Kamen Rider Super-1 (1980-1981) Episode 1 “The Galactic Cyborg’s Great Transformation” and episode 2 “The Time of Battle Has Come! The Technique is the Sincere Shaolin Fist.”
After this series, there was a lull of about five years with no new Kamen Rider shows, so maybe the innovations in this incarnation were not well-received. The story has a lot of very familiar beats, but thankfully also attempts something new and interesting. This time, protagonist Kazuya Oki is an orphan (again—several of the others up to this point were as well), and he was raised in a scientific facility in the USA run by an organization called the International Space Development Program. Because of overpopulation, they are planning a trip to a habitable planet called Super-1, and have developed a process to turn humans into cyborgs to better survive the dangers of interspace travel. Like Jo from Kamen Rider Stronger, Oki volunteers to undergo the augmentation surgeries. An evil organization called Dogma Kingdom sends spies to infiltrate the program, leading to the inevitable murder of Oki’s scientific overseer/father figure Dr. Henry (and his amazing mustache). Oki barely escapes alive, still unable to control his own transformations into and out from his Rider form. The overpopulation theme is a popular one from science fiction around the world, and while its often tackled with dubious plans to create new sources of food that backfire ala Tarantula or Soylent Green, here we have the effort framed heroically, and a Rider created with positive intentions by a reputable international identity rather than via kidnapping or tragedy.
Giving Oki an inability to willingly transform is a unique wrinkle, but not executed with great storytelling chops—for some reason he thinks training in gymnastics will unleash his powers, but we never have an inkling as to what possible connection there might be between turning flips and changing form. Eventually, in the second episode, he masters his transformation by studying martial arts, which has this clever bit where his master opines that Oki needs to experience wind as something inside and a part of his body, mirroring Bruce Lee’s famous comments about becoming like water, but connecting to how Kamen Rider traditionally is powered by a wind turbine. Kamen Rider Super-1 is also equipped with a set of five pairs of “hands” that he can cycle through for different dangerous situations—hands for punching, hands that make him stronger, electric hands, etc. These “power gloves” feel similar to later incarnations of Ultraman where the giant hero could shift from one color-coded set of powers to another depending on the needs of the fight at hand, such as in Ultraman Tiga from the 90s. When Oki manages to discover how to transform in the second episode, he automatically gets the ability to use his suite of hand powers at the same time. Moving on to his design, I do really like the metallic look of Super-1, which seems like a precursor of the Metal Heroes metaseries that would kick off with Space Sheriff Gavan the following year. My main complaint? I just wish they would depart from the “orphan hero made into cyborg, father figure killed” dynamic which arises again and again, preventing some interesting possible relational dynamics in the shows.
Edited to add: One of the most notorious behind-the-scenes details of this show is that the star, Shunsuke Takasugi, was convicted of conning money from his fans, claiming the reason for his deceit was because the Yakuza took his Kamen Rider belt and he needed the cash to get it back. Yikes. Apparently Takasugi is currently a fugitive from the law, having disappeared in 2017 and escaping his responsibility to pay back those he had conned. His reprehensible deeds really cast a pallor over his Rider show if you let them.
Credit: Kamen Rider Wiki
Kamen Rider Black (1987-1988) Episode 1: “Black! Transform!”
One of the most popular riders, and even just watching the first episode kicked me in the face! What a show! Embracing a more occultic/magic feel, Black focuses on Kotaro Minami (and his best friend, Nobuhiko Akizuki) as they are kidnapped by a weird tribe of ghostly wizards (they look like Marvel’s Moon Knight). The wizards are part of a group called Gorgom, once again an international evil society, but this time they capture Minami and Akizuki on their 19th birthday and start their nasty cyborg experiments on them to give one (both?) the power of their leader, Creation King. Naturally, Minami escapes (and maybe Akizuki as well…?), and Minami is hounded by an army of spider men. The episode is filled with inspired action and haunting sequences, with the Gorgom walking on walls, the army of spiders creeping into a building with a viscerally disquieting series of shots, and some punishing action sequences. The Rider’s awesome bike can also operate independently and attack the episode’s critter armies without Black astride. In the battles, Minami really gets thrown around, and later the impressively armored Black appears and gets his licks in—and it’s satisfying seeing the dude bust face for revenge and justice. That crunchy satisfaction is heightened by an alternating synth-and-rock score that creates a truly delicious first episode and had me craving for more.
Credit: Bilibili
Kamen Rider Black RX (1988-1989) Episode 1 : “The Child of the Sun! RX”, and episode 2 “Bathed in Light! RX”
When I was a kid, I remember when Masked Rider appeared in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, and how cool I thought he was—at first. The commercials that showed some cool monster suits also had my heart pumping, especially an impressive insect monster that battles Masked Rider in a warehouse. Well, that show ultimately disappointed me, but going back and watching the original Japanese show from which Masked Rider was adapted, those old memories came springing back to me–for better or worse. Kamen Rider RX, the last Showa Kamen Rider, and a show that JUST crossed over into the Heisei period, is a continuation of Kamen Rider Black, and even without my negative childhood memories, it seems obvious this is a bit of a step down. The first episode doesn’t have nearly the visceral impact of Kamen Rider Black, with a much tamer tone. Where Black was creepy and cool with armies of deadly spiders, RX has mutants stealing kids’ bicycles. The story takes place after Black, and Minami is now a helicopter pilot. When he encounters strange energy-emitting spikes jutting out from a lake, a series of events is triggered, and crystalline growths begin cropping up around the city (ala Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla five years later). The Crisis Kingdom has come to take over the earth, and they have already analyzed Kamen Rider Black and devised a way to neutralize him. They capture him, destroy his ability to transform, and chuck him into space—but the sun apparently mutates him, and he returns in a slightly new form to do battle again.
