Kamen Rider the First (2005) could be seen as a sort of proto-version of Shin Kamen Rider (2023), as they both dig back into the original series and try to reinvent and reimagine the story with influence from the manga version that had been published alongside the show. But whereas Shin Kamen Rider filled its narrative with monster upon monster and set-piece on set-piece with fevered, messy freneticism, Kamen Rider the First puts character development, romance, and tragedy at the center—and as a story, at least for me, the older film comes out on top. I mean, it’s messy as Oscar the Grouch on a bender, but I still liked it.
The story features college student, motorcyclist, and water researcher Takeshi Hongo kidnapped by evil-and-bad organization SHOCKER and changed into a cyborg named “Hopper”–and he has to regain control via a connection with his true passions. Later, when a lady journalist named Asuka Midorikawa gets involved in Hongo’s life, she and her fiancé are targeted by a spider man, and in the scuffle, the fiancé is killed, and Midorikawa thinks Hongo killed her love. Hongo, then, determines he will protect Midorikawa, and begins tailing her, transforming into Kamen Rider to beat down fiends and monsters that menace her. When a dude who looks like Midorikawa’s fiancée appears and turns out to be a second Rider with plans to kill Hongo, the action really cranks up. We also follow a pair of lovebirds in a hospital who slowly work out their issues in a sweet romance, and they later change into two of the main monster baddies in the film, and the various emotional threads collide in open combat by the conclusion.
While Kamen Rider the First has some major awkward bits, including pretty bad acting at times, the generally serious reimagining of the first Kamen Rider with updated effects works reasonably well with decent action and an emotionally centered (if very melodramatic) storyline. The film remixes a key misunderstanding from the original program—in that version, the lady friend thinks Hongo killed her own father! This film pulls the emotions in a different direction, coloring the drama deliberately with more direct romantic pathos, and while the second Rider coming back and posing as Midorikawa’s fiancé is ridiculous and soap-opera-to-the-max, it has some narrative bite anyway. The fact that the movie also focuses so intently on building up two of the kaijin, showing their backgrounds, their personalities, their hopes and dreams, and their saccharine romance—only to then smash them in combat with Rider—is gutsy and fresh. I don’t think it fully pays off, though, as the movie spends an astonishing runtime with the pair, and for most of the movie we don’t really know why we are following this sappy and mostly disconnected love story.
Still, for all the movie’s faults, I came out of the viewing with an overall positive vibe for a valiant attempt to create something new from a classic property while respecting those origins. My favorite touch might actually be that the movie allows Hongo to fully transform into a bad-guy at the beginning; we get to see Kamen Rider operating as a villain, with the cybernetic enhancements complete and uninterrupted—and his eventual turn to good then can stem from a particular character trait rather than good luck or a timely rescue. When the Double Riders team up, we also get some great battle scenes and flair. The movie has a follow-up film which I have yet to see, but the longstanding passion for Kamen Rider burns brightly in this uneven tribute film. A flawed, but passionate, attempt.