As Super Sentai ends and Project Red takes its
place, I started thinking about why these transforming
heroes shows work at all. Kamen Rider is the
most successful of the big three in terms of
toy sales, so it is the best place to start.
Kamen Rider resets every year. New suits, new
tones, new worlds. And yet, somehow, it is still
instantly recognizable. That got me thinking.
Why do you watch Kamen Rider? strip away the
stories and emotions, and there are a few external
elements that never change. The first thing is
that transformation is always a spectacle. We
get from Yusuke Godai, you know, behold my transformation.
We get the jingles of the more modern Kamen Riders.
That's, you know, Kuga was 20 years ago. We have
from the original Kamen Rider the way that the
transformation went from being on a motorcycle
we have these sharp fast cuts going back and
forth between Takeshi Hongo showing his normal
face then showing the mask on him off him on
him off him until finally the mask settles there
and his scarf blows out dramatically and we eventually
got some flashing lights added to that and then
after he was away for a little bit when Ishimonji
Hayato showed up as Rider 2 we had the full development
of the Henshin sequence for Kamen Rider and it
became something over time that was it was always
there but it was sharpened when he came along
because it was no longer that he just rode his
bike fast to get the wind turbine to spin up
to transform it was something else turned into
a ritual as opposed to a process it's still kind
of a process especially when you add on the jingles
of the more modern Kamen Rider shows but still
there's that spectacle that leads to the transformation
that happens when the hero is ready, when he
needs to transform, when the enemies are too
many for him or whatever the situation is, when
it's too dire, then he stops fighting from his
civilian form and then goes and transforms and
then things get kicked up another notch. Speaking
of the enemies, another big staple of Kamen Rider,
something that pulls people in, is the enemy
origin power. It isn't... always obvious at a
glance how the common writer and the enemy are
linked to each other but if you just watch an
episode basically any episode even if he's fighting
mooks or a lower level monster of the week as
opposed to a general you can see there's shared
dna between him and the other group or and the
enemy that he's fighting and i think there's
something fascinating about that dichotomy i
don't know necessarily that we're processing
that on a conscious level when we see it but
i think there's something about the fact that
if you go back to the original ground raider
he's wearing boots and gloves and a belt and
a mask with armor pieces on him and all the shocker
mooks that he's fighting have masks and war paint
um and boots and gloves as well as these belts
and they're coming at him and then you look at
first one was spider -man he's got his big shocker
belt and his crazy spider helmet and uh He had
hairy fingers and stuff, so that's a little bit
off, but then his boots are the same. And you
can see that they're these more powerful shocker
cyborgs. And you know from the first episode
of the original Commodore that he is a shocker
cyborg who's turned against them and who's betrayed
them and gone good. But I'm thinking about other
shows. You can tell, like Oz, for example, the
enemies there have a very bold design. It's very
monstrous and O's is much more refined. And yet
you can see that it's obvious that he, you know,
the metals come out of the enemies when he defeats
them. And before that, the yummies have metals
that come out of them as well. And he's using
the metals directly. So you can see, okay, metal
to metal connection. Also, while he's not monstrous,
he's odd looking and he has very evidently on
his body, these different animal motifs. So when
he's fighting the, I think it was the praying
mantis in the first episode. You can see he's
using Tatoba. He's got the grasshopper, the tiger,
and the... What was the other one? Oh, and the
hawk. He's got those animal motifs on him, and
you can see clearly. Okay, so he's got these
animal power coins, and the enemy is using them
as well. And you can see the connection. And
I believe all of the enemies always have... some
sort of flashy belt buckle type of deal uh in
zets currently it's a like a sleepy eye kind
of deal uh that's just a simple belt buckle which
looks really good uh they did something very
similar for combinator ghost and i'm not gonna
remember all the rest of them off top my head
but just looking at it you can see okay there
is something There's something unifying between
his design and their designs, and why is he fighting
them? I think that kind of fuels a mystery, even
if it's not on a deep psychological level or
anything like that. It's on the surface, but
it kind of makes it more interesting. It makes
you ask a question. In writing books, there's
something you want to do, which is that you want
to write an invisible question. You want to state
things. set up the scenario of the world in the
first you know on the first page in the first
chapter in the first paragraph if you can that
makes people ask questions or realize that there's
a question there that needs to be asked that
isn't being spelled out so which is in this case
would be why does this hero look like these villains
why does this you know monster uh why is this
monster being opposed by somebody who looks kind
of like him but who i can tell is protecting
people and helping them instead of hurting them
another thing is the iconic writer mask with
the uh big bug eyes, and whether it's Tato Bob,
which is a hawk that somehow has bug eyes, or
it's Ryuki, who has these big eyes behind a grill.