One of the innovations of this series is that now the rider is powered by the sun (like some incarnations of Superman) rather than by the wind. Whereas the old Kamen Rider and many of his offshoots gained strength by letting wind rush through a turbine in their belt, now RX gets power whenever he is exposed to sunlight—which becomes apparent in the second episode. Instead of turbines, I suppose the red circles on his belt are more like solar panels. The second episode explains some of these aspects of the new rider as he faces off against a scary-good, Terminator-esque cyborg who chases our hero down in a yellow car. RX further has a lightsaber (sunsaber?) and his “Rider Kick” has evolved into a drop kick instead of the usual flying kick. In the first two episodes, there seems to be a theme in which the badguys are tying to analyze the Rider’s abilities so as to discover the best way to defeat the hero, which I like, too—though the assembly of goofy villains in a dark base feels a bit too Power Rangers. Still, something about that driving rock-and-synth soundtrack and that heroic theme song sends me, man.
I thought about a lot of things inside the mouth of that old lizard as he shook me back and forth. I thought it was really slippery and slimy inside a dinosaur. I thought about the latest TV dramas I would probably miss that night as I was being digested in the stomach of an overgrown reptile. And I thought, yep. The old lizard, “King T-Rex” really is a tyrannosaurus.
You might think I would be screaming my head off, but such was strangely not the case. I was numb and scared and mute instead. Maybe when you are actually eaten by a dinosaur, you figure you really have nothing left to lose and there is just nothing to say. And, I mean, if you have to die anyway, it’s hard to imagine a more dramatic way to go than down the gullet of a previously extinct super predator, and you kinda just gotta accept it.
However, it smells very bad inside a dinosaur’s mouth. I don’t recommend the experience.
And the old lizard seemed determined to make the experience as unpleasant as possible, accomplishing said goal by physically turning me over and over with his enormous tongue, or nibbling at my sides with his ghastly blunt chompers. It was kind of freaky to be honest. I think I finally yelled at some point—I can’t remember clearly, but somehow I ended up with rex saliva in my mouth. My head clocked against the beast’s incisors and I blurted out some colorful profanities. At one point I believe that I accidentally belted the dinosaur’s uvula because the big shmuck choked and grunted and jerked in a way that I might have found funny if I hadn’t been inside his mouth. Then by some miracle of maneuvering I felt the beast tickling my armpit with the tip of his tongue, which might be the grossest thing that has ever happened to me.
And it was then, through the fog of fear and the crackling of panic, that I realized the old lizard wasn’t going to eat me.
A few moments later the mouth opened, light streamed in with a flash and a rush of air, a shock of cool assaulted my damp body, and then I was falling and waggling and spitting and gagging all at once before whomping to the sidewalk. The fall was abrupt and short, and I only had time for one burst of expletives before I crumpled in a pile, thankful and slimed, outside the dinosaur again.
“Well,” said the tyrannosaur, staring down at me. “What do you think? Am I really a tyrannosaurus?”
That grin on that lizard’s face was the biggest I had ever seen it. I crawled away from him in as dignified a manner as I could muster.
“Well,” I said, gulping for air. “Well. Well. Uh, well. You have a very convincing tongue. Very realistic. Still not sure what to think of your teeth, though.”
The tyrannosaurus cleared its throat.
“I have a very convincing stomach as well,” he said. “At least it’s been convincing enough for me as long as I have been alive. It reminds me regularly of its existence—but I never want to put YOU inside of it, no matter how hungry I might get.”
“Oh?” I said. “Because you are so fond of me, I suppose?”
The tyrannosaurs somehow raised a scaly eyebrow.
“You look terribly unappetizing now that I have seen you without your pants on,” he said.
I looked down. Sure enough, I had been completely depantsed at some point whilst inside the mouth of the monster. Somehow I had missed that minor detail in the process of savoring the unique experience of being vomited out onto my own lawn. I rather awkwardly flopped my hands about in a vain search for my misplaced trousers.
The tyrannosaurus coughed once, and my trousers came flying out of his open maw directly into my face.
“There you go,” said the tyrannosaurus. “Off to breakfast, then?”
Kamen Rider Amazon (1974-1975) Episode 1 “Man or Beast? The Cool Guy Who Came from the Jungle!”
Maybe the best thing ever transmitted on television, Kamen Rider Amazon takes the rider formula and completely turns it on its head. Here, our hero is basically Japanese Tarzan turned into a magical transforming hero by Incan magic to fight a giant floating red head (that has ten faces sticking out of it). Japanese Tarzan—calling himself Amazon—is tasked with traveling to Tokyo, where he meets with an old geezer named Professor Kousaka and his family. Another evil spider man appears, and we get more tragic deaths and insane violence. Amazon here transforms into a lizard-themed rider who bites off the spider’s arms! Absolutely bat-guano nuts, the story takes the brave choice of creating a main character who can’t talk and who bounces around and eats bananas, and when the massive demon head swings into the picture, serious questions about drug use amongst the creators started blossoming in my noggin. Truly a joyous frolic of unexpected garish, bloody, joyful nonsense, and topping X as my favorite so far!
