Tag: kamen rider

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Kamen Rider Impressions, Part 22: Kamen Rider the First

Credit: Kamen Rider Web

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.

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Kamen Rider Impressions, Part 21: Kamen Rider Geats

Credit: TV Asahi

Kamen Rider Geats (2022-2023) episode 1 “Daybreak F: Invitation to the Rider”

I watched the first five episodes of this show in raw Japanese last year, so it’s interesting to return to the program now after having consumed a bit of every other live action Japanese Kamen Rider series created. I was first introduced to Geats in Kamen Rider Revice the Movie: Battle Familia, where he makes a dramatic (and mostly nonsensical) cameo appearance. I was immediately intrigued and I loved his design and style—and I still do. In my opinion, Geats might be the coolest looking Rider of them all with his white fox design, awesome transformations, blistering fight choreography, and the exaggerated swagger of the hero, Ace Ukiyo.

The story centers at first on the brightly idealistic Keiwa Sakurai and his failed attempt to land a job. His supportive sister takes Sakurai out to eat his favorite food, tanuki soba (soba with fried tempura batter bits–“tanuki” is a kind of raccoon-like animal in Japan, and I am not sure what the connection is with fried tempura!). Just as the pair are about to chow down, though, a transparent energy barrier flies up between them, sealing off Sakurai in a battle zone where strange monk-like warriors burst into the restaurant and begin slaughtering innocents. Sakurai manages to escape with the assistance of two Kamen Riders (one themed after a polar bear, the other a bull). As the chaos intensifies, and one of the Riders is killed by a flying whale-castle kaiju, a third Rider arrives on his motorcycle—Kamen Rider Geats has made his entrance! Geats saves a YouTuber from a deadly fall, then shows off a series of acrobatic and astonishing fight moves, killing a whole team of battle monks in moments before turning his attention to the whale kaiju. Soon he is transforming into a powered up version of himself and jetting off on his hyper bike right into the kaiju’s nasty maw. The remaining bull Rider scoffs at Geats, but soon our hero comes riding out through the whale’s innards, blasting away vitals and killing the creature and gaining a boatload of points. You see, the Riders were competing in the Desire Grand Prix, and whoever wins the series of games will have one wish granted by some spectacular power overseeing the proceedings. With the game won, the next set of Riders are then invited for the next round—and that includes Sakurai and a whole mess of other individuals.

Ukiyo is one of the most mysterious protagonist Riders yet. We know almost nothing about him at the beginning, other than his extreme combat skills and self-confidence. Despite his detached air, he also seems concerned about saving individuals and making the world a better place—when the games conclude, the world resets, though some individuals may be dead and missing afterwards, but he still seems to want to rescue people. He could almost be a villain with a few tweaks, but I am glad they made such a non-standard eccentric as the lead.

The central gimmick feels like the classic CGI cartoon Reboot crossed with video-game-centric Kamen Rider Ex-Aid (which shares the main writer with this series) and Kamen Rider Ryuki with its army of competing Riders. The game/resetting world concept may have also been influenced by SSSS Gridman, which has some similar themes. As the series progresses and we encounter a gauntlet of varied game styles and objectives, the flexibility of the world-building becomes apparent—though with so many isekai anime exploring similar gameriffic territory, the show can feel a little unoriginal.

One nitpick: a big aspect of the series that comes to bear in the next few episodes is that for each game, the players are randomly granted certain weapons and power-ups… which is fine. I just find the look of the weapons very off-putting. They appear to be made of even cheaper plastic than the usual toy-centric designs that appear in these shows, practically appearing like faded plastic foam. They make the show feel much cheaper, which I think is disappointing, since while the CGI sequences can look gaudy and ridiculous, often the battles are a light-show ballet of fiery effects and impressive acrobatics.

So far, I like the action and costume design, dislike the weapons, find the characters a bit middling, and the concept enjoyable if a bit derivative. It’s enjoyable, but it doesn’t shake my world with excitement. Still, given that the show is currently in its weekly rounds, I am sorely tempted to catch up and watch it through to the climax!