And then actually, if you look at Ryuki more
closely, the antennae, the big eyes, the bug
eyes, and the crusher are divided between three
heroes. So it's Ryuki, whatever the bat knight
is called, and then I think it's Zelda, who has
the, he's the green one with the turrets, he
has the big antennae, the... bat knight has the
crusher and ryuki himself the dragon knight has
the uh the eyes hidden behind the visor and i
think he's a tiny little antenna too but uh anyway
that's just another example of that but there's
always these you know big eyes whether they're
compound eyes or not which i think they're pretty
much always compound eyes they're large and distinct
and that's part of the icon and i think it looks
it always looks distinct Except for with Jay
and Zetto, of course, because they almost look
like twins. And Ryder wanted two. But there's
a uniting element, which is these big eyes. So
they're kind of emotional. They kind of look
like skull eyes. Sometimes they have tears under
them. Sometimes they don't, depending on the
Ryder, the season, the design that they went
for that year. But that's always something that's
kind of there. And it makes it distinct. He's
the Karate Bug Man. Which one? All of them. They're
all the Karate Bug Man. even if they're not bugs,
which is funny. Finally, the writer is always
framed as being alone in some way. With Takeshi
Hongo, it's because he was a cyborg. He was no
longer human, and he was sad that his humanity
was gone, and he didn't know how he could relate
to people no longer being human, and it separated
him from other people. In Kamen Rider Ghost,
he's dead. In Kamen Rider Gob, he was a half
-human, half -monster, just like in Kiva. And
in Zetsu, We don't really know how he's separate,
but he is alone. He's the lone agent, even though
there's complications with Knox and even other
agents beyond that. He's Agent 7, so that implies
there's 1 through 6 at least, if not people above
him as well. And there's Zero, obviously, who's
not a writer, but he's a support member for him.
And just because the Combinator has friends,
thinking back to Minami Kotaro in Combinator
Black, he had the sister and... half -sister,
cousin, friend, whatever. These two girls that
he hung out with a lot, and he was friendly with
people, but he was always off alone. He was always
looking for Nobuhiko. He was always facing Golgum
by himself because he had to, because that's
what a writer has to do. They have to be able
to fight on their own. They have to face the
enemy by themselves. They're the only ones who
can do it. They are uniquely positioned to deal
with the threat that is there. They're altered
in a way that makes them feel alone and isolated.
Even if they have friends, they have to kind
of hide part of who they are from these friends,
these allies. And it's interesting. That's not
to say that there aren't teams and there's an
ensembles and things like that, but still the
writers being a writer is something that's singular
and solitary, even if you're part of a team and
it's less, much less like a super Sendai, even
a little bit more like an Ultraman, which is
interesting. But I think it's something that
people can pretty much always see straight on
picking up any episode of, combinator show and
also the writers typically have conflict when
there's more than one of them which i think sharpens
that even more so it's like yeah well you guys
are obviously writers but you're not working
together necessarily so even when there's a team
or when there's multiples of them and they're
not on a team they're on opposite sides it helps
to reinforce that lone aspect of combinator that
you feel and that is a big staple of it and of
course most combinators have close range physical
combat which is exciting to watch. They're brawling,
they're garrigating, even when they have powers,
like the more modern ones, it still typically
results in them going over and punching or kicking
or hitting or throwing or whatever an enemy,
which is just fun to watch. But it's more distinctive,
you know, in Super Sentai, they have a lot of
ranged slashes, even sword slashes that fly towards
the enemy, and in Ultraman you have all the beam
attacks as well. And they would take Kamen Rider
as much more physically grounded in as actual
physical combat, even if there are swords and
guns and things like that. But still, for the
most part, he's getting in there grappling and
throwing punches and things like that, which
is fun to see. And I think it's definitely a
staple across Commodore. Then you have things,
outliers like Amazon, where he's cutting enemies
in half. And like the original Commodore, he
has no weapons. He is the weapon, and it's fun
to see him getting in and mixing with the Shocker
combatmen, and he's stealing their weapons from
them and using them against them even. But then
he throws them away and he just fights with his
fists and his feet, which is always fun to see.
So those are definitely distinctive elements
of Kamen Rider that I think draw people in year
after year. Kamen Rider is sustained because
people keep watching new members of the fandom
come in and they can't enjoy it if they don't,
they can't become fans of it and watchers of
it, viewers of it, if they're not seeing it.
And I think these things are the things that
pull them in. Let's see. Am I missing anything?
Can you think of anything that's like a core
staple or core element of Kamen Rider that we
always get? You know, a reason why you watch
Kamen Rider. And also, you know, what keeps people
coming back is a different question. And that's
something I'll talk about later because I think
that needs to be explored as well. If you want
to go deeper, check the pinned comment for more
of my analysis. This is MJ, Prevention, Inspection,
and Rider Tears, signing out.