Image from MyDramaList
Kamen Rider Stronger (1975) Episode 1 “I am the Electric Human Stronger!” and 2 “The Secret of Stronger and Tackle”
A memorable first episode with a wacky monster-of-the-week and a MUCH lighter tone than previous entries. Stronger opens with a slinky-metal kangaroo monster (with a joey in its belly) attacking a hovercraft. A dude on a motorbike, Shigeru Jo, chases down the hovercraft and he, with the help of Electro-Wave Human Tackle (a ladybug-themed female Rider), temporarily defeat the attacking thugs. It turns out Jo is actually Kamen Rider Stronger, and we later witness him fight an army of underlings on their own bikes—a first that I have seen in the series. The baddies are called Black Satan this time, and the goodies are constantly bantering and one-upping each other for the best hero as they take out the goons. Certainly not as wild as Amazon, nor as dark and brooding as the first three entries, nevertheless the carefree spirit carries a charm of its own in the first episode. In the second episode, “The Secret of Stronger and Tackle,” we get the two heroes’ backstory in truncated form—as a college student, Jo volunteers to become a subject to Black Satan’s experimentation and thus is transformed into a cyborg, introducing the first Rider to become Cyborgized completely by choice rather than necessity. However, Jo has a device that prevents Black Satan from taking over his mind as they intended, and so after his augmentation, he kicks all sorts of enemy hinder. On his way to the exit, he stumbles on Tackle, who was a victim of Black Satan, and they end up escaping together and becoming a battle unit for justice! It’s all kinds of wholesome, even if Jo later exhibits some pretty extreme sexism towards his partner, and Tackle in general is presented as less capable as Jo. As for horror elements, the transformation of the machine monsters is shown, with spidery creatures crawling into victims’ ears to take over their minds (ala Heinlein’s The Puppetmasters or the flesh-eating creeps in the Parasyte manga)—but ear-wrigglers is about as yick as the episode gets. If anything, Stronger feels like a clear precedent for late Heisei and Reiwa riders and their hyper-colorful antics and revving motions to power up.
Image from MyDramaList
Kamen Rider Shin/Skyrider (1979-1980) Episode 1 “The Cyborg Flies in the Sky”
After the previous shows increasing silliness, Toei strikes back with an attempt to return to their roots with Kamen Rider in 1979—often known as Kamen Rider Shin (“shin” means “new” in this case) or Skyrider. The hero in this case is Hiroshi Tsukuba, a hang gliding enthusiast out camping with friends who spots a group of motorcycle bullies harassing a lone car while he is up in the air. He somehow manages to descend upon the embattled vehicle and attacks the assembled baddies, who reveal themselves to be the latest group of minions working for the latest iteration of SHOCKER, this time called Neo-Shocker. In the scuffle, he saves another righteous scientist, but eventually as must happen in these stories, he is injured and his body reworked to become a new Rider with a design similar to the original, but with brown pecs instead of green. A novel aspect from this version of the hero include his newfound ability to fly with the twist of a lever, soaring through the sky ala Superman. The show also rebounds back into a horror vibe—particularly in a sequence wherein a group of campers are pulled into the dirt and murdered (evoking for me The Night of the Demon and Drag Me to Hell. I couldn’t help but wonder why the villains don’t pull that hellish stunt on any and all foes they want to put on ice, but I digress.) Though some of the action feels poorly staged, with a particularly cheesy accidental transformation by Hiroshi into his rider form when he just happens to punch a minion with his fist at the right angle, the episode still rushes by at a breakneck pace with imaginative set pieces and (I thought) some of the grooviest background music in the series yet. Not nearly as narratively punchy as some previous entries, with little in the way of overt mystery, the return of the tragic tone and harder-edged creep factor do re-imbue some of the unique qualities of the Rider mythos into the series, and I like that.
Last year, in preparation for watching Shin Ultraman, I thought it would be great fun to watch the first episode or two of all the Ultraman series ever made–which proved so enormously delightful that, about eight shows in, I started writing my impressions of each show as I went along. They were just short impressions, but as the shows progressed, and I became more and more familiar with the tropes and themes and character types, and as I saw the special effects evolve, and the different eras, and monsters, and designs, the enterprise just delighted me more and more. I want to go back and write up impressions for the first eight shows, and then share what I put together here or in another venue, but as they are not ready yet, I will instead share another project that I started up this year–this one involving the equally famous Kamen Rider franchise.
Those following the world of sci-fi and fantasy films will know that Shin Kamen Rider was released about a month ago in Japan. The latest in legendary anime-and-film director Hideaki Anno’s (and sometimes Shinji Higuchi’s) oeuvre of reimagined Japanese science-fiction media properties, it hasn’t done as well as the previous three, and I didn’t care for the movie so much myself… but I still used its release as an excuse to visit the first episode or two of all the Kamen Rider shows. It was such a good time last year with Ultraman, I thought it would be equally fun to do the same in 2023 and educate myself on the grasshopper-themed hero on a bike.
I was wrong. It’s been even more fun so far! Though visiting them all can be a bit exhausting (there are over thirty Kamen Rider shows, plus more streaming originals–and adapted versions, and… well, you get the idea), and I am not quite finished yet, I have been flabbergasted to find if anything I prefer Kamen Rider over Ultraman now in some significant ways. Whereas Ultraman shows often feel quite similar to one another, with limited experimentation, the Kamen Rider shows constantly reinvent themselves with utterly outlandish new versions and worlds. While Ultraman also teased more adult oriented shows (sometimes with a lot of success, such as with Nexus), Kamen Rider has had darker and scarier stuff from the start, so when they dive deeper into adult territory, it feels more natural. But KR plays the gamut–from bloody and scary, to utterly juvenile, from Japanese Tarzan, to detectives, to medical doctors, to space travel, video games, ghosts, and more. It’s been so much fun for me to taste test these shows, and I want to share what I noticed bit by bit here in a series of posts. Enjoy!
