[AkibaSilver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Neat! The Wiki is... a little difficult to get info about the manga series, and most of the links I clicked were for stuff from years ago. Sorry to be so off-base on this! I will stop trying to figure this out!

Dw, it's fine! I know firsthand from how bad the wiki can be for stuff that happens in the manga, especially Spirits and SIC, again probably because of how little of it is translated, so most of what I know I've picked up from diving far too deep and seeing news on here about more recent stuff.

I guess, on a personal note, comics just aren't as big a thing over here in the UK as the US, so it doesn't feel that weird to me that manga for the show just isn't as big. Over here, we don't get the individual issues outside of Forbidden Planet imports - what's sold in newsagents are (I think) two or three issues sold as one, and the TPBs are stocked in bookshops and the like. Apart from, ya know, kids activity magazines.

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

You know, I'm a little amazed that (to my limited knowledge) there aren't a steady stream of Kamen Rider manga releases. Here in the US, any moderately successful sci-fi/fantasy/horror TV series can get at least a limited series, if not a raft of spinoffs. I mean, there's a currently-running Blade Runner comic. The idea that a 50-year franchise with dozens of potential characters to flesh out or revisit isn't constantly churning out material... I really don't get it.

The first batch of chapters were pretty much a where are they now type omnibus where they showcase the first 9 riders from Ichigo to Super-1, but after that it basically builds up to be the Kamen Rider ZX(pronounced Zet-Cross) TV show that never was circa 1984. Like I said before, I lost track some time later but overall it was a fun read last I checked because Kenichi Muraeda's art + further development of ZX. At some point I believe it kinda was halted and they continued as Shin Kamen Rider Spirits.

[Matrixbeast]

Well, that's a bit of an odd way to describe it. Being a comic medium, they're able to be far more ambitious in what kind of story they tell, being able to not have to worry about whether certain characters can return if their actor declines or such.
It's the type of show ZX wish it could've had

According to the KR Wiki, Toei specifically denied them the use of Kotaro/Black, which is a bit of a bummer, though. Since I bet it would've made for an even cooler story.

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matrixbeast

Well, that's a bit of an odd way to describe it. Being a comic medium, they're able to be far more ambitious in what kind of story they tell, being able to not have to worry about whether certain characters can return if their actor declines or such.
It's the type of show ZX wish it could've had

According to the KR Wiki, Toei specifically denied them the use of Kotaro/Black, which is a bit of a bummer, though. Since I bet it would've made for an even cooler story.

It was so cool to see the 10 of them work as a team at certain moments and best part of the comic early on was Riderman. They basically Episode of Bardock'd him kinda.
And yeah it is a bummer with the no Kotaro stuff.

[Matrixbeast]

In some current cuteness, it seems Hiro Mizumashi/KR Kabuto's daughter has learned of his role in the franchise, and thus has since been carrying around a soft vinyl of Kabuto everywhere she goes.



https://twitter.com/HiroMizushimav2/...45846849155072

I started following his youtube channel at the start of the year, too. It's nice to know what he's been up to, lately

[BagJo]

That's awesome!

[Fish Sandwich]

So this is something I kind of wanted to do in my Kuuga thread, but it's an idea that quickly grew beyond the scope of just that one show, it's something I've kind of talked about in here before already, and also, it's been rattling around in my head for a while and I still can't bring it to any kind of unified point. This is mostly something of a thought exercise, but hopefully there's at least something in here worth thinking about.



I talk at pretty much any given chance about the thematic underpinnings Kamen Rider was built on way back at its inception, and enjoy thinking about how those themes reverberate throughout the franchise. One of the big things at the center of Rider, as Ishinomori originally created it, was the idea of him as a warrior of nature. A freedom fighter with an irrepressible desire to stand against forces that seek to dominate and control. The grasshopper motif, the association with wind, it's all part of that. Shocker represented fascist regimes, but there was also an element to them of simply being an organization. They were all about advanced technology, and structure, and everything else that would inherently be repugnant to a hero conceived, essentially, as a positive force of chaos. I mean, heck, the word "chaos" in its original sense, a void, could even refer simply to open air. Not a deliberate connection, I'm sure, but I still think it shows how deeply baked together these ideas were. They even loop back on each other accidentally. This is what Kamen Rider was all about for the longest time. No matter the specific incarnation, they were heroes who proudly rejected authority. Ones who refused the evils of society in favor of the harmony of the natural world.





And watching Kuuga again got me thinking, did they lose that somewhere along the line? Because at a glance, you could argue Kamen Rider's big revival not only threw all of that out a window, it replaced it with something diametrically opposed. What's one of the most notable things about Kuuga as a series? That he works directly with the police, right? And what are cops if not the very symbol of authority? But Kuuga spends an inordinate amount of time emphasizing the police as an entity of righteousness. Their hierarchy, their order, each cog in the machine, they're all working to help Kuuga save people from the threat of the Grongi, who ironically are themselves the rebellious element in the equation here. Even though it's Japanese society, instead of Shocker, they're still trying to tear down the establishment, just the way a Rider would, right?



