Red Shadow, created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, is a ninja who wears a red-and-black costume and a stylized red mask. His adventures take place in Feudal Japan, and he and his ninja sidekicks Aokage (青影, a little boy) and Shirokage (白影, an old man) fight evil warlords, wizards and daikaiju using modern high-tech gadgetry (a blatant oddity in a period setting).

Akakage, The Masked Ninja (仮面の忍者 赤影, Kamen no Ninja Akakage), produced by Toei Company Ltd., aired on KTV and Fuji TV from April 5, 1967 to March 27, 1968, with a total of 52 episodes (divided into four segments). Akakage was played by the late Yuzaburo Sakaguchi, Aokage was played by Yoshinobu Kaneko (younger brother of fellow child actor Mitsunobu Kaneko of Akuma-kun and Giant Robo fame) and Shirokage was played by the late Fuyukichi Maki.

This was Toei's first color tokusatsu superhero show and Japan's first color live-action ninja TV series. Aokage's footage from the series was also used to create several Watari films with the titles like The Magic Sword of Watari (not to be confused with the unrelated 1966 film Watari, Ninja Boy).

Akakage, The Masked Ninja (仮面の忍者赤影, Kamen no Ninja Akakage) is the anime remake produced by Toei that aired on Nippon Television from October 13, 1987 to March 22, 1988, with a total of 23 episodes.

Video game

A video game based on the anime version was released in 1988 by Toei for the Famicom. The game music was composed by J-Walk.

Red Shadow (RED SHADOW 赤影, Reddo Shadō Akakage) is a loose remake of the 1969 film for the original Akakage series. It was released in 2001, and was directed by Hiroyuki Nakano, it stars Masanobu Ando in the title role. The story, characters and their costumes were however re-designed from scratch.