Kamen Rider episode 1: The Eerie Spider Man (1971)
The very first episode of any Kamen Rider series is a shock to the tokusatsu universe, at least for me—here we have what amounts to a horror tokusatsu hero. Takeshi Hongo, super-scientist (with an IQ of 600!!) and motorcyclist, is kidnapped by SHOCKER, an evil organization along the lines of James Bond’s SPECTRE, but with more monsters. SHOCKER transforms Hongo into a cyborg to serve their evil ends, but before they can finish and fry his brain, he escapes, and in the ensuing carnage vows to fight SHOCKER and its evil manifestations. The atmosphere of the episode is surprisingly eerie and sometimes downright frightening, with dark shadows and shrieking sound effects from the baddies, as well as bubbling gruesome deaths wherein humans boil into nothing. The effects are captured with primitive measures (such as reverse photography of soap bubbles), but something about that analog feel makes the scenes more spine-tingling. Spider Man, apparently a deliberate poke at Marvel’s hero, is a colorful red-and-black fiend with webs and darts and a trio of gorgeous femme fatales in nasty face paint. One of the most inspired plot points has the daughter of Hongo’s friend convinced that he (Hongo) killed her father in a tussle towards the end of the first episode, leaving our hero in an emotional state. A powerful and provoking first episode.
Kamen Rider V3 Episodes 1 and 2: “Rider No. 1: His Name is V3!” and “Last Testament of the Double Riders” (1973-74)
Kamen Rider V3 is a direct sequel to the astonishingly long Kamen Rider series, which nearly ran one hundred episodes before concluding. Hongo is back with his partner, a new rider named Hayato (who must have turned up in the last series at some point—when transformed, he looks virtually identical to Hongo’s Masked Rider cyborg form). A new evil group has now assembled from the ashes of SHOCKER. The new group, called Destron, is targeting Hongo and Hayato’s student, Shiro Kazami. Kazami wants Hongo and Hayato to transform him into a third rider so they can fight together more effectively, but the “Double Riders” don’t want to put Kazami through the miseries of cyborgness. However, as more and more monsters appear, Kazami gets critically injured, forcing the Double Riders to rescue him through cyborg surgery. V3 is a more colorful version of the rider, with twin fans in his belt to power him up with wind. The new two-part pilot story is not QUITE as spooky and weird as the first episode of the previous series, with more bright skies and a decidedly more cheerful palate, but still—we get goosebump-inducing catacombs and a “scissor jaguar” that kills multiple people via his stabby hands. Ultraman Leo would seemingly ape this idea of previous heroes training and being replaced by newer versions the very next year, and the end of the pilot arc provides another startling cliffhanger involving a turtle and a nuke. Not quite as impactful or revelatory as the first episode of the first series, but memorable nonetheless.
Kamen Rider X (1974) Episode 1 “X-X-X Rider is Born!”
This episode feels like a complete reboot rather than a continuation of the previous story. Here, Keisuke Jin (our hero) arrives back in Tokyo from a trip only to be attacked by goons. He manages to escape, and visits his nutty professor father in a hidden freaky laboratory. The goons, led by a Neptune-themed monster man who can vomit white foam that disintegrates humans into bone, go on a rampage, eventually tracking down Jin and his father and mortally wounding both. This time, dad transforms his son into a Kamen Rider cyborg, and there is some convoluted stuff, and it turns out Papa Jin has a secret island base with mega technology. Soon, Kamen Rider X is zooming around on his aquatic super bike and fighting the Neptune guy. A rollicking good time with intrigue and insanity to spare, not to mention even nastier deaths (Blood! Bones!) and surprising betrayals, I really enjoyed the bombastic chutzpah with this entry.
I opened my eyes. The head of a dinosaur was in my window. I leapt a full four feet out of my bed, hitting my head on the ceiling and crying out at the top of my lungs.
“Shh, you will wake the neighbors,” said the tyrannosaur.
“What are you doing?” I said. “What time is it?”
The tyrannosaur smiled his big, toothy smile.
“I don’t know how to read your clocks,” he said. “I just got up with the sun. And I am hungry.”
I looked at the clock.
“It’s barely five o’clock!” I exclaimed. “I can’t get up now! This is my favorite time to sleep!”
“We need to go get breakfast,” said the tyrannosaur. “I assume you are a man of your word. You said you would have breakfast with me.”
“I said, and I quote, ‘I have work tomorrow,’” I retorted.
“Yes,” said the tyrannosaur. “It’s your first official day as my guide. That is what you meant, right?”
“No!” I said. “I am an electrician! You should see the pile of electronics I need to fix scattered all over my house, not to mention the buildings around town with wiring problems! How did you think I could afford this house? And that garage that you slept in last night?”
The tyrannosaur smiled blankly at me.
“So are you ready for breakfast?” he said.
“Let me sleep for another hour!” I yelled.
I pulled the blankets over my head and tried to sleep. However, the image of a tyrannosaur watching me through the window kept barging into my head. That image was not conducive for sleep. Neither was the loud crunching sound coming from outside. I think I may have lain there a full thirty seconds before I threw the blankets off and dashed to the window. I leaned out, and my eyes bulged when I saw him.
The tyrannosaur was still standing next to my house, but now he was eating my bushes very noisily.
“Those are my bushes!” I bleated. “They aren’t food! Are you really a tyrannosaurus? You aren’t, are you?”
Hearing that, the tyrannosaur stood up straighter and taller than I had ever seen him before and he gave me what I think was an indignant scowl.
“I am indeed a tyrannosaurus,” said the old lizard.
