Kamen Rider - A short intro

After that long experience with Raidou Kuzunoha, I kind of wanted to wind down from doing any major gaming at the moment. So I've been watching some tokusatsu (read: guys in costumes beating the crap out of each other). Also, I've been looking at the content of my blog lately, and noticed it had plenty of talk about games, but not enough about Riders. Riders? Why, Kamen Riders of course! In retrospect, I should probably change the name of my blog but I'm far too lazy to do that so I'll just force myself to talk about Kamen Rider for a bit so my blog title wouldn't be a bold faced lie!

For those who don't know, "Kamen Rider" (literally translated as "Masked Rider") is a TV "tokusatsu" series from 1971 originating in Japan. It might remind you of power rangers, because it's very much the same genre. It's about a man named Takeshi Hongo who is suddenly kidnapped by an evil terrorist organization known as SHOCKER. During captivity, they transform Hongo into a cyborg but just before he is brainwashed into being their minion, he manages to escape and becomes hellbent on destroying Shocker for robbing him of his humanity.

By today's standards, it's very cheap, cheesy, and people today would be rolling their eyes at the cheap special effects. But with what little they had to work with, they made up for with charm, fun energy, and compelling storytelling featuring a great main character. Kamen Rider is an icon today, and deservedly so.

This was meant to be a short introduction as I was about to do a write up for episode 8, but it ran longer than I thought. So I'll leave that article for another time. At the very least, please enjoy the opening intro of the series...



For those who want to check out the series, head on over to KitSubs.