Kamen Rider Impressions, Part 4: Saban’s Masked Rider

I am writing my impressions of all the Kamen Rider TV shows released in Japan and the USA–and I might try to fit in the Taiwan ones, too, if I can find them. Today I am looking at Saban’s adaptation of Kamen Rider Black RX, which it kind of sort of adapted two times…

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Season 3 “A Friend in Need” Parts 1-3 (1995)

These episodes were my first encounter with Kamen Rider (or Masked Rider, as he is called here)—I would have been fourteen years old at the time, and I was still watching me some Power Rangers and enjoying it despite its decidedly younger target audience. I remember being pretty excited by the entrance of this mysterious bug-themed warrior from another planet. The episode trio of episodes was intended as a backdoor pilot for Saban’s Masked Rider series, which would mostly be an Americanized version of Kamen Rider Black RX. Coming in to watch the show now, in 2023, with the various revelations about behind-the-scenes drama during filming of Power Rangers, and with the tragic recent passing of Tommy/Jason David Frank, the show was hard to watch for more than just its technical limitations. Of course, the actual quality of the show—or rather lack thereof—is far more apparent to me now, in comparison to the Japanese originals (which weren’t always of sterling quality themselves, but I digress).

The story goes that the Power Rangers’ assistant robot, Alpha 5, becomes privy to some kind of disturbance on his home planet of Edenoi. Ai-yi-yi, what do we do?! Four of the Power Rangers are dispatched to the planet to investigate what was happening (with ominous declarations that they won’t have their full powers so far from home—a warning that comes to nothing in the show, as it has little to no impact on the events that play out). Kimberly, the Pink Ranger, remains behind on Earth because she has a case of the flu. The four rangers who go to Edenoi soon run into Prince Dex/Masked Rider and his friends—who immediately attack the rangers without allowing them to explain why they are visiting (really paints Dex as a massive jerk). As it turns out, the baddies from Kamen Rider Black RX have been renamed and repurposed (the leader is now Count Dregon instead of Jark, which… is an improvement, actually), and stock footage of their conversations in their floating robo-base are dubbed over with new chit-chat about how the villains are targeting Edenoi and attempting to defeat Dex and take his Masked Rider powers. Predictably, the rangers eventually team up with Dex and defeat some of Dregon’s goons. Meanwhile, back on Earth, evil conqueror couple Rita and Lord Zedd send a goofy new monster to attack Angel Grove while the rangers are off traipsing the galaxy—a repainted version of a mecha-monster called Ikazuchi from the Toei Super Sentai series Dairanger, now called Repelletor. Surprisingly, Dex does not return with the rangers to help fight Repelletor, and the rangers defeat the monster on their own—right before ominous news that Dregon is now inexplicably planning to attack Earth, and we get a quick throwaway shot of Dex being sent by his father to prevent Dregon’s attack, and done.

I have a lot of fondness for the old Power Rangers shows, particularly the ones with the original rangers, but watching the stitched-together quality of the show now after viewing a string of original Toei action adventures really shows how shoddy Saban’s work was. While Toei’s plots could often prove highly shallow, they were more coherent in style and content than what we have here, with the varying visual quality and forced reworking of special effects. The far greater kiddification level of the show is also obvious next to the often much darker Toei shows—with the constant snarky one-liners really sticking out in the American show. Snark is not nearly as common in Japan, so it can be downright distracting. It was also striking just how MUCH Jason David Frank had become the star of the show, as he is the leader of the team by this point, and his character also narrates with martial arts and life advice over the end credits. Seeing his youthful enthusiasm and charm (and admittedly cheesy acting) really makes me miss the guy.

Still, nostalgia has its place, and I yet found enjoyment tripping through memory lane. My favorite part might have been comic relief “bullies” Bulk and Skull with their ludicrous comedy routine and over-the-top music cues. Coming from my more adult perspective, they seem to be conjuring some Three Stooges energy in their slapstick antics, and I heartily approve.

But I am dreading watching Masked Rider next…

Masked Rider (1995-1996)  “Escape from Edenoi” part 1 and 2

Masked Rider immediately destroys the backdoor setup from Power Rangers, and so even before it gets started, the show seems determined to annoy its fans. While the “A Friend in Need” episodes of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers season 3 were not stellar storytelling, they still told a story, they still had some intriguing ties to Power Ranger lore, they still had the beloved Alpha 5 claiming citizenship with Edenoi and thus making him related to Prince Dex and the power of the Masked Rider. These story threads added a layer of intrigue for fans to glom onto going in to the new series, as fans in the West were pretty unfamiliar with the bug hero. The whole purpose of a backdoor pilot is to set up those threads, those roots, to stabilize and structure and add flavor and sauce to your new show. If you create the backdoor pilot, set up the expectations of your fans for cross-show craziness, and then cut those expectations off immediately when the show proper is released, probably your viewership is going to feel cheated, robbed, spurned by the entertainment gods.

That’s definitely how I felt when I went in to watch Masked Rider “Escape from Edenoi” parts one and two back in 1995. The beginning is similar to the Power Rangers setup, with Edenoi under attack by Count Dregon and his dark armies. We get a little background this time (Dregon is Dex’s uncle, he was banished, he came back and conquered, he is now or is planning to harvest soldiers from earth), and we also get a much-hated addition in the form of Ferbus—basically Masked Rider’s version of Snarf from Thundercats. A duck-billed troublemaker with the voice from Hades, Ferbus follows Dex to earth, and adds “hilarity” by giving Dex’s adoptive father the sniffles. Dex is adopted by an interracial family after he crash lands in their flower garden, and said family is shockingly unphased when Dex reveals he is an alien. But one of the strangest choices of the show is its lack of action, as the first episode is missing even one decent fight sequence. Maybe if the creators didn’t feel the need to retool the premise and snip out the Rangers, we would have been able to shorten things up a bit and weave in a few punches and kicks.

The second episode wrapping up the story is, if anything, even worse than the first. While the first episode creates a sense of tension with the arrival of Destructosphere, a monster created with an impressive combination of T-1000 style computer effects and a truly grisly and effective monster suit, the second episode squanders the build-up by having Dex face-off against the monster and defeat him within the first few minutes of the second part. (The reason Destructosphere looks so impressive compared to other monsters in the series is because his footage came from a movie called Kamen Rider ZO—which also explains why Dex couldn’t fight him for long, given the logistics of attempting to paste together scenes of the Kamen Rider RX suit fighting a monster from a different story!) But nothing really gels in this episode. Dex goes around somehow creating talking vehicles with his mind (and then is confused when the machines he just created can talk–shouldn’t he know what he made?); “Maggots” (the foot soldiers of the show) replace Destructosphere and have a food fight until Dex defeats them with antics like imitating a bullfighter (this is an alien?); and the final monster that appears (a beetle tank) is boring, simply showing up to be defeated easily by Dex and his team. The comedy is awful, the action is limp, the drama is weak, everything is nonsensical—it seems painfully clear why this series never went anywhere with audiences.

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