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Kamen Rider Impressions Part 20: Kamen Rider Black Sun

Credit: Tokyo International Film Festival

Kamen Rider Black Sun (2022) episode 1 “Episode 1”

After my adverse reaction to Kamen Rider Amazons and seeing the very bad reviews, I was dreading checking out Kamen Rider Black Sun—the second web series that takes an old Kamen Rider show and recreates it as a grotesque and violent adult-oriented drama. This time, the much-loved Kamen Rider Black is coming under the reconstructive scalpel, and given that (just as with Amazon) Black was one of my favorites of the shows I taste-tested, I became even warier of what the new version might become. But surprisingly, despite my fears, Black Sun avoided many of the areas that most frustrated me about Amazons, and the resultant drama (based on the first episode anyway) is creative, scary, emotional, and resonant with me as a foreigner living in Japan. Plus very bloody and nasty.

This time, our main character is Kotaro Minami, a grungy middle-aged man who does odd jobs (flashback to Kamen Rider 000)—but Minami’s work tends to be the disreputable sort, like shaking down hapless people for money. In the world of this Rider series, monster people are an open part of society. Called “Kaijin,” they are of mysterious origin, outwardly human, but with an ability to transform into animal-people of all sorts—and they don’t receive recognition for human rights. When schoolgirl activist Aoi Izumi gives a speech to the UN about why Kaijin should be accepted and treated as equals with human beings, Minami is given a job to hunt her down and kill her—which he accepts. But at the same time, another group dispatches a spider-man to capture Aoi, and a gory battle erupts when they both descend upon the poor girl at the same time, and it turns out Minami is the titular Black Sun—a Kamen Rider with a very bad attitude.

Credit: Asahi

A big part of the lore from Black Sun also features this massive bug called the Creation King, which has something to do with the origins of the Kaijin, and all that stuff is also tied into the origins of Black Sun and a second Kamen Rider. Kaijin can also slurp a substance called “Heaven” to power up and maintain eternal youth.

And along with all the above there are various machinations and an evil government and endless intrigue. Yet even with all the moving parts, I found myself connecting with Black Sun far more than I expected, and I think there were two overall reasons.

One was Aoi Izumi and her caring family. Izumi seems to be modeled after a Greta Thunberg or especially Mulala type, and it’s hard not to get behind her and care about her well-being.

The second reason is that the show could be interpreted as speaking to issues about foreigners in Japan and the discrimination we face. The word “Kaijin” is just one letter away from “Gaijin,” which is a rude or informal way to say “foreigner” in Japanese. The show also features extensive scenes with protests and speeches against Kaijin… and I have seen such demonstrations in Japan against foreigners. I have seen trucks outside of train stations in Japan with far-right activists loudly proclaiming that foreigners should leave, that foreigners have no place in Japan, and of course I have experienced mild racism at various points while living here as well. Making the Kaijin animal themed is a familiar Kamen Rider trope—but it also ties uncomfortably into the Tama-Chan incident from 2003, in which a sea lion was given an honorary entry into the city juminhyo (or resident registry)… something foreigners were not allowed at the time. Foreigners protested, marching the streets with sea lion whiskers sketched on their faces. The Kaijin in Black Sun transform into animals of all sorts, and the connection feels deliberate.

I also really like that Black Sun has organic monsters and Riders. They don’t look like robots or men in armor or origami (like in Revice), but actual animals with fur and scales and carapaces. The transformation sequences are less a light show than a squish of tentacles and shifting body parts. It reminded me most of Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue (1992) and The Guyver, which was a manga meant to take themes from Kamen Rider and make them even darker and more extreme.

I am intrigued by this show. It has a lot going on, and while it has apparently been criticized for its use of Black Lives Matter police battery imagery, the fact that it’s trying to say something important I think is laudable. I’d be curious to see more.

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Kamen Rider Impressions Part 19: Kamen Rider Revice

Credit: Terebi Asahi

Kamen Rider Revice (2021-2022) episodes 1 and 2 “Family! Contract! The Devil Whispers!” and “The Devil is Just a Bad Guy?!”

