Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Episode Four: Sunfire

Sunfire

First Aired: October 3rd, 1981

Synopsis: When a large meteor is at risk of destroying the city, Firestar flies out to destroy it, unaware that she's being watched by Shiro Yoshida, who is the mutant Sunfire, and his uncle Genju. Genju wants Sunfire to recruit Firestar, ostensibly so that they can power up his fusion reactor and help the world, but really so that he can create a giant fire monster he can use for evil purposes. Shortly afterwards, Iceman, Spider-Man, and Firestar are at a carnival where Shiro is showing off his uncle's electronic company's samurai robots, when Aunt May ends up in danger when the helicopter she accidentally climbed into starts to have problems. Sunfire and Firestar save her, and Iceman realises that he recognises Sunfire as someone he's fought in the past. Shortly afterwards, Sunfire invites Firestar to meet with him by writing her name in the sky in flames. While she goes out flying with him, Iceman and Spider-Man decide to investigate Genju's electronics company, but Spider-Man ends up captured.


After flying around for a bit Sunfire takes Firestar to see his uncle, but gets ordered to capture Iceman and succeeds in doing so. Sunfire and Firestar are then prepared to help with Genju's so-called fusion reactor, when a robot buzzes in to confirm that Iceman and Spider-Man have been captured. Firestar realises that something fishy is up, but is forced to heat up and power the fire monster anyway. Sunfire, not having realised this would happen, refuses to assist his uncle, and frees Iceman and Spider-Man. While the fire monster goes on a rampage in the city, the four heroes defeat the samurai robots at the electronics company, and then go to stop the fire monster. While Spider-Man distracts it, Firestar and Sunfire fly around to create suction that pulls water in the river into giant spouts. Iceman freezes them, and then the fire monster is led over to the giant ice columns. They're then melted, extinguishing the fire monster. In the aftermath, Sunfire is going to take his uncle back to Japan to face justice, but before he goes, he and Sunfire share a kiss.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Sunfire's uncle spends the entirety of this episode dressed as a samurai. Because, y'know, that's just what Japanese people do, I guess. (Sunfire himself wears a suit when in his civilian identity).
• When Sunfire writes Firestar's name in the sky, Iceman and Spider-Man see it, and wonder whether she's watching it. If only she lived in the same house as them, so that they could go and ask her!
• When the heroes are fighting the samurai robots towards the end of the episode, there's a brief shot that shows Genju there, even though he's supposed to be off controlling his fire monster in its rampage. Oops.
• Genju's electronics company is named Ichi-ban Electronics. According to my weeaboo housemate, this would translate to "The Best Electronics". A bit of a bland name, but I appreciate that the Japanese is used appropriately!

Review: I don't care what anyone says, Sunfire's a cool character. He's got a great costume (and lets not even get into his Age of Apocalypse version), a personality which allows him to be used as an antagonist or protagonist without too much difficulty, and a solid set of superpowers. I wasn't expecting him to show up in this series, but I can't say that he's not welcome. Throughout the entire thing, he's shown as being just as heroic and competent as the other characters, barring one or two stupid moments when he blindly follows his uncle's orders - I'm primarily thinking of him taking down Iceman.

Genju himself is kind of fun as an antagonist in the way that he just decides, "Yeah, I'll trick my nephew into helping me make a fire monster; then everything ought to work out." It's a pretty comic book-y plan, but I kind of love it all the more for it. I also appreciate that he's smart enough to lie to Sunfire about why he wanted Firestar, and that he has samurai robots to help stop the heroes. (Lets ignore him wearing a samurai getup himself; that's just silly).

Honestly, the worst thing about the episode is the slightly dodgy pacing. We've got a scene after the carnival (which itself drags out a little) where Sunfire's invited over to dinner, one where Firestar heads to Ichi-ban Electronics with Sunfire as Angelica Jones then leaves almost immediately, and a bunch of scenes where Sunfire and Firestar are just flying around doing heroic deeds. I guess you could argue that they're there to help sell that they're interested in one another, but I bought that once Firestar said that she thought that Shiro was cute. Tighten up the pacing a bit more and this would be a very fun episode, but even with that flaw, it's still manages to be pretty fun.