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Since when do tyrannosaurs eat bushes? Prove to me that you are a tyrannosaur!”
“You want me to prove it?” said the tyrannosaur, a light in his eye.
“Yes!” I shouted stubbornly.
And with that as his signal, the tyrannosaur pounced forward and snapped me up in his jaws.
Note that I originally wrote this review for Kaiju and Henshin Manga, a manga Facebook group covering one of my favorite genres. I lightly edited it for publishing here, but the content is almost the same.
Usually giant monsters in Japan tend to be pretty kid-friendly, and while Ultraman has his occasional very bloody moments ripping and cutting kaiju apart, and Gamera might douse the camera with brightly colored blood on occasion, nevertheless the mood is usually kept light and airy without much real fear. Shingo Honda’s manga Creature! changes all that with a heavy dose of gross-out freaky horror and massive, wicked-looking Lovecraftian monstrosities.
The story: Highschooler Akira Takashiro is trying to up his game in basketball and overcome his rival for love interest Miku, who goes to a different school. But just as he gets drafted into playing in the next basketball match, what seems a massive earthquake shakes up the school, and suddenly hideous tentacled monsters are ripping and slicing his classmates to pieces. He manages to escape with the class president in tow, then teams up with a nerd and a punk, but the outside world is no safer than inside, as the city teems with a menagerie of toothy, massive creatures with a thirst for human flesh. Can Akira survive and reunite with his lost love at the station? Will the earth remain under the dominance of humankind? Where did these monsters come from?
We don’t get all the answers in the first volume, but we do get a fast-paced and deliriously gory story. The Japanese title is “Hakaijuu,” which I have heard combines the Japanese word for “monster” with the verb for “to vomit,” so it isn’t surprising that we get a lot of guts and gore—one of the most shocking moments being a scene in which we peek into a giant monster’s mouth to see Akira’s classmates melting in digestive juices. The monster designs themselves are varied and sport endless tentacles, teeth, and eyes in all the wrong places, but for a monster buff like myself, I really enjoyed seeing their insane countenances and abilities, and especially the destruction left in their wake as they preyed upon the kid protagonists and battled each other for supremacy. Character motivations are somewhat basic, which doesn’t mean bad, but still… Akira and his friends sometimes feel like archetypes more than individuals. They still are at least sharply delineated from each other, and I know from reading the first 17 or so volumes that some of them will eventually go through major character arcs, but they aren’t really allowed to piece together much of a personality or backstory before they are up and running away from the monsters.
A note on the translation, since I have read both the original Japanese and the English version of the first volume: The dialogue can be a bit wooden in the English sometimes, but it wasn’t enough to detract so much from my enjoyment. Also, I was disappointed that the English version didn’t include Shingo’s little notes to readers that appear at the beginning of each volume. He talks in one of them about how disappointed his father was that he was doing THAT kind of manga!
For me, despite some flaws, the sometimes pedestrian plot is enough of a justification for mad monster mayhem, at least for starters, and Honda’s artwork is fantastically detailed. When the big monsters appear, too. the creatures an impressive sense of scale and sheer awesomeness. While the first book kind of feels like a zombie apocalypse with the zombies replaced by toothy giant monsters, nevertheless I think the story fills an important niche in giant monster fiction that had gone relatively untouched before Attack on Titan came along—and Creature! is much more extreme in violence compared to its hairy younger monster sibling. If you have the tolerance for the blood and gore, Honda’s manga is stupid entertainment worthy at least of a nibble and a bite.
Before the old lizard moved into my garage, the city of Final Pumpkin was making all kinds of plans to spruce up the joint with a bed and dinosaur-sized shower and a variety of other accoutrements. Basically they wanted to make my humble two-car garage into a five-star dino hotel. Well, they wanted to until they saw the incredible bill from the architect, designers, and plumbers.
“Don’t worry,” said the old lizard. “I am a dinosaur. I am used to sleeping on hard floors.”
Frankly, I had been looking forward to the dinosaur-sized jacuzzi that Mayor Pilky had proposed. I figured the dinosaur wouldn’t be using it ALL the time, after all, so whenever he was out with his fans… well, who wouldn’t want to take a dunk in a jacuzzi the size of most public pools?
Actually, it seemed like once I agreed to house the old lizard, all the promises from the mayor kind ofdried up. The enormous paycheck lost a few zeroes now that I was the officially sponsored t-rex ambassador. After some meetings and an interview with the local newspaper and a limited amount of celebrity, I ended up a schmuck with a dinosaur holding a pillow on my front lawn.
“You’re the ambassador,” said the old lizard. “Guide me.”
I showed him the remote control for the garage.
“Push this button to open the garage,” I said. “Push this button to close.”
Somehow the tyrannosaur managed to hold the remote control in one claw, the pillow in the other. I turned to go.
“What’s for breakfast in the morning?” the dinosaur asked.
“I’m not your cook,” I said. “I’m not getting paid enough for that. The food bills alone would bankrupt me.”
“But you are my guide, right?” the dinosaur said.
“Yes,” I said. “I can guide you to a tree in the morning, or walk you to a nice restaurant.”
I wasn’t really serious.
“Okay, then let’s have breakfast together tomorrow morning,” said the dinosaur.
The old lizard must have thought I had been serious.
“I have work tomorrow,” I said.
“Yes, your new job as my guide,” the dinosaur said. “I am looking forward to breakfast tomorrow.”
And then the tyrannosaur ducked into my garage. His tail disappeared inside, and I stood there watching as the garage door slowly squealed shut in front of me. I wasn’t too sure about this arrangement, but I was glad I could keep an eye on that suspicious lizard at least.