I first watched Kamen Rider Revice episode one last year before catching Kamen Rider Revice: Battle Familia at the movie theater—a really kickin’ Kamen Rider movie, by the way. Watching it now, and the second episode too, gives the show a new sheen, since at this point I have taste-tested all the previous shows in the franchise leading up to it. Revice is the 50th anniversary special for the Kamen Rider world, and it takes ideas and themes from many previous incarnations—a supernatural threat released in a temple similar to Amazon; another power-up gimmick; multiple animal-themed versions of the hero with various powers; an evil monster that the hero must contract with in order to use his powers like in Den-O. However, along with these familiar tropes, Revice has developed new qualities and charms, and while I didn’t like the show much upon first viewing, its innovations strike better on this second go-around

The plot basics follow the discovery of demons (“akuma”) that exist inside all humans as a manifestation of their faults—and those monsters can be released with magical stamps (not postage stamps–kind of like a rubber stamp, but fancier). These stamps are first discovered in a Latin American temple, and subsequently an evil society known as Deadmans (modeled after stereotypical Mexican fashion and the Day of the Dead festival) begin developing their own stamps to change normal people into monsters and resurrect a super devil from the past. A high-tech organization known as Fenix (think SHIELD from Marvel—they even have a flying base) opposes Deadmans, and have developed tech that can use demon powers for good.

Meanwhile, our protagonist, Ikki Igarashi, lives for his job at the family bath house, feverishly working hard to please the customers and his demanding mother. However, Ikki has a problem—he can hear voices and sometimes sees a monstrous apparition (later named Vice) lurking in his workplace. When Ikki attends a special event put on by Fenix (Ikki’s older brother is a member), Deadmans attacks with an elephant-themed monster and a team of underlings. In the mess and chaos, members of Fenix convince Ikki to contract with Vice and transform using the newly invented battle equipment to become Kamen Rider Revi. Unfortunately, even after contracting and transforming, Vice is very evil and tries to eat Ikki’s mother. Even though the Ikki and Vice in their morphed state manage to defeat the Deadmans in this situation, Ikki is horrified at just how close his demon-other came to killing his precious family members. In a subsequent attack by a disgruntled gold caddie contracted with a monster mantis, Vice once again attempts to devour innocent bystanders. Ikki has to find a way to get Vice under control as Kamen Rider Revi is the best chance to defeat the horrors of Deadmans, because if he doesn’t, whenever he transforms, Vice becomes a part of the problem—and the issue only escalates as brother Daiji continues to push Ikki to join Fenix and fight for justice.

You know what’s great? A Kamen Rider hero who has his memories, who has and enjoys his job AND is good at it and is NOT a loser, AND who is NOT another orphan but has and lives with a loving and lovable family! Ikki is a real outlier in Kamen Rider fiction, and the introduction of a warm family atmosphere to the franchise (that isn’t another adoptive local eccentric father or just a supportive female secretary) is welcome indeed. Ikki does have trouble in his job at the bath house, but only because Vice torments him with comments and pranks—Ikki is not himself a nutjob, nor a nebbish nerd, nor a hypochondriac cooking dog poop in a kettle. Maybe most kids don’t want to work at a bath house, but I think Ikki is actually a great guy worth appreciating. The dynamic with Vice is also interesting, with Vice being downright wicked, and Ikki grappling with the implications of his dangerous tech (I am guessing after the second episode, that theme will mostly be resolved for quite some time). The relational beats reminded me of Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus books, which also dealt with contracting demons to fight evil—though in those books, the morality was more nuanced and troubling. Though working in a second Rider as part of the central transformation is a memorable way to add new dramatic substance, the pair can also “combine” with each other to form larger attack forms (it’s really ridiculous-looking), which allows for scaling and possible mini-kaiju battles in the future.

I am not the biggest fan of the Rider designs here, and I feel some qualms about adopting “Day of the Dead” pageantry for a villainous secret organization. Still, the acting is solid enough, the action has memorable and crazy permutations, and the central characters have interesting dynamics. This show has a lot of promise!

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Kamen Rider Impressions Part 18: Kamen Rider Saber

Credit: Terebi Asahi

Kamen Rider Saber (2020-2021) episodes 1 and 2 “In the Beginning, There Was a Flame Swordsman” and “The Water Swordsman Along with a Blue Lion”

