Incredibly close matches this week. My own nomination loses only because I opted to vote against it, even. Is that a first?
Bracket
FIRST BATTLE!
Kakero! Spider-Man (Spider-Man OP) submitted by Kishi
So, it's the late 70s, you're Marvel, you want to make some inroads into Japanese markets, and it hasn't been going well, because... well let's be real, have you ever compared Superhero comics and manga? So you license your most popular character to Toei to make a superhero show that appeals to Japanese audiences. So yeah, we keep the costume and the webs and all the weird squats, but for a civilian identity and backstory we focus on a motorcycle stunt racer named Takuya Yamashiro with an astrophysicist father, who makes contact with an alien before being killed by a vampire nazi scientist, so we've got a bit of a quest for revenge going. So following the commands of various spiders, Takuya finds his dad's alien friend in a cave, where he's been trapped and surviving by eating spiders, gives him some power-ups to become Spider-Man with, and proceeds to die and reincarnate as a spider. Oh and also he gets a giant robot. Again, standard baseline stuff for Japanese superheroes. Show's honestly a tad underwhelming if I'm really honest, but, yeah.
VS.
Star Fleet (Star Fleet OP, Brian May cover) submitted by Bongo Bill
Western influences continue! X-Bomber was a Japanese space opera series by everyone's favorite pervy weirdo Go Nagai, adapting the look of Gerry Anderson's whole Supermarionation thing. After it was localized as Star Fleet, Brian May of Queen asked the composer of it's western theme song if it'd be cool if he could do a cover of it since he just thought it was a really great song, and it is, as is this cover.
NEXT BATTLE!
Dino Soul (Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger) submitted by Hilene
... OK I have like zero context here.
@Hilene wanna set this up maybe? I do know Kyoryuger is the 37th Super Sentai show, going with a dinosaur theme (again), and this is pretty clearly from a big emotionally climactic scene where I'm just kinda speculating... someone is rescued and the team gets a major powerup after? Past that sorry I've got nothing, and feel ashamed of my quick research skills.
VS.
Midnight (Dekaranger ED) submitted by Purple
Dekaranger again? Already? Right so here's our ending theme, sung by the quite prolific
Isao Sasaki, who you probably know best from singing the opening theme to basically anything you are familiar with that came from Japan in the 1970s. Very distinctive voice. Anyway, the normal ending of Dekaranger is, after going all Judge Dredd on the alien criminal of the week and maybe having a bubble bath back at HQ, our heroes going out to a nightclub for drinks and to dance to a band populated by robots with whatever they're playing for heads... and I guess I have to figure this is actually canonical because later in the series this band actually shows up in the context of the show, dealing with space crime problems. And that's great.
It's western influences vs. western influences, and Super Sentai vs. Super Sentai today. I'm on team space.
Kind of a shame really that nobody nominated anything from Fourze, the Kamen Rider show about the school bully who grows up to be a space shuttle, but I understand.
Voting ends at late o'clock, after the day rolls over, as usual.