Uchuu Keiji Shaider, or Space Sheriff Shaider , a Japanese Tokusatsu¹ series (Toei, 1984), was my favorite show to watch—an unusual taste here in the West. Most kids preferred more modern Japanese series that had already aired here earlier, I don’t even remember exactly why I liked it so much. Maybe it was the hero’s hypnotic bluish armor, or the light-hearted subplots (outside the action scenes) involving kids gathering at a pet shop in a Tokyo residential neighborhood. The shop owner, Kojiro, was overloaded with slapstick humor. I was also fascinated by the massive fortress Babiros, which transformed—like something out of Transformers —into a colossal gun controlled by a glowing hologram of the protagonist, in a digital projection that looked like it came straight out of Tron (Disney, 1982). Fire Formation! Those aren’t the only references to fiction of that era. Shaider is a patchwork of pop culture—from sci-fi movies like Alien and Star Wars , to horror films like Carri...