Rambling about Kamen Rider pt 2
3 August 2025
(from Kamen Rider Black. Flashing lights warning.)
i'm back! i've watched a lot more tokusatsu and i'm here to tell you why you should too. it's really fortunate that motorcycles are still the exact same amount of cool as they were back in 1971 when they decided to make a motorcycle superhero that they didn't know would last for at least half a century afterwards.
Kamen Rider Black (1987)
Black is the oldest one i've watched, and the only one from before the hiatus and reboot (Kuuga in 2000). Kotaro and his brother Nobuhiko are captured by evil cultists at their birthday party, then turned into cyborgs and brainwashed... but Kotaro escapes right before it's complete! and now as Black Sun, he needs to find a way to save his brainwashed brother, Shadow Moon.
this show mixes serious storytelling with very goofy monsters. with the distance of time, i'm not sure how much of it was meant to be silly and how much is just that old shows are really funny by default? what makes it work though is that Kotaro takes everything 100% deadly-seriously and i love him. 
most Rider shows post-reboot are very serialized (every episode has major permanent developments) but Black is very episodic, which i assume is probably nromal for the old ones? but then right when it was starting to get repetitive, this asshole shows up and steals the show for the next 30 episodes, oh my gosh! so, my favorite thing in Kamen Rider is when there's multiple Riders and they're constantly arguing with each other — but Black here is the only one i've seen that inverts it? once Bilgenia shows up, he's openly planning to usurp the other villains, and they're always arguing and fighting, but then they have to put aside their differences and join forces whenever Kamen Rider shows up. makes me feel bad whenever they lose, even if they are evil cultists.
my favorite thing in this show is that Black's motorcycle Battle Hopper is a sentient grasshopper, who can't talk, but gets treated with love and care like a pet. lots of good scenes of Kotaro musing about current goings-on while giving his steed a nice wash. 
Kamen Rider Agito (2001)
there's been a series of strange deaths: people drowning on dry land, getting embedded in walls, or being completely mummified in the middle of driving. the police trace this to monsters called the Unknown, who seem to be related to some mysterious artifacts. amnesiac Kamen Rider Agito, police exo-suit Kamen Rider G3, and freakish monster Kamen Rider Gills all set out to defeat the Unknown and figure out what's going on.
yeah, this is what i meant earlier! there's three Riders here and they all have very different ways of doing things. none of them know who each other are, which is really fun! like, all the Riders run into each other a lot, and all their unmasked forms run into each other a lot, but nobody realizes it. i never get tired of stuff like that! 
Shouichi (Agito) and Hikawa (G3) in particular are perfect foils for each other, where Shouichi acts really dumb but is actually really smart, and Hikawa is the opposite. the supporting cast is great in this one too, especially Ozawa and Mr. Misugi.
as an aside, it took me a long time to realize that the first Kamen Rider was supposed to look at least somewhat like a monster-of-the-week, not a hero. he is a monster, but one who consciously chooses to fight for justice, and that's been a really important recurring element throughout the entire franchise. i'm bringing it up here because... Gills is amazing, i love when a Rider gets to be really freaky like this! check out that face close-up with the mandibles!
there's one episode halfway through (with a guest writer i think) where everyone's extremely stupid for no reason, and i always think about it.
Kamen Rider 555 (2003)
certain people who die come back to life as a powerful Orphenoch, "humanity's next stage in evolution." the Smart Brain corporation, led by them, has been trying to take over the world... but mysteriously, the same corporation also created a powerful flip-phone to fight the Orphenoch, and loser protagonist Takumi is the only one who can use it, to transform into Faiz!
this one really stands out to me, because there's a big focus on the monsters as people, and what they choose to do with their new life. Takumi doesn't even show up until like 12 minutes into the first episode — the start is entirely focused on Kiba, the horse Orphenoch, who immediately murders someone in petty revenge. it's really rad that one of the main characters is just a centaur sometimes. all the Orphenoch characters are amazing and i love how they end up forming their own little group that's given just as much attention as Takumi's.
it's hard to talk about the plot of this show without major spoilers, but i can say it has maybe my favorite moment in the whole franchise? if you've seen it then you know what it is! one warning though is that this show is strangely really sexist, and don't expect any girl to ever be a Rider even if they hint at it like ten times. it's not a dealbreaker but it's worth a CW there.
Kamen Rider Ex-Aid (2016)
he's a doctor... but also a gamer! Ex-Aid fights against the Bugster virus, which infects people and makes them manifest a video game monster — if the monster's allowed to exist for too long, then the original patient disappears. of course because it's a non-video-game piece of media about video games, it's very obviously written by someone whose only experience with games is second-hand accounts of someone else's vague memories about 80s arcades. this bugs the heck out of me but i think other people might find it really endearing!
in general i could poke a thousand holes in Ex-Aid's extremely flimsy plot and characters, and it does many things i disagree with, but it's definitely a turn-your-brain-off show and it's fun like that. the suits and the general visual design are perfect, and it has some of the most fun action sequences i've ever seen. the soundtrack is all really hype Gamer Music, and villain Kamen Rider Chronos is so cool, omg! this is still pretty low on my list of ones i'd recommend watching, but it's some good stupid fun with high highs and low lows.
the protagonist Emu gets really, really into it whenever he's playing a game. he's usually very lighthearted and kind, but when he's gaming he gets super intense and serious. this is played up as just a quirky character bit, but about halfway through the show, he gets a new powerup that lets him activate "2-player mode", and have both personalities out at the same time. and then it turns out he's plural! there's a few nice story beats about being considerate to other parts of yourself even if it's scary at first, and it's all handled in a fun respectful way even though i'm pretty sure the writers didn't know they were representing a real thing. if you want a Kamen Rider that's entirely about being plural then you should watch Den-O!click for spoilers on a cool thing that's important to me
Kamen Rider Build (2017)
10 years ago, Pandora's Box was discovered on Mars and brought back to Earth... and opening it caused all of Japan to erupt into civil war. Genius physicist Kamen Rider Build and his idiot pro-boxer boyfriend are out to put a stop to it! (they are extremely gay and i'm so proud of them. 
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this one's really good in general but i want to focus on one specific aspect of it. so, the transformation/special narrator callouts have gradually gotten more and more obnoxious over time, because kids love that stuff. so there's this really interesting contrast where, even during serious or heartfelt scenes, it still happens. it's all canon, but nobody finds it silly — that's just how fighting sounds like in this world. A named recurring character can be dying on the floor with soft piano music playing, and a weeping, grieving Rider runs in in slow-mo to fight the villain responsible, ROBOT JELLY! (tin-can crunching sound) ROBOT IIIIIIN GREASE! (guitar riff) to transform and then the scene continues with 100% sincerity as if nothing strange just happened.
it's incredibly inspiring as a writer actually, because... again, that's just how it works here? the world you're writing can have the strangest rules or the stupidest mechanics, but if you take them seriously then your readers will too. even if your main character's supermove is a physical, solid ballistic trajectory graph which shows the exact path of your kick, if you treat it with the same sincerity as Goku firing a Kamehameha, then there's never anything to be ashamed of. if Kamen Rider can do it then you can too. 
Conclusion
Kamen Rider is really good. they used to all be on archive.org but then the uploaders flew too close to the sun and got them all removed. there's other places to get them if you know where to look, though! i've also spent a lot of time recently watching Ultraman and a bit of Super Sentai, so i should do a spinoff post soon. 