If PBS made a Kamen Rider show, it would look something like Kamen Rider Saber. This time our hero, Touma Kamiyama, is a quirky novelist and bookstore owner who enjoys reading to kids and tormenting his editor as deadlines loom. He also happens to own this funky booklet thing that has the title “Brave Dragon” etched into it. One day, Kamiyama and his editor are transported into an alternate fantasy world when evil forces open an enormous magic book on the city, thus trapping and transporting anyone in a several-block area into an alternate fairy-tale dimension. Kamiyama finds himself in grave danger from this big ugly monster-man who has something like a cup for a head, but is saved when a flaming sword falls from the sky and allows him to transform into Kamen Rider Saber—a flame-themed Rider with a fiery sword and a dragon familiar. Kamiyama makes short work of the foe with vim and flair, and it seems as if everyone is teleported back to their normal world. However, just as Kamiyama is wondering if what he experienced in the fairy-tale world was real, a man riding a mechanical blue lion strolls into his bookstore, requesting Kamiyama turn over his magic book. Kamiyama refuses, and the new guy, named Rintaro Shindo, takes our hero to a neighboring dimension of awesome, where Kamiyama learns about the mystical tomes that created the world and the knights that protect them and the magical universe. Soon Kamiyama and Shindo are facing off against ant-themed humanoid beasties called Megids, zipping around on bikes, destroying giant ants, and invoking and interacting with characters and elements from popular folk tales and kid fables from around the world.

I was just waiting for Wishbone to show up.

This incarnation of Kamen Rider is easily one of my favorites yet. The acting is way overdone and the humor can irritate, but the magic book theme is brilliant and I love the idea of using fairy tale books as weapons and calling forth the giant beanstalk (from Jack and the Beanstalk) and chasing a rapscallion through the sky via said burst-growing plant. Of equal delight for me was the scene where Shindo and Kamiyama jet on their bikes and blast a scampering lot of overgrown black ants, which seems to be directly conjuring the Earth Defense Force series of games (especially with the quite terrible CGI effects). The splash and flash of the effects and battles is equal parts big cheese and hugely pleasing, and the costume work and especially the design of Saber looks very, very cool. The show further features an eccentric book lover narrator who bookends (heh) each episode with commentary—basically another version of that dude from Kakuranger who was both a rakugo artist and a peppy narrator. My main complaint is with Mei Sudo, Kamiyama’s editor, who is played with grating gusto and extreme exaggerated affect. Sudo really got on my nerves. Still, having Kamen Rider crossed with Thursday Next is a massive win in my book—I want more of this, please!

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Kamen Rider Impressions Part 17: Kamen Rider Zero-One

Credit: Amazon

Kamen Rider Zero-One (2019-2020) episode 1 “I am the President and a Kamen Rider”

Given that Kamen Rider Ex-Aid presaged the covid pandemic by a couple years, I can’t help but feel a bit nervous about the existence of Kamen Rider Zero-One… a Rider series about AI gone amok! Kamen Rider Zero-One is the first Kamen Rider series from the Reiwa period, which started in 2019 in Japan, so the title works as a reference to that transition, as a pun on the word “Reiwa” (“Rei” can be a reading for the kanji for “zero”), and as a reference to the binary code of computers and thus the central theme of AI danger and corrupted robots.

The story goes that Hiden Intelligence is a big AI group like OpenAI, and they have created a line of robots called Humagears. However, their CEO has just died, but has left a letter handing over the company to grandson Aruto Hiden… except his grandson is a loser (here we go again…) who wants to become a comedian and make everyone laugh (I’m having another flashback to Ultraman Trigger and it’s “smile, smile” catchphrase), and he doesn’t want anything to do with running a company. When Aruto goes to a local amusement park, however, a comedian Humagear about to do a show gets infected with a program that changes him into a mantis-themed killer robot with a jonesing for murder. A cute robot girl gives Aruto a Rider belt so he can protect the guests of the amusement park from the spreading infected robots, and he changes into Kamen Rider Zero-One and kicking a considerable volume of robot buttocks.

One nice touch of the first Reiwa Rider is that, even though Aruto is another in the long line of losers, because of the AI bit, he can download gluteus-whalloping skills from the sky and forthwith go medieval on the sinister robot scum with alacrity. Zero-One’s transformation, too, features a big CGI grasshopper-bot that snaps apart and clicks onto his body, becoming the armor and readying the guy for action! I jive with Zero-One’s day-glow yellow and black color scheme, and the resulting fight includes some wicked action insanity as the Rider jumps and ricochets through a bus mid-flight (things get tossed around a lot). While I wasn’t so keen on the monster design here, lots of energy blasts are exchanged, and the minion-droids look appropriately deadly. Maybe this one was not as unique or cool as some of the previous Riders, and the comedian angle comes across as more than a little grating on this first outing, but I think there was a lot to get charged up and positive about in this incarnation.

