I’m a Japanophile. Some might say otaku. My interest in Japan spans several areas, some of which wax and wane over time, but all remain constant. When I was a kid I was very into tokusatsu (in short, superheroes from Japan). I had played Ultraman video games, I had seen Guyver, I had seen Kamen Rider, Godzilla, Gamera, Daimajin, I remember having a keen interest in these things. Then something happened that, at twelve, blew my mind; tokusatsu became mainstream on American television. It was the Super Sentai series, spliced together with American drama footage, and produced as the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. I was extremely excited.

I watched it every morning before school. I was hooked. I didn’t care about the inserted American drama, what I cared about were the Super Sentai sequences, authentic tokusatsu from Japan. Out of the gate you’d have five mysterious superheroes, each clad in amazing costumes, battling demons from space. If that wasn’t enough, the demons were sometimes made to grow gigantic. This is when the mysterious superheroes would summon their mecha. They would combine their mecha to form a great and powerful fighting robot, complete with a one-hundred-fifty foot energy sword. That description should be enough to sell anyone.

I’ve always considered it rather amazing, even somewhat miraculous, that an entire generation of American kids grew up watching tokusatsu. I’m not a fool, I’m aware that the vast majority of these kids had no idea. But it’s rather curious that they didn’t, you know? You would see the American cast teaching life lessons to youths in California moments before they’d take a brief stroll to battle space demons in a Japanese cityscape. That’s a supreme dedication to obliviousness.

And now I’m thirty, my interest in such things is beginning to wax again, despite my age. And here I am, streaming Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers from Netflix. Don’t get me wrong, I wish I could watch the authentic Japanese Super Sentai without the American cheese, but it is what it is, and at the end of the day, the tokusatsu scenes are worth it. Oh yes, they are worth it.