Violet's Rambling Disorganized Kamen Rider Thoughts

Hi, I'm Violet and I broadly like the Kamen Rider franchise! If you know me well enough, I have probably tried on at least one occasion to sit you down to watch one of these shows (and you've almost certainly blown me off but for the record the few people who haven't have all gotten into it). Anyway, I like these shows broadly (and a few quite specifically) enough to make a whole webpage to try and get other people into it.

So, why should you give Kamen Rider a shot, besides my general assertion that they're good shows? Well, even though the whole franchise has virtually no presence anywhere in the English speaking world, it's Kind Of A Big Deal in a general pop-cultural sense. So it's a good thing to have at least some familiarity with in that general media literacy sort of sense. And generally speaking you don't put out 50ish episodes of TV a year damn near EVERY year from 1971-1989 then again from 2000-2022 and counting as I'm writing this if you aren't doing SOMETHING right.

And it's also a flavor of good that's adjacent to a lot of other good flavors, and particularly nice if you've drifted away from those. Like, hey, it's Japanese SF media. We all like (or used to like) some flavor of that, right? Manga, anime, video games, kinda figuring at least one of those appeals to you, or did at some point. Kamen Rider hits a lot of similar notes... but hey, you also might have fallen out of those scenes because over the years there's been this growing trend towards everything being set in schools, and what I can only describe as hyper-sexualized child-women. Kamen Rider Does Not Go There. These are shows about adults, often with serious day jobs, and while there's room to improve (getting over 30 shows in the franchise these days, it'd be nice to have even ONE actually staring a woman as the main character) I can't name one show that grossly sexualizes women or relegates them to love interest status. Plus, these are all superhero shows, but they don't fall into the trap Western superhero media tends to of trying to make everything more grounded/edgy/dark/grim and stays focused on, you know, actually heroic characters demonstrating actually good behavior and brawling with properly evil villains (for what it's worth, of things you have probably seen, Black Panther really felt a lot like a Kamen Rider property to me). Oh and they're Tokusatsu (which basically means rubber suit) shows, so said fights hit those same good cheesy notes you get with say, Godzilla, or Power Rangers, but the meat of the show those fights are attached to is also good, rather than being super childish.

Also, there's a very known commitment wth a given Kamen Rider show. If you look at the entirey of the franchise, yeah, you're staring at uh... 750 hours of TV, which is even more of a commitment than deciding to watch every episode of Doctor Who or The Simpsons, but there's a reason I'm calling it a franchise. Every year, there is a new Kamen Rider show. It's its own complete totally self-contained story, with its own characters and setting. There's no greater continuity or like, Kamen Rider Cinematic Universe everything slots into. Just, somewhere in the vicinity of 50 episodes that introduce some characters, start up storylines for them, play those out over the course of a year, and wrap everything up neatly. No series finale cliffhangers because they were hoping to get another season, no "hey remember this from 5 years ago?" stuff, no "we don't really have a plan for so-and-so this season so they're just going to meander around." Just, one and done seasons. You can grab any given one and watch it too, without having to worry about slogging through rough years' episodes for context.

So OK, if these are all their own self-contained things, how is "Kamen Rider" a coherent thing? Well, there's sort of a rough template to them. Our hero (a very pretty man) ends up with some thing (probably a belt) which allows him to turn into this super hero in some sort of head-to-toe armor (usually with at least a vague bug-vibe going on), for reasons in some way tied to how there's a big local rubber-suit monster problem. He probably also has a motorcycle, and some other very pretty man he's got a ton of sexual tension with, who is probably also a superhero, and a supporting cast which can be described as colorful. And then we generally follow some sort of monster-of-the-week (or monster-of-the-fortnight) format while also advancing a surprisingly involved and soap-y storyline. Also towards the end we probably really up the stakes and start clearing the deck. Beyond that though there's a huge gamut of themes and tones. You might have something super wacky and cartoony. You might have a really dark police procedural sorta vibe with bloody corpses hanging from trees. You might get a super jarring mix of elements with no business even being in the same show ending up in the same scene. You might have a super tightly written story where everything connects perfectly, or a weird directionless show that just kinda plays it by ear and then rushes to tie things up at the end. Which of course means it's good to have someone to write up some summaries of all these many shows, which I'm planning to do here, eventually. After a whole lot of watching, rewatching, and finding time.

In other words, in true Web 1.0 spirit... this page is under construction.

The big damn timeline/synopis block!

There are a lot of shows to get through here, and personally I still have plenty to work my way through. This here is a big ol' chronological listing, which can further be divided into several major eras. Sticking at least mostly to the international fandom standard, we have the Showa Era, movies, Early Heisei, Late Heisei, and Reiwa. Yeah, we're naming these after Japanese emperors, it just happens to roughly work out nice with the placement of long breaks and broad changes in approach to the writing. Weirdly enough, the same convention also works great for the Godzilla films, and for Doctor Who, as all 3 franchises kinda shuttered things sometime in the 80s and had a big revival around 2000. More practically...