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Kamen Rider Impressions Part 16: Kamen Rider Build and Kamen Rider Zi-O

Credit: MyDramaList

Kamen Rider Build (2017-2018) Episodes 1 and 2 “The Ones Who Were the Best Match” and “The Innocent Runaway”

Well, well! While retaining many farcical and silly elements, Build feels like a return to a starker sense of danger and drama akin to Kuuga or Agito or even the original. The ideas prickling to the surface of this narrative really stoked me up. This time we get a secret civilization discovered on Mars (which seems like more of an Ultraman trope), and a Pandora’s box which creates massive walls across Japan and splits the country into three warring countries striving for superiority. In the midst of this, our hero Sento Kiryu appears—another amnesiac, this time dwelling in a secret Rider base underneath a café, and assisted by a sleepy chemical genius girl who cooks up powerful brews made from defeated monsters called Smashes; the liquid then enables Kiryu’s alternate Rider forms. When Kiryu hunts down an escaped ex-boxer jailed for murder who pleads innocence—and Kiryu ends up helping him, and so is tagged by the military police as an accomplice to murder. Both Kiryu and the accused have memories of a dangerous mad scientist complex where they were experimented upon, so Kiryu hopes the newcomer can help him regain his memories—but things get really hairy when the boxer’s girlfriend gets changed into a Smash, and a bat-themed villain appears and mops the floor with Build.

As with so many other Rider shows, I really like the spread of fresh ideas in this show—and the urgent sense of intrigue and mystery. Yes, the drama feels a bit overdone, but it also burbles up emotionally, and I could totally understand fans catching tears from the second episode. The humor can overwhelm the serious bits a little, but the at turns antagonistic and friendly relationship between Kiryu and the boxer hits with dramatic satisfaction. I’m a little tired of amnesiac heroes, since they have turned up several times already at this point, but Kiryu with his physics-genius background and Wolverine-esque creepy memories is pretty interesting. The new Kamen Rider design feels like a further iteration on Kamen Rider W, as he combines power liquids to create the best battle combinations—generally one liquid with an animal strength and another with a tech base, such as the standard Rabbit Tank form. The two forms combine in diagonal slashes across Build’s body, too, rather than the straight up bisection of W. Throw in military robot soldiers (perhaps borrowed from Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue) which can climb on each other and form bigger agglomerate mechs (perhaps inspired by the Indian sci-fi comedy Robot and its sequel), and we get some compelling Rider storytelling and hijinx.

Credit: Kamen Rider Web

Kamen Rider Zi-O (2018-2019) episode 1 “Kingdom 2068”

Zi-O is a kind of new version or spiritual successor to Decade, meaning it takes the last set of Rider shows, and smashes them together, opening again with a massive war sequence and a new Rider who possesses the ability to destroy… well, everyone. The grabber of the story is that our hero this time, teenage weirdo Sougo Tokiwa, is destined to become a demon king in the future and take over the world. In order to stop that from happening, a certain Kamen Rider Geiz also comes from the future to attack and kill him and thus prevent his reign, and a girl named Tsukuyomi tries to save him from Geiz while simultaneously attempting to dissuade him from his dire destiny. Tokiwa, however, has felt he was meant to become a king ever since he was a kid, and when he is given the opportunity to use a compass-like device to change into Kamen Rider Zi-O, he decides to take the chance and pursue a future as a righteous king instead of his supposed destiny of evil. There is also some kind of monster stuff going on, and a dude is turned into a warped version of Kamen Rider Build (he steals powers from normal people this time instead of monster essences), which I am sure will come into play later.

The characters bounce all over time, kind of like Kamen Rider Den-O, but this time zapping to dinosaur time, to 1600s Japan, and to 2017 and an encounter with the Kamen Rider Build crew (meaning that they exist on the same timeline and same universe, complete with the alien walls and three warring nations?). With Tsukuyomi and Geiz, we get big mech battles, giving added scale and perhaps a touch of Zord-flavoring borrowed from the Sentai universe… and when Tsukuyomi takes Tokiwa to dinosaur time, we even get a mech vs. rex sequence. I thought the rex looked pretty good—basically a Jurassic Park knock off that strikes a sharp-looking pose until it starts moving. Tokiwa’s Rider form looks styling, too—he is made to look like a big silver wristwatch, with his face as the face of the watch, the hands stretching out like prickly ornaments on the helmet. While Zi-O isn’t as immediately competent at combat as Build was in the previous show (since Build had had time to learn the ins and outs of Rider life before the story began), Zi-O still exhibits power and impact, and right at the end of episode one is facing off with Kamen Rider Geiz who has a similar power set. I didn’t get a really good feel for Zi-O’s abilities just from the first episode, but I like the premise, and I would be curious to see more, even if the story doesn’t quite grab me as hard as Build or Kuuga did.

