Why is Silver Kamen Ep 1 so Dark? | シルバー仮面第1話はなぜ暗いのですか？

Ahhhhhh! The Alien Tigris suit.

Silver Kamen was a unique tokusatsu show created by many staff formerly from the Tsuburaya production team. They included Akio Jissōji, Yamagiwa Eizō and Tōru Toyama.

If you are familiar with Silver Kamen, you'll know it's a show with a dark tone and serious story, but how about the episode where there is literally poor lighting? That is none other than Episode 1, "My Hometown is Earth". Watch the first 6 minutes of the video below.

There is a very surreal feeling to the prologue, and it has very low lighting. The darkness was actually intentionally employed. Read on to find out why.

At first, the production team had difficulty selecting the cast for the show, and so the filming was delayed to 4th November. At that time, Tsuburaya's Mirrorman was scheduled to be aired because TBS could not obtain the permission of another show's creator. Mirrorman would then  go on to compete for audience with Silver Kamen. Meanwhile, another show, Gatsu Jun, was cancelled a week earlier than planned. As such, the broadcast of  the first episode of Silver Kamen was moved from 5th December to 28th November and the production team had to film this episode in an exceptionally short time.

The pitiful condition of the Alien Tigris suit

The fight scene of Alien Tigris during the climax was taken ahead of the shoot, but during the explosion scene when Tigris died, the fire burnt more than half of the costume from the bottom. As a result, the costumes of Tigris became useless, and the rest of the suit was used to depict the carcass of Tigris. However, Alien Tigris still needed to appear in the beginning of show that was ironically filmed later, so upper part that remained of the suit was used like a puppet for these scenes, the scene when the Kasuga siblings use special glasses to see the true identity of Tigris is also dark. The darkening of the screen of the first episode was an unavoidable measure to hide the suit.

In the preview of the first episode, many had concerns about the darkness at the beginning and so on . Meanwhile, the director Mikaji Shinko and Saburo Shinoda playing as Masami Kasuga testified that it was popular in the preview. According to some, director Jissōji had a strong adherence to the video of the first episode, and went to the adjustment room of the TBS at the time of the main broadcast, instructing not to increase brightness of the episode. Meanwhile, according to an interview by Tetsuya Kobayashi (President of Japan Contemporary Project) which was recorded on the DVD of "Silver Mask Photonic", Jissōji himself went to adjust the brightness, thinking that it was too dark.