Should there be more American Kamen Rider Adaptations?
 

With all the hype and commercialization Power Rangers Super Megaforce is getting in America, I was wondering if adapting kamen riders would be a good idea

I'm not clear how Dragon Knight went down over here since I didn't pay much attention. It's not a bad idea, it's just going matter of

A) Set itself apart from Power Rangers
B) Finding the right source material and gimmick

Ryuki was a good choice due to the large number of Riders and the diverse characterizations and interactions that would have offered, as well as the card gimmick (who doesn't love card gimmicks), so Gaim would be a sound choice since it has a similar number of Riders- though many would likely be turned off by the whole "fruit armor" thing.

Oh man, I'd love to see Gaim get the Neo Saban Power Rangers treatment. Not because it would be good, but because there's so much overblown hype for the show that seeing people's reactions to it getting horribly bastardized would be hilarious.

Schadenfreude. It's a thing.

Should there be? Yes.

With what happened to Dragon Knight and what has done to Power Rangers, that we should let it be adapted by those people? Nope. Neo-Saban will fuck it up somehow.

Honestly, Kamen Rider is good enough already without American adaptations.

But Saban had nothing to do with Dragon Knight. That was on Adness Entertainment.

Yeah, Saban wasn't even relavent at that time.

Yes, kamen rider dragon knight was really good and I would like to see what they would do for other rider series

One of the things I noticed in some american adapted japanese stuff

Saya no uta
Japan - romance between a mentally broken man and an eldritch abomination dealing with several psychological issues
America- romance between a mentally broken man and an alien while a group of mad scientist try to capture an experiment on the girl

Kamen rider ryuki
Japan- battle between riders set up by a mad man to fulfill their wishes
America: Aliens want to take over the world

Most Sentai
Japan: Enemies with actual motives ( I think?)
America: Aliens want to take over the world

Seriously why does it always have to be aliens

If they adapt Gaim they'd probably turn Helheim into aliens or something

My point still stands that Kamen Rider has always and will always be adapted terribly.

But Helheim is an alien. Sagara said how he travels across the universe.... that obviously means the world that got taken over that created the Overlords is another planet.

I'll defend Dragon Knight and say that it was a decent attempt, it wasn't perfect by any strech of the imagination but at least it's watchable and leauges better than Masked Rider.

To me, it felt like a poor man's Disney era Power Rangers with shreds of Ryuki in it. A show's biggest crime is that it could bore me, and boy does Dragon Knight do that in spades.

Although, if Judd Lyn was involved in a hypothetical Gaim adaptation, I'd watch for a few episodes to see if it's good. but that'll never happen.

Id be down

No by alien I meant the generic grey aliens that constantly try to take over the world in the movies like what they did in dragon knight

Why so much hate for dragon knight?

Mainly because it was awful.

Dragon Knight was pretty meh, but still fairly decent and watchable it did help me push to buy the Ryuki Figuarts before starting on Kamen Rider Ryuki.

I found Dragon knight to be enjoyable, and as far as adaptations go it had clever use of the footage.
While at this point their dream of adapting Kabuto seems impossible, I would like to see more KR adaptations by other companies.

I'd be down for a BONES animated version of OOO

I don't hate it I just find it rather bland

This.

Dragon Knight was an abysmal imitation of the source material. And I hate the argument "but they got all 13 in!". So? They spliced the series down and edited footage from 2 movies into Dragon Knight to do that. Those other riders exist in alternate Ryuki timelines. Them just being there in Dragon Knight doesn't make me stomach the show more. It's still a poorly acted and plotted mess.

I would really hope that an American company doesn't attempt something like this again. Hopefully the poor ratings of Dragon Knight and it's inability to carry a toy line proved it shouldn't be attempted again. Clearly Saban has dropped their "Power Rider" trademark so there won't likely be anything from that. I'd like to think it won't happen again, but then the time between Masked Rider & Dragon knight was over 10 years.

To be fair, it wasn't an imitation, its an alternate spin on the mirror world with various plot elements regurgitated and wrapped in a nice little deus ex machina bow on top lol.

But yeah, We'll probably get another Kamen Rider Taisen movie before we get another Rider adaptation lol.

I wanted Dragon Knight to be good and while it had the potential it falls short on so many levels. Poor acting a lot of the time, poor writing and all the original footage looked like it was on the smallest string of a budget.

It's a real shame because they got in a really decent bunch of martial artists and stunt actors in to work on the show but it just didn't really click together, also for some reason the director just forgot how to fucking direct when the riders fought in suit.

It had a lot of potential and the attiude going in to the show was awesome, like you could tell they wanted to do the show justice but the execution was just urgh.

Also to get this off my chest, I actually hate the sound effects guy. I hate his work on this show, it was absolutely atrocious. Really ruined a lot of the fights, even the japanese footage just felt like shit because the sounds where bloody awful.

The number one gripe I had about Dragon Knight fight scenes was those flash, and flash sequence like every time they threw a punch or slash the screen would flash and move on to a whole different scene/setting.

