Kamen Rider: Episode 5 - The Monstrous Mantis Man (怪人かまきり男, Kaijin Kamakiri Otoko) (Original Airdate: May 1, 1971)

 Mysterious earthquakes are happening in Japanese suburbs, and a woman Takeshi grew up with has mysteriously disappeared! This raises two questions: (1) Are these things connected, and (2) how is Shocker involved? First off, it turns out the missing woman (Chikako) worked at an earthquake monitoring station. Second, Shocker is using small nuclear explosions to simulate earthquakes, and abducted Chikako to help further their plan to cause an earthquake and destroy the city! ...wait I thought Shocker wanted to turn everyone into cyborgs and then rule the world, how does this further that goal? And why is their commander for this operation a cyborg with mantis powers?

He has a sickle, like a mantis claw. Dunno what that has to do with earthquakes.

Don't worry, in this episode, none of those questions will be answered! You WILL, however, see Takeshi continue to train as a motorcycle rider and explain magnitude to Tachibana. You WILL see two incredibly boring fight scenes with the Mantis Man and some Shocker grunts, and Takeshi inexplicably escape a combination bomb/pit trap when the "blast radius activated my belt". You WILL be unsurprised when Chikako is revealed to be brainwashed by Shocker, and disappointed when a subplot about the Mantis Man's egg just turns out to be a decorative shell placed over the lever that will unleash the final earthquake. I'm aware that last bit sounds insane, but here we are anyhow!

This is easily the worst episode I've watched so far, but not wretched, just uninspired. And nothing made any sense once you thought about it for two seconds. I'm aware this is children's show from 1971, so I'm willing to cut it quite a bit of slack, but we've had four episodes with better plotting than this. Shocker trying to abduct people makes sense, they do want to turn everyone into cyborgs. I don't see how destroying a city with earthquakes is going to further that plot. Oh, also, the "henchman and monster dissolve when defeated" animation has gone from foamy stuff, to blood stuff, and now it's just this abstract string art that disappears in a weird time-lapse. A definite downgrade.

Kamen Rider: Episode 5 gets a 2/5.