White Lion Mask (1973)

White Lion Mask (白獅子仮面) is set during the Kyoho Period of the Edo Era (1716-1735), the city of Edo (now Tokyo) is under the terror of Okami Kamen (Wolf Mask). Town Magistrate, Echisen Ooka, send his top man in the Kage Yoriki (Shadow Police), Hyoma Tsurugi (Kyotaka Mitsugi), to investigate. He unveils the evil pulling the strings of a Yokai army, Kaen Daimaoh (Infernal Devil), but is mortally wounded by the creature. Suddenly, another apparition appears, Shiro Jishi Kamen (White Lion Mask), who spares his life, and now Tsurugi must fight as the human form of this agent of righteousness to preserve justice!

Following in the horse hooves of P-Productions' THE VIGILANT LION MARU and Toei's TRANSFORMING NINJA ARASHI, WHITE LION MASK (Shiro Jishi Kamen) failed to find it's audience and only ran for 13 episodes. For decades afterwards, the series all but disappeared from Japanese television and was never issued on Home Video due to convoluted rights issues between various parties involved in the production, until 2003, when the series was finally issued on DVD, which is now out of print.



Have any of you seen this Tokusatsu series? And if so, what did you think of it?

 

Never seen it but sounds interesting. Doubt I will since you said the dvd is oop.

 

It seems someone is selling Volumes 1-3 on Amazon Japan:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/白獅子仮面-1巻~カラ...&ie=UTF8&qid=1389278943&sr=1-1&keywords=白獅子仮面

The first volume is $157!

 

This rules. I remember hearing about this show a while back but never knew what actual hero looked like. Im a sucker for any toku set in feudal Japan. I dug up the first episode here. The player opens up in a new window sort of awkwardly but at least its something. Thanks for posting this!

http://www.nicozon.net/watch/sm5577137

 

Like wise. White Lion Mask is like Lion-Maru but more serious; it's a shame it never found it's audience. The series could have gone new places.

Oh, and here is a better link to the first episode, on DailyMotion.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15944v_白獅子仮面-第1話_shortfilms

 

Thanks for the info.

 

So apparently M1 made toys for the DVD release of this show in 2003 (we think). Very little info is available on these on the net. Thanks to The Moog for filling in some of the gaps. Sorry for the crap pics.

Left is the main bad guy, then karakasa part of the yokai army

 

Yep, i would love those but i'm sure i'd have to get in line.

If they popped-up on Mandarake i'm sure they'd be stupid money!

 

yeah, i bid on that karakasa once and lost because it skyrocketed beyond belief

 

Thanks for sharing those pics.