And I kept thinking about those strange stones I had found under the house. What could they be?
Originally written in 2021 for the Facebook group, Kaiju and Henshin Manga. I lightly revised a few things for this reprint, but the text is mostly the same.
Monster Tamer Girls vol. 1
In 2021 young actress Kaylee Hottie charmed many viewers with her depiction of Jia, a deaf Iwi girl from Skull Island who could communicate with King Kong via sign language. The character of Jia takes a longstanding kaiju trope—the woman who connects/communicates/saves the monster—and adds a slightly new twist. Usually the female who connects with the monster is older, and may even be a romantic interest to the beast (the original Ann Darrow from King Kong (1933) being an obvious reference), but Jia is neither of those; she is more like a tiny friend to our favorite giant ape. However, whatever the role, women have been communicating with, befriending, tempting, and controlling giant monsters from the start of mega-monster fiction—whether as priestesses, twin fairies, jungle women, or just naïve ladies in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This trope was made the center of a two-volume manga series back in 2014-2016, released in English in 2018 via Yen Press, and written plus illustrated by Mujirushi Shimazaki (that HAS to be a pen name—“mujirushi” just means “off-brand”). She took the classic girls-and-monsters bit and made it into a tale of cute girls doing cute things with giant monsters with Monster Tamer Girls—and it’s a lot of fun.
The story goes that in 1999 giant monsters appeared around the world, and, while destructive at first, people soon discovered that the giant beasts were not inherently violent and could be tamed via the singing voices of prepubescent girls (who knows why). Thus schools were opened up specifically for training young women in the ways of kaiju calming and handling, and Monster Tamer Girls follows Ion Hidaka and Sora Misumaru as they start out their monster schooling careers. When they arrive, they are given the task of looking after the local grumpy giant monster in the woods to break them in as kaiju freshies. This monster is notorious for being recalcitrant and tough to handle, but it takes a shine to shy Hidaka, who shows great talent in connecting with monsters through her powerful voice. Thus the adventures begin, as various strange beings continually emerge into the tale and cause trouble, and friendships between both monster and human form as a consequence.
The girls are a big focus, with their foibles and charms, each new recruit trying to fit in, struggling to figure out their place, how to connect with monsters, and dealing with their dreams. The girls are treated with a light touch—they have problems and faults, but they aren’t tragic and dark characters, and their lives seem a bit like marshmallow pudding: saccharine and sweet and light, perfect if you’re in the mood, bad for those who dislike the fluff. The monsters are cute, too, and have their own issues—often relational—that the girls must confront and help solve.
For me, I really enjoyed the airy, amusing misadventures of Hidaka and Misumaru. They are far-removed from the punched-up action and explosions in most monster-fare, and folks with a taste for the silly and calm storytelling of something like Flying Witch will probably find something to enjoy here.
The art is clean and easy to follow, and the girls are not sexualized (beyond short skirts). They are charming, if a bit empty, but since the girls are drawn in a similar fashion without many distinguishing features, sometimes I found myself getting confused as to who was who. Monsters, meanwhile, are illustrated in the same low-detail, high-adorability frame. The designs are not that memorable, and come across as fairly generic, but they suit the purpose of pushing the story forward.
I would totally recommend this series for kaiju fans looking for something fun that takes a familiar trope and twists it in a new and fun way. References to the greater kaiju fandom can also be found, and it’s just nice to relax with an undemanding piece of entertainment that makes you smile—especially in these stressful times.
I thought about what to do all week. For me, the old lizard was a really big mystery—a mystery that a lot of people just seemed to accept and celebrate. Of course I didn’t understand how a tyrannosaur could still be alive today. I wondered why he could talk. I wondered why he didn’t have sharp teeth, why he was eating plants, and why he didn’t just eat everything that moved instead. But most of all I wondered why he wanted to live in my garage. Maybe it’s because the question was about my stuff. It’s hard to give up things that you paid good money for. Especially when you can’t even figure out a good reason for the sacrifice.
I wandered out back to the hole where the tyrannosaurus had apparently slept for many years. It had already become a tourist spot, and a fence had been erected around the area. There were some tourists taking pictures of just about every dirt clod in sight. I simply stood, staring at the hole, trying to imagine what it would be like to sleep in a dark cave for hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of years.
I thought the old lizard must have had a really bad crick in his neck when he woke up.
I thought about the tyrannosaur footprints we found around this area as well. There were a few in scattered places, and some were not particularly hidden. I wondered how no one had found them before. Maybe there could be more underneath my house or garage, like where I was living literally was his old stomping grounds. There was a crawlspace that led underneath the garage, so it might be worth checking out. I got down in the dirt and crawled inside.
I don’t know what I expected to find. Mostly I just founddirt, spider webs, and a few snakes. The dirt was too loose to have fossilized dinosaur footprints in it—of course. But that didn’t mean that the old lizard didn’t used to walk around right where my garage was now.
I found a few unusual rocks underneath the garage that seemed somehow… organically shaped in some way. I decided to take them out with me. I didn’t want to come away empty-handed from crawling around in the dirt for a good thirty minutes, even if all I came out with were a few ugly rocks.
As I stood up and dusted myself off, I saw Charlie standing a few feet away.
“Oh, there you are,” Charlie said. “I was looking for you. Man, am I glad that dinosaur isn’t here. Anyway, I was just wondering if I could borrow your truck for a week.”
“A week?” I said.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “I figure it’s better if I ask you to borrow it for a week rather than come over and ask every evening, haha.”
“Haha,” I said.
I didn’t laugh. I just said, “haha.”
“So what do you say?” asked Charlie.