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Kamen Rider Impressions, Part 15: Kamen Sentai Gorider

Credit: The Movie Database

I was really curious about this series, as I have enjoyed Super Sentai/Power Rangers content since I was a little kid, and as previously mentioned I first learned of Kamen Rider (or Masked Rider at the time) through watching the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers TV show back in the day. If you look at the title, and the images that advertise for this series (on Amazon, for example), it looks like it is about a Super Sentai hero squad composed of color-coded Kamen Riders based off the original Kamen Rider design combined with Secret Squadron Gorenger—arguably the first Super Sentai TV show (though the formula wasn’t fully formed from the start, as they didn’t have giant robots back then). I thought the pastiche looked like a jolly good time, and I figured I would just watch the first of the three episodes produced to get a taste of what was in store, and to see just what these Goriders were and how they came about.

So I watched the first episode… and the Goriders didn’t appear. They DID appear in the preview for the second episode, so I decided I would watch that one, too, given that I thought the whole point of the show was the Kamen Sentai Gorider group.

I watched the second episode… and the Goriders… didn’t appear again. They weren’t even hinted at, outside of the fact that the show had five… no, they had six Kamen Riders assembled. What gives?

Note that I will be going over some spoilers here.

The story takes place in the Kamen Rider Ex-Aid storyline, and so Emu Hojo awakens in a strange amusement park world (the background reminded me of Seibuen Amusement Park which currently houses the Godzilla the Ride attraction, but I don’t think it actually was that place). He is guided to an eerie mansion-like room with a big mirror and is soon joined by a series of other Riders—Another Agito (from Kamen Rider Agito), Kamen Rider Baron (from Kamen Rider Gaim), Kamen Rider Marika (also from Kamen Rider Gaim), Kamen Rider Blade (from the show of the same name), and Kamen Rider Lazer (from Kamen Rider Ex-Aid). As it turns out, they are stuck in a video game that is impossible to win, and Emu Hojo (remember, he is a doctor and a superior gamer) is the main player—but every time he loses, he also loses his memory. Suffice it to say that eventually he figures out that there are nefarious forces lurking behind the scenes, and manages a way to reveal the true villain. However, after the true villain emerges, the heroes still don’t have the strength to defeat him and his minions…

This is where the Kamen Sentai Gorider team comes in. Somehow, suddenly, Emu Hojo (in a super Kamen Rider Ex-Aid form) pulls out a set of five cards with no explanation, and he tosses them to the other five members of his team. They suddenly transform into the Gorider team from the previews, and they perform a series of fight maneuvers based on the Gorenger TV program and they basically mop the floor with the baddies in a jiffy. They have maybe five minutes of screen time before reverting to their normal forms… and that was it.

I was quite perplexed. After poking around a bit, I found that the Gorider team apparently originated from a movie that was released earlier that same year—Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Chou Super Hero Taisen. But so far as I could tell, that movie is not really mentioned in this mini-series. The ability to change form into the Goriders is not so much as hinted at (outside of the title I guess), and it’s not clear why Emu has the needed cards in his arsenal. I guess you need to watch the movie, and maybe it sets things up… but the fact that this mini-series sells itself as a Goriders series and includes the pastiche hero forms in such a perfunctory manner is really disappointing. I felt like I had been cheated, a victim of the old bait-and-switch.

I did enjoy the show, regardless, despite my confusion. There are lots of twists and turns and fights and even some bloody action and despair at times. But they should NOT have sold this series as a Kamen Sentai Gorider show. What a rip off!

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Kamen Rider Impressions Part 14, Kamen Rider Amazons Season 1 and 2

Credit: IMDb

Kamen Rider Amazons (2016) Season 1, Episode 1 “Amazonz”

A strange re-imagining of Kamen Rider Amazon, which was one of my favorites of the Showa period, Kamen Rider Amazons was a web-exclusive series made with a much more mature tone—this show was not made for the kiddies. It also doesn’t feel as if it was really taking many ideas from the original Amazon, which I adored for being so wacky and for featuring a Japanese Tarzan biting the legs off of a monster bug. Given that this show follows the long tradition of no subtitles (not even in Japanese) that plagues so much of Japan online programming, I felt a little lost while watching, but I will give my rough thoughts below.

