I’m not a huge fan of wrestling, sure I watched it as a child, saw the Undertaker face off against the Undertaker. But that was… I think over 30 years ago. A friend has shown me a few matches with long storylines to them a wee bit back, and those are fun. But what if we take those crazy storylines, and include super heroes?
You probably don’t know about Kinnikuman, and there’s a reason for that. Kinnikuman started out in its VERY early days as an Ultraman Parody but started to pivot to wrestling stories. And that’s where the problem came in. You see, in the First World Tournament arc… there was a character, Brockenman… who represented west Germany and was portrayed as a….Particular problematic part of his nation’s past in a very overt over the top way. This resulted in the anime adaption that was being shown in France instantly pulling the show the moment he appeared.
There was however a sequel series that was brought over to the west and even to the UK as Ultimate Muscle. So if you saw that, this is a sequel series set between the end of the original show you probably didn’t see and couldn’t have seen legally, and the show that was turned into Ultimate Muscle.
Now all that explanation of why you won’t have seen the original show may make this show seem unapproachable for you. BUT wisely the first episode is a bit of a bonus one that goes over the main events of the original series so you don’t need to worry about that.
The new show, set about a year and a half after the end of the original Kinnikuman series ended, sees a peace treaty being signed by the main 3 factions of Chojin (basically the super human wrestlers) the Justice faction, the Devil faction and the Perfect faction. Then at a show by the Justice faction, a group of Perfect Chojin calling themselves the Perfect Large Numbers show up, saying the representative for their faction didn’t have the right to sign anything and all but kill every member of the Justice faction present, including reducing a few of them to regular humans. This is in part due to most of the heavy hitters of the Justice faction are still recovering from the events of the final arc of the original storyline. And for all their boasting about being perfect and superior to regular Chojin, the Perfect Large Numbers seem kind of arses who attack weakened foes. So that leaves Terryman to face them, but a strange figure watches from a bar. Plus other figures watch from the shadows.
What follows is a series of fights that are surprisingly brutal. There’s a fair bit of blood in these. Really makes you think how much censored Ultimate Muscle must have been given how much western localizations would cover up things to hilarious levels (look at the original broadcasts of the Saiyan Saga of DBZ). Basically some of these fights are not for the squeamish, but are quite inventive at times as the amount of different abilities on show get used.
The series is on Netflix at 12 episodes including the special episode 0 for new entrants. and a second set of episodes coming in January 2025.
Rating: 🤼♂️🤼♂️🤼♂️
But that’s it for my standard rotation. Next up the December reviewing whatever I like. And there are two recent movies (one very recent) that I have my eye on reviewing.