The Showa shows (1971-1989) Broadly, these are probably what you'd think. Somewhat campy in retrospect pretty traditional superhero shows, with a lot of arbitrary stunt bike stuff and rubber monsters. The production values were surprisingly good for the time, but generally we've got a lot of simple, straightforward, fight of the week shows, with basically perfect heroes saving whiny kids a lot.

The Movies (1992-1994) After the end of Black RX, we wouldn't have a new Kamen Rider show on the air for over a decade, but it was followed just a couple years later by three movies, each about a new original character with no connection to any TV continuity, and a really strong emphasis on the sort of visual styling and bio-mechanical horror effects you'd see in contemporary sci-fi and horror from the time. One of these is a really dark remix of the original series' starting premise, the others are pretty solid encapsulations of the franchise into stand-alone films.

Early Heisei (2000-2009) Kamen Rider returned to TV in a really different form. Shot digitally, really emphasizing unique world-building for each show, heroes switching around between different modes, overarching themes for monster designs, and a strict understanding (generally) that each show is its own self-contained thing, wich we can give a real proper send off to in the final episode. These first 10 shows are all over the map tone wise though, some being very kid-friendly low-stakes adventures, some having investigations into serial killers, and some just completely losing the thread of their story.

Early Heisei (2009-2019) After rounding things out with a big anniversary self-referential crossover show in Decade, there was a bit of a retuning of things. Every show from here out has a clear plan for story arcs over the whole season, solid character arcs, with more emphasis on a supporting cast, markedly better production guys, serious upping of the ante in terms of watching absurdly pretty boys looking like they're about to kiss, and characters doing the whole mode shift things using combinations of different power-ups at once. Early on there's a distressing escalation actually, with W having a 2 slot power up system, OOO going to 3, and Fourze getting unwieldly, before reigning it back in. In my opinion, the best of the best start here, and there's a lot to be said for just starting with W and watching straight through.

Reiwa (2019-) I mostly feel like this is just an arbirtary break point, but hey time of writing I haven't gotten to any of these shows. One significant change worth noting is that this is about when these shows stopepd secretly all staring the same lead actor. For 18 out of 20 shows in the Heisei era, when the main character transforms into his suit, the usual pretty boy actor is replaced by Seiji Takaiwa, who in addition to really compelling stunt work, really does an excellent drive of conveying each character's personality and emoting through some pretty damn heavy costuming that totally covers his face. From here on out it's Yuya Nawata instead. Oh and this same suit actor for every show secret is why wacky crossover movies have most returning characters just standing around kinda lifelessly.