Don't forget - Dragon Knight was so popular it was cancelled 3 episodes before the finale and had to be aired online instead.

Meh, I really liked Dragon Knight. Sure it's no Ryuki but not only was it enjoyable but there was a hell of a lot more effort with story/original footage put in than most Power Rangers series.

If they can capture that level of ingenuity again, I'd be down for another go.

GIVE ME MY BLADE, FAIZ, KABUTO, KUGGA, & AGITO ADAPTIONS DAMNIT :lol! That means yes :lol.

This. It wasn't anything mind-blowing like Gaim or Agito, but it didn't screw anything up, either.

Honestly, I'm not very fond of adaptions. The only thing they ever did for me is to make me notice that the original is far superior- aka how I got from Power Rangers to Super Sentai.

There might be a chance to adapt a show very well, but it requires especially better acting. The acting out of suit in the US footage usually doesn't fit the suit acting in the Japanese footage and thus breaks the illusion. Also, writers that actually have the skill to write stories that are the same level as their counterpart. Not all writing in the Japanese version is always better, but the Japanese way of storytelling sure has something about it that makes it more captivating and interesting.

But... as good as an adaption would be, I wouldn't watch it anyway. I love the original work and I connect the suits so much to the show's original characters and the actors' faces... adaptions just never work for me. Once they transform, I always see the Japanese counterparts. Call me narrow-minded, but I just can't get into an adaption once I've seen the original version.

I disagree but...*shrugs*

The majority of the time yes, but there are those PR season which are better then the Sentai counterpart.

Mighty Morphin season 1-2,RPM,In Space,Dino Thunder and Lost Galaxy are this to me.

I rather see a original American Kamen Rider show then just give the Power Rangers treatment. We have two original American Godzilla movies and two original American Ultraman shows (USA and Powered which both bombed in the US), so why not have a original Kamen Rider show. With a original show, they can do whatever they want with it and make a show with better special effects. I would like to see a original American rider show similar how Arrow is handled.

No chance of that happening.

Yeah it's unlikely to happen unless a TV producer in the US is a big enough fan to let it happen. I think the Power Rangers treatment should be only used for Power Rangers. Either dub and sub the Rider shows or make something original.

Now PR maybe has a chance.*if Saban wasn't a cheap ass maybe*

As for Rider the only thing I could see is something like the Guyver movies.

Imagine if we just got straight dubs. Like, Funimation-quality dubs.

For a original American Rider show to happen then I think Steve Wang should given a second chance with a better budget, more control and have it on a better channel that markets its show better. For a original American Rider show, I think a PG-13 show similar to Arrow can work. More people would watch it and take it seriously. You can still sell toys since it won't be a R rated show and if kids think it looks cool then they will buy them. Just market your shows well enough and have it be good then you can have something big.

I would enjoy something like that, but I don't think anyone right now will actually try and bring it over but I would love to see it.

I would be okay if they got treated like the Marvel movies do. Once a year adapt a KR season into a 75-90 minute movie by using their asthetics to tell their own original short story. I think it'd be better than trying to have an actual series out as the general public are already so negative-minded on anything new PR does that's not MM based there's no way enough people are gonna give a KR series a chance. Maybe some, but not enough. AFAIK the movies could be much easier to handle from a story standpoint, production standpoint & viewer standpoint.

Of course I was generalizing a bit. Yes, there are some fairly good Power Rangers seasons. I heard RPM was really good on the writing side. And I even read the first draft of a Go-Busters adaption by an original PR author and it was brilliant. But sadly, those are rare, because not all writers are that good at working on the source material and making their own story of it. But then again, I guess this is because of the way the different authors see kids shows. And this is a problem that would be a major problem for Kamen Rider. By removing things that could be too dramatic, the authors may have major problems to write an action series that fits the source material. Action series should involve serious fighting and death- despite some light-hearted elements in the story.
And that's the problem with the target audience a US-adaption of Kamen Rider would have: If it is a children's show, how do we create an atmosphere that fits the darker atmosphere of the fighting scenes (that would be especially difficult in early Heisei...)? If it's a show for an older audience, wouldn't the designs and suit action come off as "too cheesy"?
Of course, the last point wouldn't be a problem to us toku fans, but a show that airs on TV should have a larger audience than that. This point is something that could really be a problem. I've seen Sailor Moon fans react to the Sailor Moon toku just that way: "What's this, it looks so cheap, why does it look like Power Rangers?!"

I think adaptions are always very hard to work on if it comes to the writing and acting. Of course, you could go the path that PR Samurai went and re-tell the story (by changing things and adding weird moments and minor plotholes, lol), but if you just re-tell the story, you could spare yourself some work by just making a dub of the original show. I mean, that's one of the reasons why Toonmakers never got through with their half-live action half-cartoon adaption of Sailor Moon- it would have been too much work. If you write an individual adaption, it would even be easier (for a writer) to create something that's completely your own, say, an all-american Kamen Rider show with it's own designs and fights. Of course it's cheaper and easier not to shoot the action scenes yourself, but it gives you much more creative freedom to write a cool show.