I don’t know why, but I said, “Okay, Charlie. You can borrow my truck.”
Why on earth did I always let him borrow my stuff?
“Thanks, my man,” said Charlie. “Again, really glad I caught you when that t-rex wasn’t around. That guy scares me to death. If he was here all the time, I don’t think I could ever come over. So, uh, can I have the keys?”
I didn’t reply, but I did smile as I handed over the keychain.
It is Easter. I like writing stories. I wanted to share a story which I wrote for a chapel speech I gave earlier this year. I also drew the illustrations. I have been a Christian all my life, though these days I really have a hard time embracing the teachings and it’s hard for me to say with certainty what is true. However, I keep hoping that there is a loving God out there, and this story is kind of an expression of that hope. I really wanted to write a Christian-inspired science-fiction story, and predictably took some inspiration from from C. S. Lewis’ sci-fi trilogy with the following. The title is a pun playing off of the dual meanings of “body”–and the Japanese title is also a pun, though it works differently… It’s “Hoshi no Karada,” which means “Star Body”–but the word for “desirable” or “to want” is “Hoshii,” and so I was wanting to kind of implicate that meaning in my story, too. A Desired Body. Happy reading–and Happy Easter!
The Japanese version follows the English. Japanese translation provided by Yukakology from Fiverr, with additional edits from my Japanese tutor hero and my coworker Yukiko. All artwork was done by me on paper with pencil, then scanned. Apologies–it’s not great art!
The ATOM pods turned in the gravity pull, detecting the nearby planet and its riches before we could come out of the long sleep. I felt adrenaline as I awoke, knowing that something good had brought me to life. Even just looking out of the sensor window, I could see that the world below us was beautiful, full of treasure we could take for ourselves.
“It’s a good one, I can see even from here,” came Evelyn’s voice over the interphone. “This planet will be our biggest profit yet.”
“Let’s take it, then,” I said. “We’ve been floating for six days. Finally we have something to wake up for, huh?”
We turned our pods toward the planet, and we fell from the sky. Our pods, egg shaped, burned lines of fire through the atmosphere, but the shells protected us as we streaked towards land. We skimmed over the water, the stretching oceans, the shimmering flames of the nearest star glittering above us as we searched for a lifeform we could use to adapt into and begin to take everything for ourselves.
“Remember,” I said. “The lifeform we choose has to be big enough that we can get a good DNA sample. We need to be able to take the organic matter into our biosuits in enough volume or else the mutation will be incomplete. We want to make sure everything goes smoothly so we can really enjoy ourselves.”
“Yeah, I got it,” said Evelyn. “Plenty of life here to choose from, too.”
And there was. Strange bird-like creatures fluttering and singing through the air. Long pin-legged insect-like things dashing across the surface of the lakes. Billions of tendrils poking out of the hills and reaching for the sun. But we needed something big, and these lifeforms—we could take their lives later, but we needed something large for our adaption engines to really work.
“How about that tree?” Evelyn said. “Over there. Biggest tree I ever saw. Lush. Powerful. We can take it, and it will transform us, make us suitable for this world.”
I turned my ATOM pod in the sky, triggered the shade mechanism in my viewing port so that the streaming sunrays wouldn’t dazzle me, and took in the organism before me.
It was like a tree, certainly. Hundreds of feet tall, with gargantuan limbs splayed out, welcoming us in. The outer material—the skin or bark of the thing—was an intricate play of dark and light, whites and blacks, and splotches of gray. Instead of leaves, the thing had bubbly orbs of glittering green that seemed to suck the energy from the atmosphere and beam out heat themselves. But most beautiful of all were the fruit. Massive hanging bulbous fruit, juicy and inviting, thick with organic material that would be perfect for our adaptation engines.
I sucked in air across my newly-grown teeth.
“It’s against the rules to use the trees,” I said, though I liked what I saw. “Sometimes the trees don’t make for good adaptations, you know. It might not…”
“It’s fine,” Evelyn said. “We aren’t going to find anything nicer than this. Those old guidelines about trees are outdated anyway—our new adaptation engines have been updated and can handle the transference even from plant life.”
She didn’t wait for me to respond. Already her ATOM pod was diving. It plunged into one of the enormous red fruit, larger even that her own space-traversing machine. Immediately the pod began to transform, merge with the fruit, and gorge itself on the available organic material.
“It’s amazing, Guy,” Evelyn said. “The fruit, this tree—it will provide everything we need to adapt for this world, so we can take anything we want. The power—it’s astonishing!”
Any time we wanted to use a world and make it ours, we first had to merge with organic material in that world so that our bodies could live there. If we just tried to exit our pods in our newgrown bodies, we would be too vulnerable, weak and fresh in a possibly dangerous environment. The rules, though… they said we should adapt using an animal—flesh and blood, not the tree.
“It’s good, Guy!” Evelyn cried through the interphone. “It’s so good! You need this!”
I couldn’t bear to stay away, hearing Evelyn’s excited voice. My ATOM pod seared down from the sky almost beyond my control, and I bonded with a second fruit, the pod hitting it with a loud, wet pop. Soon the skin of my pod was pulling in organic material—I could hear the juices gurgling around me, assimilating, pulling through the membrane of my cosmic machine.
And I did feel it. The power. The knowledge of this world that would sustain us, the DNA and the pieces of this gorgeous world that were becoming a part of me.
Yes. With this power, we would become the creatures we needed to be to live in this environment, and absorb the truth, the facts of how to adapt through the elegance of the DNA of this amazing lifeform that obviously was thriving here. I felt my body infused with everything we needed to rule and conquer this world.