Kamen Rider	The original series, and the one that gets the most tributes. There's some evil organization performing weird superscience experiments that turn people into monsters. One victim of this goes all superhero in response, fighting other monsters. It's got that weird charm of the period, very colorful, very formulaic, kinda goofy. The protagonist, Takeshi Hongo (played by Hiroshi Fujioka, who you may know better as Segata Sanshiro because I assume more people outside Japan have hunted down old Sega Saturn ads than this show), is replaced quite suddenly and sloppily by "a friend" just a few episodes in, because they hadn't thought to have seperate stunt actors in the suit from the start, and Hongo had a rather nasty accident. Once he recovered, he came back, and the show just kinda rolled with there being two Kamen Riders for the rest of its 98 episode run. I haven't watched past the first couple dozen episodes, but it holds up surprisingly well from what I've seen. Probably not a show I'd marathon, because it generally sticks to a pretty rote formula of here's our monster, here's our monster threatening people, here's our big damn hero sweeping in to save the day, but that also means you can jump in wherever just based on an episode title that sounds interesting, and it's one of the few shows available in full via Shout Factory.
1971-1973
Kamen Rider V3	This is a direct continuation from the original series, but with a new lead, Shiro Kazami, played by Hiroshi Miyauchi. I'm not planning to get into this sort of actor trivia with everyone but he also played the lead in Kaiketsu Zubat, and honestly if you're ever going to watch any of these really oldschool '70s Tokusatsu shows, you absolutely need to check that one out. A monster with a very memorable design killed his family as they were witnesses to a crime, nearly killed him, and he was made into a cyborg by the two orignal Kamen Riders (similar to the very rushed backstory of Kamen Rider 2). Past that, I have seen like, 2 episodes. It's safe to call it more of the same, probably with more memorable monster designs. Interesting trivia from the Kamen Rider wiki- In spin-off media, there was a crossover between this series and the Japanese version of Spiderman. This series also managed a DVD release in the U.S. prior to the rights hell that made the whole franchise unavailable for quite some time.
1973-1974
Kamen Rider X	I know next to nothing about X. It had a shorter run than most shows, at only 35 episodes. Protagonist Keisuke is turned into a cyborg by his scientist father, there's an evil organization. Series doesn't seem super well remembered. Still in the original continuity but less closely tied if I understand correctly.
1974
Kamen Rider Amazon	With an even shorter run, just 24 episodes, this one really mixed the formula up, getting away from tragic cyborgs turning other people into tragic cyborgs, and giving us a young child who was in a plane crash in the Amazon, being a bit feral, eventually being adopted by some Incans, who were then killed, looking for a magic amulet that he ends up with, that turns him into a very Kamen Rider styled piranha monster of sorts, after which he returns to Japan, and monster fights ensue. Amazon is infamous for being way more violent than any of the rest of these, and was basically pulled off the air for being too graphic. In 2016, there was streaming-only spiritual successor, Kamen Rider Amazons, which really leaned into the violent reputation and shock value, and if I'm not mistaken, it can actually be streamed on, appropriately enough, Amazon Prime, under the title Amazon Riders. Emphatically not for kids, as I understand.
1974-1975
Kamen Rider Stronger	Switching networks, because again, Amazon went a bit too hard, Stronger is largely back to form from a Showa show. Evil organization kills the protagonist's family, he infiltrates them and volunteers for their super soldier program, planning to use those powers to take them down. His character design, and especially his sidekick's, going by the rather amazing superhero moniker of Electronic Wave Humanoid Tackle (and one of the entirely too rare women getting to do the superhero thing properly in these shows), feel a lot more in line with American superhero aesthetics, while still keeping the bug look going. As I understand (sorry I have to keep throwing this in, I still need to go binge all these Showa shows and they've been a bit harder to find fansubs for, traditionally), this series is largely doing its own thing, but concludes with a big ol' team up of every character from every show to date, for a nice kick of nostalgia, as well as something of a sendoff as we would have a bit of a break for the franchise fo the next few years.
1975
Kamen Rider (Skyrider)	After a break, we have... Kamen Rider. Fans would eventually take to calling this series Skyrider, or Kamen Rider Shin (a title unfortnately also shared by 3 other entries down the line, wih Shin meaning "new"), and was intended as a reboot for the franchise, which again, at this point was basically a decade old shared continuity. The plot setup is a retread of the original show, just straight up calling the evil organization Neo-Shocker. I haven't watched it, and the KR wiki has... really nothing to say about it. My vague understanding is this relaunch fell a bit flat.
1979-1980
Kamen Rider Super-1	Kamen Rider Super-1 at the very least gets us away from cartoonish evil organizations, and instead has someone vollunteer to become a cyborg to go explore space. Star Wars really did reshape the entire geek media landscape the world over. So we have an evil space empire as our villains, and another series I need to hunt down to get any info to make this more than a stub of a summary, sorry.
1980-1981
Kamen Rider Black	While I still haven't seen it, Kamen Rider Black was a huge hit, and to this day people talk about it as a high-water mark for the franchise. The broad strokes of the plot are... let's revisit the setup of the original show yet again, but with a lot more drama, tension with the protagonist's brother also being put through the same thing, big tragic reveals. Got a lot of international released, there's plans for a remake series like Amazons at some point this year as I'm writing this. Plus it got a direct sequel series, which almost never happens.
1987-1988
Kamen Rider Black RX	Again, it's a direct sequel to Kamen Rider Black. The protagonist gets tossed into space and mutated and ends up with a a new costume, there's a new villain group and... I really feel like I should know more about it, but, I don't. Still very well received, very dramatic, exported a lot... here's some trivia though! This is the series that was absolutely butchered to hell (along with two of the movies released shortly after) to bring us the horrible, unwatchable Power Ranger's spinoff that was Saban's Masked Rider, total bomb and reason that it took like 25 years before anyone was willing to attempt to bring any of this stuff over to a western audience again. So if you watched that, you've probably seen chunks of some action scenes?
1988-1989
The 90s Movies
Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue	This is probably the biggest outlier in the series. As per tradition to date, we are yet again recycling the basic premise of the original 1971 Kamen Rider, focusing on a protagonist being experimented on by an evil organization that turns people into weird monsters, who rebels and fights the rest of them, but... this is not a superhero movie. This is basically a horror movie. Rather than just being a regular guy who can ride his motorcycle real fast so the wind kickstarts his cyborg engine and gives him cool bug power armor, this is just a movie where someone gets turned into a monstrous weregrasshopper that then goes around ripping mostly other monsters, and if I recall some standard humans to pieces with just you know, claws and teeth and such. So that's... interesting. It's REALLY interesting when future aniversary crossover stuff just throws this monster in with all the old '70s heroes. But overall the tone feels more akin to the Guyver, or a somewhat toned down The Fly. Again, it's a really interesting outlier.
1992
Kamen Rider ZO & J	Continuing with this plan to make Kamen Rider just a series of annual theatrical releases, thankfully, we did not continue with the adventures of a hideous murderous bug monster on the run from the law, but instead .
1993, 1994