egg created by an energy orb spit out by the head on a wall that leads the villains that then falls into a small pool of blood before emerging as an egg that hatches into the monster of the week.
I’ve begun referring to this weekly plot device as the Incredible Inevitable Egg (and if you get that reference you know some old advertisements like I do).
In episode 29, The monster of the week is this guy, SataSata who is created to use the joyous holiday season to warp and corrupt the children of Japan.
Of course he can’t go around looking like a fanged monster, nope, he needs to take on a more ‘normal form’ so he become Satan Claus the Black Santa!
And what does Satan Claus do? Let’s let the giant head explain.
Cut to our heroes, who are helping a pet store owner get ready to deliver presents to a bunch of his clients. Um… why are they wrapping up live animals and sticking them in a sack?! That doesn’t seem like a very good idea to me!
Shaider gets asked to help deliver one special present (a finch in a cage) to a pair of kids but he has to do it in properly Santaesque fashion. Apparently Japanese Santa doesn’t use the chimney and just comes in through any available window.
Yeah, hiring strange men to walk into your children’s’ room to leave presents sound totally safe and legit! Oh well, it could be worse and it gets worse. As soon as Shaider leaves the cage, Satan Claus makes his move and brings his true gift… a really bad LSD Trip!
No, he actually swaps out the kids’ finch for a cage full of Fuuma monsters. His intent is to turn all of the kids in Japan against the real Santa by giving them crappy, scary gifts. I bet these days doing that would just get him a massive merchandising deal with Hot Topic.
Somehow this works and the kids gather to commiserate while Shaider’s pet store owner friend complains he’s ruined because now he has to give refunds to all of his customers for the bad gifts. Or maybe the pets just died because you wrapped them in packages without air holes you dork!
The children who now aren’t so thrilled with Santa hear strange music and see cloaked figures in black dancing.
Entranced by the music, they fall into line and are soon lead to the a strange altar in the woods where Satan Claus is holding some kind of a religious service.
Oh God, is that a Santa Claus crucified upside down?!
Um…. yes. Yes, it is. Wow, here I thought Santa was supposed to be Saint Nicholas, not Saint Peter. Japanese kids’ shows, traumatizing the youth since at least 1971!
The ceremony goes on with the kids joining a weird, haunting chorus and being turned into black clad, facelessly masked figures as well. Fortunately, Shaider arrives to break up the party and rescues the kids! The next morning he even returns them to their families.
Only it’s all part of Satan Claus’ plot and the kids, with no memory of their parents, turn into black-clad cultists once more and gather in swarms to cause mayhem and destroy things!
This, of course leads to the final battle between Shaider and SataSata who sheds his Satan Claus disguise to utilize his full, monstrous powers in taking on the lawman.
This being Space Sheriff Shaider’s show and not Fushigi Monster Satan Claus the series (which I would totally watch!), the outcome is pretty inevitable and the evil Santa impostor is destroyed!
All of the children are saved and returned to normal. They then gather on the steps of a Church clad in white and sing an actually rather beautiful version of ‘Joy to the World’ in Japanese.
Thank you Space Sheriff Shaider! Thank you Annie! Christmas is saved and we’ll be sending the producers of your show the therapy bills for our children!
As far as WEIRD Christmas episodes go, this one is going to be pretty hard to beat. I’ve never seen anything so dark come out of a Holiday offering that wasn’t intended for adults. The villainous plot was a glorious twisted perversion of the holidays with some hopefully unintentionally borderline blasphemous imagery for any Christian viewers. Had this been on American TV, I can see a massive backlash.
Thank Great Emperor Kublai it wasn’t!
This is actually the first episode of Space Sheriff Shaider I have ever seen. Now, I want more. If any of the other episodes have this kind of out-there feel and look to them, I have to see them for myself!
Before I go, one more shot of that messed up Satan Claus ritual scene. Seriously… I might make this my Christmas Card next year for my weirder friends.
