A film by Hideki Anno

I Will admit that my history with the Kamen Rider franchise is severely lacking. Like most elder millennials, my only real exposure to the franchise was the much maligned 90s American version that aired in the peak days of Power Rangers hype. That monstrosity, which cobbled together a few scenes from the Japanese shows, was less about a bioengineered superhero fighting against monsters and more some sort of weird Alf-like sitcom starring a puppet named Ferbus. With that in mind, I went into the prospect of seeing Shin Kamen Rider largely due to my respect for the director, Hideki Anno, considering how much of a fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion that I am. Thankfully, my little gamble paid off because I absolutely loved this movie.

Anno has been doing movies in this “series” for a while now including Shin Evangelion, Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and now Shin Kamen Rider. The overall theme linking these very disparate franchises together is that you can tell Hideki Anno is going back and revisiting things that he liked when he was younger (or in the case of Evangelion, something he produced) and modernizing them for new audiences. In the case of Shin Kamen Rider, that is not saying that he did not respect the source material as other directors have historically done. I would even go as far as to say he went above and beyond in respecting the source material as he made the production feel like a 1970s television show. This includes bizarre camera angles, strange dialogue choices, monster designs, and more. Shin Kamen Rider probably about the purest version of a love letter to an old franchise that I can think of.

“Hongo Takeshi awakens to discover he has been transformed into a grasshopper-hybrid cyborg. Becoming the Masked Rider, he must fight the mysterious evil organization SHOCKER to protect all of mankind. “SHIN MASKED RIDER” is Anno Hideaki’s ode to the legendary tokusatsu franchise, Japan’s biggest hero, and his dearest childhood icon. Go! Go! Let’s go!”

I think one of the first things that caught the audience off-guard at my showing was the fact that this film is not your granddaddy’s Shin Kamen Rider. While I would never say that this was in fact “mature”, the film does revel in adding an outrageous amount of cartoonish blood to battles. In the opening scene alone, the audience it’s thrown right into the middle of a white-knuckle car chase that eventually spills out into a martial arts fight in the woods (I will post this scene below). at one point, Kamen Rider finds himself surrounded by the henchmen of another genetically engineered creature, a human cross-bred with a spider. Acting on pure instinct, and not holding back in any way, Kamen Rider dispatches this wave of henchmen in perhaps the most violent way that I have seen since Kill Bill. Buckets, if not literal bathtubs, of blood shoot across the screen with every furious punch that is delivered to their maniacal faces. Yes, it’s overdone and gratuitous and it definitely sets the tone for the film going forward.

Shin Kamen Rider reminds me of the sort of films that made me fan of Japanese genre films in the first place. I can recall buying a questionable “Grey market DVD” of Ryuhei Kitamura’s Versus in around the year 2000. Versus was often compared to the Sam Raimi-helmed franchise Evil Dead in many ways, considering it also has zombies and is insanely violent, albeit in a comical way. Shin Kamen Rider had all the trappings of a film in this style, and for that it became an instant favorite of mine. In fact, I have somewhat fallen out of touch with Japanese films, and this was the sort of thing that could easily bring me back into it If other directors are making movies like this still.

While I am by no means an expert on the original television show that this is based on, I was assured by one of my friends during the showing that this movie basically follows the first half of the original series up to the handoff between the original Kamen Rider and his successor that ultimately takes the mantle from him. While Anno tasked himself with re-conceptualizing a large portion of short television episodes and whittling them down into a two hour movie, the tone and feel of an episodic television show is somehow retained throughout. This film features battles with a handful of increasingly bizarre mutated and genetically engineered hybrids, in-line with the “monster of the week” format of the show.

Speaking of those monsters, I absolutely loved the costume designs in this film. They are not only retro in many regards but modernized to such a degree that they look far better than what you would have probably seen in the original television series (hell, I’d say most modern shows in the series as well). An example would be the so-called “Spider-Aug” (or augment) antagonist I was talking about earlier. Previously designed with an almost “Doctor Who from the 60s” level costume that probably looked cool back in the 70s but has not aged well, this new version combines the best of mechanical armor and a biological creature to create something that really stands out. Nothing looked “cheap” in Shin Kamen Rider despite the obvious smaller budget, which should be a lesson for all would-be productions of stuff like this.

One thing that I don’t think a lot of people were expecting with Shin Kamen Rider was the overall tone of the production being so serious despite the absurdity of the plot learning towards a more comedic tone. The overall storyline and motivations for the characters are done in a strictly dramatic way, everything is played dead serious and it’s pretty well-acted. There are scenes of characters crying, characters going through waves of depression, characters not knowing how to move on with their lives after something bad happens etc. (If you have seen Evangelion, you know what’s up) This vibe is coupled with fight scenes that border on the ridiculous at times, owing a lot to the original television series, which are both zany and fun. I couldn’t help having a big smile on my face the entire time during this film.

I would love to see a sequel to Shin Kamen Rider, especially considering that the film is definitely set up to where they could easily do one, but I’m fairly certain that that is not something that Hideki Anno is planning. If anything, I’ve gained a new appreciation for this franchise as a whole, and may end up venturing onto streaming sites to see if I can find a couple of the newer productions to watch. I know Amazon has a relatively recent show called Kamen Rider Black Sun available that is also somewhat of a mature take on the franchise, and if I recall correctly Shout Factory has its own Pluto TV channel that routinely shows episodes of this. The question is, do I want to sit through endless ads?

Shin Kamen Rider was presented in America via the Fathom Events film distribution service that runs in theaters throughout the country. I can’t vouch for who runs stuff from this, but I frequent AMC Theatres and routinely watch Fathom Events stuff all the time. Usually, these sorts of affairs have some kind of a special feature involved, whether it be a small documentary or a special scene from the director etc. I was somewhat disappointed to see that Shin Kamen Rider did not include something like, this unless you count and after credits sequence. This scene basically showed some of the scenes from the original television show, just to show off how closely related the two properties are. This movie does last over two hours, so I can understand why they did not do this, but some little bonus would have been nice. Then again, simply getting to watch this AT ALL was cool in of itself.

Overall, Shin Kamen Rider was a real surprise for me, and something that I definitely will end up purchasing in the future. As I stated before, this is exactly the sort of film that I would have been obsessed with in my 20s, and it’s nice to see that these sorts of off-the-wall crazy films are still occasionally getting made over in Japan. If you’re on the fence about watching this movie, potentially with nightmares of Ferbus haunting your past, don’t be worried. Do yourself a favor and check this out once it hits home media or streaming because it’s well worth the watch. Fans of schlocky exploitative movies or tokusatsu films of any nature will get a kick out of this for sure.