Kamen Rider Impressions, Part 5: Kamen Rider Kuuga and Kamen Rider Agito

Kamen Rider Kuuga (2000-2001) Episode 1: “Revival” and episode 2 “Transformation”

After over ten years with no new Kamen Rider TV series in Japan, finally in the year 2000 Kamen Rider Kuuga arrives with fresh ideas and a tweaked, modern style. It still has some familiar tropes (with a version of the spider-man creature appearing first, the bat man creature appearing next), but it still feels sparkly new—this time leaning into the more fantasy feel from Black with its ghostly villains, and the sort of mythical-temple background from Amazon. The story starts at an archeological dig in Japan where a Egyptian-style stone temple structure has been found. Something goes awry, and a tomb-like box breaks open, unleashing a monster that kills everyone in the dig. When a weird belt inscribed with unreadable glyphs is placed into the hands of the archeology crew’s compadres for closer inspection, the monster spider man comes knocking, apparently in search of the belt. Our hero, happy-go-lucky “professional dream chaser” Yusuke Godai puts on the belt and transforms into Kamen Rider Kuuga. After that, a lengthy and astonishing fight sequence ensues—leading to more and more questions and intrigue. The second episode introduces Kuuga’s fully transformed body (initially Godai changes into a weaker white form with smaller cranial horns, but when fully riled, he can become red and peak amped), and we are shown an buzzed new changing sequence in which Godai’s body shifts piece by piece while he is engaged in combat. As with the original Kamen Rider, the bat man that appears in the second episode has serious vampire vibes.

What a rebirth of the show! While some of the special effects don’t hit so well for me (the primitive CGI that crops up looks worse to my eye compared to the analog effects in Black on occasion), the ambition here is legendary. The action set pieces include a police car smashing through the front doors of a building, broken glass scattered all over, and a long fight dangling from a helicopter! The fisticuffs aren’t over in a flash, and even when the baddie is vanquished, it’s not clear whether he survived, which adds suspense. The lore includes an invented language represented in both writing and in speech, and the series apparently has two versions—one wherein the monsters’ foreign tongue is translated via subs, and one in which it’s not. What a spectacular idea! The version I saw on Tubi included subtitles for the spoken monster-talk, which removes some of the mystery, but at least in the first two episodes I didn’t think it was a huge loss. Plus, the horror theme is back! Blood! Monsters emerging from the dirt with hands reaching out zombie-style! A broken sarcophagus and long-standing death curse ala classic mummy tales! Yet at the same time, we get humor, we get likable characters joshing with one another, we get fun AND chills AND good action. This feels like an Honest Abe attempt to entertain. It feels like the whole kebab—and the Kuuga design looks solid, with sweet horns! On the down side, the acting can be weak, and the camera work feels pedestrian. Godai is one cheesy character, which can be a charm—but he also gets awful lines about wanting to make sure everyone can smile (a refrain later taken up by Ultraman Trigger in 2021 and the protagonist’s oft-repeated signature “smile, smile” phrase). The actor who played Godai, Jo Odagiri, infamously has spoken unfavorably of tokusatsu and his time working on Kuuga, and has since become a huge name in Japan. All that said, and regardless of his (apparent) negative feelings and unpolished acting, Kuuga seems to have overflowing style and exciting ideas.

Kind of boring end song, though.

Kamen Rider Agito (2001-2002) Episode 1 “A Warrior’s Awakening” and episode 2 “Blue Storm”

The thirtieth anniversary Kamen Rider show, Kamen Rider Agito (sometimes written as ΑGITΩ) takes place in the same universe as Kuuga, though with new mysteries and an infusion of new ideas—and a continuation of the previous show’s mixture of goofy acting and dark themes. The contrast feels even stronger in the first episode here.

A lot happens in the opening episodes. After a sea storm, a strange device washes up on the beach. It seems alien in origin, and has a complex locking device that requires supercomputers to decode. At the same time, an anti-monster team has assembled, with a human-made robo-suited agent code-named Kamen Rider G3 (piloted by a dude named Makoto Hikawa). Meanwhile, members of a particular family begin turning up dead, somehow fused into trees—their flesh combined with the wood, their arms dangling in the open to signal their presence. Shouichi Tsugami, a young man who has lost his memories, has psychic attacks when the tree-related murders occur, and then a panther-man attacks yet another victim and faces off against G3, who rushes to the scene. When G3 proves ineffective in battling the strange menace, and Hikawa is nearly killed, a mysterious Rider appears who is strong enough to defeat the menace.

The first episode sews together so many ideas that the narrative feels slightly overstuffed, and the introduction of some of the plot threads can be delivered with a bit too much convenient, unrealistic dialogue. The biggest weakness of the first episode is the poor writing and acting, but the new menace (it’s NOT another spider man) and the layers of mystery add a lot of narrative momentum and suspense.

The second episode polishes much of the strengths from the first, adding further wrinkles to the mystery around the family targeted by the panther-men (now called “Unknown”), and ending on a frantic cliffhanger that really had me salivating to go on to see what happens next. We also get more character development (which seems an important element for this version of the Rider), and hints at further supernatural powers operating in this world—including a creepy photograph and characters with psychic abilities (perhaps channeling Ringu, which had recently become a phenomenon; the American version would release in 2002).

A scene that stuck out to me—I know it doesn’t really reflect on the quality of the series in any way, but I want to write about this, because it’s my article—is when Tsugami’s adoptive family is puzzling over the man’s forgotten past, and it is suggested (due to his predilection for cooking particular dishes) that he might be from the Kansai area (Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto). Tsugami responds by sarcastically speaking in Kansai dialect, which the translator renders as “Gawsh, ya think so?”—basically treating the dialect as dumb-hick language, which is pretty insulting, given Kansai includes some of the biggest and most culturally significant cities of Japan. But at least they tried!

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