Great entertainment indeed! Here in Brazil, in the 60's, National Kid was a big hit. Created by National Electronics (today Panasonic) Inc, as a propaganda-show, this character seems to have had success only in Brazil! Around 1994, my brother-in-law, who is Japanese descendant, traveled Japan and looked for some tapes of this old TV program and never found it. Japaneses only had eyes for Ultraman and Jaspion. Sad, unfortunate. For a young kid, the show were fantastic, intriguing, amusing. But never better than Superman. This is naturally impossible. I enjoyed it as a 10 year old boy and, 30 years after, i had the opportunity to review it in a VHS tape (i have the "National Kid against the Venusians Incas, part 1"). The acting and the dialogs (in Portuguese) was awful, the props and special effects were poor, but the plot and the overall ambient (noises and electronic music) still seems fantastic. The musical title theme(singed in Japanese!) still is one of the best in any show, as is the "Fight theme". One great touch was the reasons why the Venusians Incas or the Abyss Beings attack the Earth: the humanity are using atomic weapons and destroying the oceans, so someone has to stop them. And no gigantic monsters appears to destroy puny humans, what is a exception in the Niponic tradition on films. Only on the last story arc, The Zarrocos, we see a classic Japanese monster playing havoc. Great fun! For anyone interested, I can email a mpg clip with the introduction theme in Japanese. Or anyone can get it at :http://www.infantv.com.br/national.htm
Just for comparison sake, my favorite TV shows are Star Trek (original and Voyager), StarGate SG1, Roswell, Buffy, Seinfeld and Battlestar Galactica (the new version)
