I'm getting at my blogging quite a bit late today since I had some work-related things to handle as well as having some of the family over for dinner. Plus, there was that latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" to catch online.
Never heard of this TBS anime titled "Chargeman Ken!" but from the looks of it, it reminds me of the original "Gatchaman"（ガッチャマン）series from the 1970s (although the production studios were different). And sure enough, "Chargeman Ken!" had its time on the airwaves in 1974. From what I've read on the Wikipedia page for the series, it's gotten quite a bit of notoriety for its poor production values due to the fact that apparently, the staff had gotten fed up enough about the low budget given that they decided to hit the beach instead more often than not.
However, in a "so bad it's good" twist, the series received some redemption online in recent years which even led to a Blu-Ray product getting out in late 2021. It's always nice to hear a happy ending for the underdog. Another thing that I discovered about "Chargeman Ken!" is that each episode was only 10 minutes long, and here I thought that this temporally truncated format for anime was more of a recent thing.
Still, I rather like the opening theme song "Chargeman Ken!" by the Hibari Children Chorus（ひばり児童合唱団）since it's got those cute kids and cool, funky and heroic horns and strings that always have me remembering all of those tokusatsu shows and early anime experiences of my childhood. The lyrics were provided by the employees at Knack Productions, the originating studio (so those guys did at least try hard on one element of the project), and the music was by Kunio Miyauchi（宮内國郎）.
As for the much-in-demand Hibari Children Chorus, they were also responsible for the theme song for the world's largest adorable monster turtle as well as a really trippy and cool Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）song.
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