Within a few hours, our bodies had been converted to something greater than we could ever have imagined, and we emerged from the cosmic membranes of our pods. My body was larger, muscular, my eyes sharper, my mind dancing with the information of a million lives, and I knew how I could make this world my own.
I fell dozens of feet to the floor of the world, and the tendril-like plants whispered away from my gripping feet. I roared and shook my fists at the sky, and I heard Evelyn cry out her own victory not far away. We dashed through the undergrowth to each other, each step cementing the use and the power of our bodies, making us more confident in our new skins.
We crashed into each other, and I lifted her above my head, and our eyes flashed as we looked on each other in naked triumph.
“We are masters of this world,” Evelyn said. “We will take everything we need.”
“Yes, but less us prepare ourselves fully,” I said, and reached to pull off strips of black bark from the tree. “We need to protect our new skin as it hardens for this world.”
The black bark oozed and shifted onto our bodies after we applied the clothing chemicals that shifted the structures of the molecules and created living vestments we could use to cover ourselves. Soon we were running, laughing, taking anything we wanted from our new world.
Nothing could stand against us. The creatures of our new home, for all their variety and beauty, could not overcome our space weaponry, nor our perfect new bodies and the power within us. Again and again, everything we found, anything we wanted, we took, the treasures, the fruits, all things of value bowed before us and went into our collection modules, crunched down to microscopic size via the portable black holes housed inside.
“This world is the richest one found yet in the history of our race!” cried Evelyn. “Look at the minerals, the rich biodiversity, the metals housed in the hills, the quality of the oceans and all that we can yet learn!”
I laughed, and I leapt dozens of feet in the air, pouncing over the shrubbery, crushing everything underfoot, sucking all that I wanted into my portable black hole.
But as the days passed, I realized something was wrong. I woke up with the knowledge that something had broken inside of myself, and I felt a streak of fear stab through my mind. I stood from the bed of pulverized downy cotton matter that had made my bed, and something gave in my leg.
I looked down, and my skin had cracked. The black leathery bark clothing was starting to split. I desperately tried to run, and found my legs seemed to splinter beneath me.
“Evelyn!” I yelled. “What is happening?”
She emerged from behind the cover of overlapping enormous leaves, but I knew from one glance that the flaw was in her, too. The power that I had seen that first day in her new body had halved and broken. Something creaked in her bones as she turned to look at me.
“Death is in this organic stuff we have taken in,” she said. “Did it not fully adapt us? Did the technology fail?”
I grabbed her arms, feeling the pain jag through my fingers as I held her.
“You did this!” I said. “The guidelines warned against using the trees when making the adaptations! Why wouldn’t you listen to me?”
“If you are so wise, then why did you follow and use the fruit for your own adaptation?” Evelyn retorted. “You are no wiser than I!”
“Do you both find yourselves so full of excuses?” came a voice then. “Listen to yourselves, and see how you have led yourselves to destruction.”
Someone was stepping through the flora nearby. The footsteps were like thunder. Yet there was a gentleness in the voice that reverberated through our hearts.
It was the Man. Larger than either of us. Perfectly adapted for this world. Somehow I knew right away we were supposed to adapt through this organism, and not through just any tree or thing we could find in our rush to take and make everything our own.
The Man stepped closer, taking us by the hand, leading us through the underbrush. We walked with him, tears in our eyes, our bodies failing, cracking, falling apart. Even just a few steps and I could hardly breathe, could not keep up with his quickening steps.
“I will carry you, but you must let go of your burdens,” said the Man. “There isn’t time nor space for you to carry all the things you have stolen. Let go of them, and I will carry you.”
What could we do? I did not want to drop the packages, the fruit of our labors, but my knuckles burned with pain as my body continued to shiver and crack. The black hole module fell from my grasp and into the swirling undergrowth.
“Faster, we need to go faster,” said the Man, and his glistening muscles pulled us along, and we saw the tree again from whence we had come, and He brought us there, and we saw He was crying now, His mouth pulled back in a grimace of sorrow.
“You will need to crawl back into your pods,” He said. “If you will follow me, I can save you, but I cannot force you to take the positions. I need to take my own.”
He put us beside the ATOM pods we had arrived in, and then he was climbing up the tree. I peered across at Evelyn, and she back at me, curled in our painful places. We knew if we climbed into the pods, we would lose everything we had ever known, and all the treasure we had tried to take. But what choice was there?
I coughed and spluttered as I pulled myself into the pod, my black bark clothing curling off of me. I was like a baby, barely able to move, and all I could do was weep, and realize the depth of my selfishness. I saw out of the viewport the Man had taken His position indeed. He was on the tree now, becoming one with it, His arms splayed out across the tree’s limbs, the thorns I had not seen before piercing into him, and His blood was joining the tree. As the pod began to take on His organic matter, I could feel the transformation begin.
I could not see Evelyn. I could only see the Man, and He died, shattering as the tree took Him, and He cried out once in a language that I could not understand, but which my heart took in like sweet words spoken to my soul. The broken body that I had boiled and churned in the pod, and everything purged away, in a riotous wave of stinging, shining new.
When the pod I saw in jettisoned from the tree, and sprung away from that world, I saw, too, that the Man who had climbed the tree was gone, too, and somehow I knew that He somehow was walking again. Somehow it seemed He had escaped the thorns and suffering of the tree which had nearly killed me, and which Had indeed killed him.
I knew He had escaped those thorns because, even as I left the wondrous garden that was the astonishing world I had tried to steal, I knew the Man lived because the blood that burned in my heart was not my own.
I was something new, again. And the treasure I walked away with that day was greater than any I had searched for.
