Kamen Rider Ex-Aid (2016-2017) episodes 1 and 2 “I’m a Kamen Rider!” and “’No Thank You’ for Two Geniuses?”
When I came back to Japan in 2015, I didn’t pay much attention to Kamen Rider—and when I started noticing the show, it was because of how outlandish Kamen Rider Ex-Aid looked. I would see posters for the movies or maybe clips from the show or an occasional trailer, and I thought it looked awful. The new Rider doesn’t so much have a helmet as he has a cartoony face and plastic spiky hair. His colors are bombastic to the extreme, with spandex and an idiotic game controller chest plate—and I didn’t even realize that the character had an even more absurd first stage version. Apparently the show has its haters, as the Toei World YouTube channel’s upload of the first episode has comments turned off. Even so, the show is popular among fans—from a poll of 10,000 voters conducted for the 50th anniversary of the original, Ex-Aid came in as the sixth most popular show, and comments from international fans under the second episode were almost uniformly positive.
The idea this time is another that I thought the show should’ve experimented with years ago—heck, I thought Kamen Rider Black RX WAS about this idea: make the Rider a doctor. Emu Hojo is an intern doctor at a pediatrics hospital who also happens to be a master gamer (we get another scene where another cute girl is dragging our protagonist around and chastising him for being immature, which has definitely become an unfortunate trademark of the franchise at this point). It soon comes out that a new virus, which started as a computer virus, has migrated to humans. Called the Bugster virus, it is often exacerbated by stress, and the sufferers may change into looming enormous monsters if the disease develops too far. A secret underground organization of super doctors have been given technology to transform into soldier-like doctors who can transform and manifest video game elements in the real world, which they can then use to fight the Bugsters. Each Doctor Rider has their own video game world and power ups which they call into existence to merge with reality after they transform to their Rider suits. As with most other Riders in the franchise, each Rider also has stages or levels of transformation—this time mimicking game mechanics, so that when they initially transform, they are squat chibi-style characters who need to power up ala Mario to take on an adult stature and increased powers. Hojo’s pestering nurse sidekick, Poppy Pipopapo, is actually some kind of computer program, too, and she can slip in and out of computer monitors. Everything is styled with mega-bright colors and jittery editing and insanity to the max.
I love having the Riders double as doctors, which seems like a natural extension of the Rider mythos by this point—though having the docs battling their transformed patients into submission feels like a HIPPA violation. I think it would’ve worked better had the doctors jumped inside the human virus hosts and fought the monsters on an inner plane rather than seemingly pounding the patients into the ground. Calling in game worlds to manifest around the virus and provide additional power ups and battle opportunities gives the fights a new sheen (it reminded me of the original CG animated TV show, ReBoot), and the gaming gimmick makes the previously obtrusive CGI effects feel perfectly natural. In the first two episodes, the fully-developed Bugsters are achieved as full CGI monstrosities, far bigger than humans—and without the usual suitmation. But it works pretty well, and the bright plasticky Rider suits lend themselves to computer modeling for slick acrobatic combat, too. While Hojo is again a bit of a loser, I like that nevertheless he can fight well from the start because of his gaming background. As I was watching, too, I couldn’t help but feel the show hits different after Covid with the whole widespread new-type virus theme—and apparently (according to comments I noticed) the parallels to the pandemic become more pronounced as the series continues. I don’t really like the super plasticky gadgets (which look just like the toys they are meant to sell), and once again we have hot women attaching the belt buckle on one of the Riders for a frisson of sexual energy, and I am not wild about the bleepy-blonk sound effects and jerky editing (what is with the head doctor???), but this is way better than it has any right to be.
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