Kamen Rider was the product of Toei TV and manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori, and like all good manga ideas of yesteryear, it's unreasonably violent and obsessed with cyborgs. At its core, KR (Kamen Rider, we're going to be using this abbreviation a lot so get used to it) is a revenge story, with young academic genius and motorcycle enthusiast Takeshi Hongo abducted by the evil organization Shocker and experimented on, turning him into a cyborg. He's rescued by Professor Midorikawa before his brain can be modified to obey Shocker, and they escape, but are followed by the evil Spider Man (not that one). Takeshi transforms into Kamen Rider and kills Spider Man (again not that one), but not before Professor Midorikawa is killed. His daughter Ruriko sees her father die, and blames Takeshi for it. It's a clear cut, well-told origin story. Stan Lee would have approved, I think.
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| The eponymous Kamen Rider |
What's most striking about the premiere episode are two sort of opposing factors: what is here and what's not here yet. The costume and bike are primitive but well-designed, the stunts are well-done for their time, and if the story is largely predictable, well, that's just to be expected of both the era and the intended target audience (kids). What's equally surprising is that the show spends little time on who Shocker is, who's leading them, or where they come from. Shocker still pops up from time to time in modern KR (usually a big crossover movie), so I don't know when in the last almost 50 years they got fleshed out. Also, the grunts don't have what are now considered their standard costumes or make their signature noises, and I'm curious when that'll come in. Stay tuned, as Shannon Manor would say.
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| The evil Spider Man (not that one) |
Kamen Rider was made just over eleven years before I was born, and I have a disposition for watching older TV that should serve me well here. I'm a pretty big fan of 60s Doctor Who, and it's an appropriate comparison because the budgets and effects here are probably (somehow!) lesser than that. Modern KR uses far far too much CG for my taste (looking directly at you, Saber, you goddamn fever dream of a show), but the effects here are primitive enough to sometimes be distracting in the opposite way. There's a sweet spot for me somewhere around KR Black, and I've gotten used to the CG in most of the 2010s era KR shows, but early KR and 2000s KR are largely blind spots for me, so we'll see how I like those eras as I go. So far, so good!
I'm giving Kamen Rider: Episode 1 a 3/5
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