The show features an anti-monster squad in military getup and guns and electric shock add-ons (to their clothes?). The group hunts down people who are turning into monsters, and following the Rider formula, the first two monsters that show up are a spider man and a bat man—actually several spider men. The monster encounters are played out like a straight-up horror action film, with torn-up corpses, gross-out transformations, and gruesome kills and sound effects. One of the members of the anti-monster crew can tear off his clothes and change into this armored knight-like thing, who pops off several legs from the first spider man encountered (perhaps a shout-out to the original). Separate from the action, a young man named Haruka is suffering from an unspecified disease, and his mom treats him dispassionately but doesn’t do a good job of looking after the guy since soon he fails to take his meds and stumbles off into the woods. At the same time, the anti-monster group is there, too, fighting another spider, and the bat guy, and then this other dude shows up snarfing raw eggs. Raw-Egg Man has a Rider belt and transforms and starts saving the day, maybe, and then Haruka transforms into some other Rider-esque thingee, and the end.

Apparently Haruka is the main hero, so I kind of feel gypped after watching the first 40-minute-plus narrative and barely getting a glimpse at his hero form. Raw-Egg Man cuts a fashionable posture with his red Rider armor and big, bulging eyes. The idea of this show seems to be that the monsters and the Riders both are transformed via genetic manipulation like in Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue, a straight-to-video biopunk reimagining of Kamen Rider made in 1992—but the monsters all look like they are still wearing human-constructed armor, helmets, boots, gloves and the like. In the 1992 film, the movie leans into its biological design ethos, with the Rider looking like a proper animal-man. Having the biopunk theme, and still clinging to chunky armor and flashy lights for transformations feels poorly realized. Everything also has a suffocatingly heavy tone, which caused me some severe whiplash after watching so many deliberately wacky Rider shows. Still, the actual filming of the series is mounted with care and precision, and the gore and violence may attract some fans.

Despite this series being an Amazon exclusive, the show was still stuck behind a paywall, regardless of the fact that I have Amazon Prime in Japan (I can watch the re-edited version, where they take the whole series and shorten it into a movie—but who wants to do that?). This ridiculous paywall may have caused my discomfiture more than the actual show, as it just frustrated me.

Credit: Amazon

Kamen Rider Amazons Season 2, episode 1 “Neo”

Because the second season has a new Rider star, and that Rider is directly based on the Japanese Tarzan character from the original Kamen Rider Amazon (which still might be my favorite of all the Rider shows I have seen thus far), I decided to take a watch even though I didn’t really like the first episode of Amazons. This time around, Chihiro (why do the two male heroes both have typically feminine names?), some kid raised in the Amazon, is brought back to civilization, and he keeps biting people and there’s lots of blood. Later he is living on the streets and working with a biker gang to track down and kill Amazons—the monsters in this series. The biker punks attack and provoke a policeman into transforming into a monster, and then Chihiro comes out and rips the creature apart and guts it. Like in the first season, there is a military-esque monster-hunting squad, and we see them blowing up a car early on. We soon learn that Chihiro lives in tension with the bikers, who like to cast aspersions on him. Pretty soon we see a wedding unfolding on screen, but the bride transforms into a monster and starts killing and eating everyone. Chihiro arrives to fight the monster, but in the middle of combat the monster-hunting squad arrives with an emotionless young female that transforms into a feral bird-themed Rider, and they both fight together in increasingly bloody fashion.

The second season has a similar vibe to the first, with washed out lighting, darkness and shadows everywhere, angst, and a severe seriousness. Everybody seems hyper-cool, uber-anxious and combative, or completely emotionless. Iyu Hoshino, the no-feeling female Rider, struck me as a possible proto Ruriko from Shin Kamen Rider, who has a similar extreme cool. As with the first season, the monsters and Riders are supposed to be organic, but they still look like armored fighters, and the whole atmosphere is dripping with seedy, nasty grime and gross. I like horror, but this show feels detached and filthy, with a set of unlikable characters crawling through a mucky, concrete hell-hole. Give me back my fun-loving Riders!

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Kamen Rider Impressions Part 13: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid

Kamen Rider Ex-Aid (2016-2017) episodes 1 and 2 “I’m a Kamen Rider!” and “’No Thank You’ for Two Geniuses?”

Credit: Kamen Rider Wiki

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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