Well, no, of course they aren't doing it "just the way a Rider would". The very notion is absurd. But what exactly is the difference? What's the common denominator that connects Kuuga with his predecessors? Why doesn't it feel more incongruous than it does? Surely you can't be a part of any kind of system that exists to govern people and still be living up to those same ideals. Or can you? What if those ideals are both more complex than you might think, and yet also as simple as can be?




And that's really the secret to all of this. Kuuga, it flips on its head that old tradition on a surface level, but the part of it that actually means something, I'd argue is completely the same, just expressed from a different angle. Society now represents that same harmony nature used to. Instead of focusing on elements of it like pollution and oppression, the emphasis is on how it's the result of people working together to strive for something greater. The technology and science that were once wielded by the forces of evil are now employed by the police, and their many collaborators, for much more noble purposes. Meanwhile, the Grongi, barbarian throwbacks who live almost entirely on impulse, now represent the same selfishness those old power structures did, their bestial instincts still showing the problems with a system of values that makes no room for the feelings and desires of others.

What's essentially going on here is that the old notion of freedom is being applied on a meta level. Obsessing over the labels was never the point. Good and evil aren't simply about being on some particular side of a fence, and that's as Kamen Rider as you can get. The actual reason Kamen Riders stood up for freedom was because it was a means to protect the hopes and dreams of those people that would otherwise have them stolen away. When you get down to it, their motivations were never any different from Yuusuke, who fights as Kuuga against the chaos the Grongi bring to the society he's a part of so that he can protect the futures of the people living in it. Giving Yuusuke the explicit driving goal of "protecting smiles" isn't an innovative change from the way the Showa Riders were, but a distillation. Something that gets to the absolute core of what truly makes not only Kamen Riders, but anybody with a desire to do good, a hero. It's just about being willing to care about the lives around you as much as you care about your own. The Grongi and Shocker are both the villains because they refuse to do that. Rider 1, Black, Kuuga, Drive, all of those guys, they're the ones we root for, because they refuse not to, no matter how much harder that path is. They all deeply believe in the inherent sanctity and beauty of life, and that philosophy is something that's still at the center of the franchise to this very day.




I guess I did end up kind of making a point here? I don't know how good it was. Obviously I'm probably oversimplifying some things, and, in the opposite direction, I suppose "heroes are selfless" isn't something that needs this much elaboration, but, I don't know. This was something I've been thinking about for a while, and I figured it'd be worth putting out there.

[FreshToku]

I've personally had the simplified idea of 'Kamen Riders do not fight for justice, but for the freedom of all living beings' ever since the last episode of Wizard had Decade stating those exact words. When he said that, it's like the entire theme that started from the beginning of the franchise clicked with me.

I think it's more than fair to say though, that the shows these days don't have expressing those themes as a priority. Not to sound like I don't think Kamen Rider today is 100% all toy commercial with no pathos, but sometimes the classic Rider themes only come up in a superficial sense, second to whatever kind of impressive and well-known trope they want to do. I think Zero-One has been a rather good example of that, personally.

I kinda wanted to top off my post here with a positive 'but on the other hand!', but I don't actually have one in mind.

[Kamen Rider Die]

I think you could say there's a general theme lately of Heroism Is About Supporting Each Other, and Kamen Riders can support people by kicking monsters in the face. But, like, not exclusively!

Villain organizations are about sacrificing others, about vengeance, about the insignificance of the individual. Heroes are about protecting others, about empathy, about the inherent value of every person.

I mean, I don't want to make Fish happy, but: Ghost. That's a show that went all in on the idea that we need to care about others, that the value of community and society is about finding a way to include everyone, to have each person feel like society reflects them and their needs.

[ShiShiLeo]

Another facet that is sometimes overlooked is the idea of power. That the original Kamen Rider was essentially a cyborg that was made for bad turned good, is one of my favorite themes from the entire franchise, and why I tend to like the series where that element is most prevalent.

Certain International Relations Theory would suggest that power always gives way to evil, but Kamen Rider attempts to show that power can be good too. Riders protect others because they have the power to do so. Dreams, smiles, hopes, are all things being threatened by evil power, and Kamen Rider is the good power that rises up to the challenge.

One of the design elements of the original Ichigo helmet are the "tears" below the compound eyes.

These represent the inherent remorse of using violence and power to overcome... violence and power. Kamen Rider heroism is about having power and using it as force for good.

I think Kuuga represents optimism. The state of affairs in Japan circa 2000 was an optimism which included police and by extension government authority, as a force of good. And Kuuga worked with them because at the time working within the system yielded better results than rebelling from the outside. This is something that obviously fluctuates over time and zeitgeist, and as we see more corruption at different levels (and a lot of the time, not government, but corporate) Kamen Rider has adapted those core values to fit modern times to varying degrees of success.



Peace and justice are social constructs but human life is an exacting quantity. From the very beginning I never thought that Riders saw themselves as arbitrators of justice or even equality in the same way other super heroes try to uphold an internalized (note: not socially agreed upon) sense of law and order. At the end of the day, they are human and imperfect, but at least they have something they will stand for that doesn't endanger others.