Premium Bandai has announced June pre-orders for a series of colorful Kamen Rider transformation boxers. They come in three varieties, Rider 1, Kuuga and Amazon. Each retails for 6,480 yen and fits waist circumferences of 76 - 94 cm (M ~ L).
Warning, slight spoilers for the shows, but I will keep the major ones behind the cut.
There are many recurring themes in Kamen Rider shows, and they are each handled quite differently even though they share many common beats. I will go through all the Heisei riders, comparing some of the main themes of the shows. I will start with the theme of dealing with past and present trauma, a trio of shows I like to sum up as:
Kamen Rider PTSD: Kuuga, Wizard and OOO
Godai is getting there. Haruto is there. Eiji is getting himself out of there.
Kuuga
At the start of Kamen Rider Kuuga, the Godai the show lets us see is a well-adapted young man. Sure, there are the usual background traumas to help us understand why someone would take it upon themselves to become a Kamen Rider, but they are all in the past. His parents might be dead, but he’s got a loving sister and an adoptive uncle, and friends that care about him. He has a teacher he made proud, and while there’s obviously something in him that doesn’t take well to routine since he keeps travelling, people in general trust him. Even Ichijou thaws up eventually, though he thinks that Godai takes fighting spider monsters while transformed into an ancient warrior far too lightly.
So what happens when the pressure keeps piling on? Kuuga is the first of the Heisei Rider shows, and in a way it seems to be created as a comment on Kamen Rider Black. They both have classic heroic protagonists being put through hell to save the world, but while Minami Kotaro clenches his fists and moves on, even when he’s put through horrors like watching his father die and having to fight his brother to the death, Yuusuke Godai has more issues with the role as hero. Oh, as the show progresses he keeps smiling and making his famous thumbs up, but when nobody is watching the mask starts slipping.
The pictures on the top and bottom respectively, were both taken within the same episodes. The ones on the left are Godai’s face when people are watching him, the one on the right when they look away. The smile disappears immediately. He starts getting the 1000 yard stare. Eventually the moments he manages to muster a smile and a happy face becomes so few and false that the other characters starts noticing as well. But they can’t do anything but worry, because in the end, they need him. They need him to fight. Not to be happy. And everybody in the show is aware of that.
Godai will protect everybody’s smiles, even if his own turns false in the process.
Wizard
Haruto Soma on the other hand, had his trauma before Kamen Rider Wizard even begun. His parents died when he was young, but unlike with Godai, we get to see that this really broke something inside him. He is still alive because his parents wanted him to live. It is pointed out many times that he is the hope of his dying parents, and growing up and gaining powers has just meant that he has expanded this to be the hope for other people as well.
As the show progresses we get to peek beneath the surface of the suave Wizard, and we get to see that he’s really just as broken as the people that he saves, he just keeps moving out of duty and stubbornness. He saves people, and they stick around to try to get through and try to help, but deep down his only connection is still Koyomi, who is as broken as he is.
It is what comes after this picture that is so important. His now middle-aged teacher asks the adult Haruto whether he can talk to him now. He would like to help and give some hope to his favourite student. Haruto hesitates, says “thank you, but…” and then the scene is interrupted. The look on Haruto’s face is a sad but resigned one. We never get to hear whether he would be ready to open up now instead of soldiering on alone, but we get the impression that he’s not ready to. Not yet.
In a weird way, the donuts really symbolize the show. Every day he’s tempted by the manager of the donut wagon to try new things, she keeps going out of her way to make donuts that might appeal to the sad but handsome man. And yet, every single time, Haruto picks a plain sugar one. Routine. Simple. Safe. He doesn’t try anything new because there’s nothing that he really wants. Not for a long time. He just goes through the motions because he would disappoint his dead parents otherwise.
Haruto is the last hope for so many people, and yet he lost his own so long ago.
OOO
If Godai is in the process of being broken, and Haruto is living in the middle of it, Eiji Hino is starting to heal. When we meet him at the start of Kamen Rider OOO he’s much like Godai and Haruto, a goofy, charming young man that doesn’t ask much of life. He doesn’t really want anything, he’s traumatized and has flashbacks when he’s reminded of the war that he was involved in.
Eiji’s story is a story about desire, about the fact that wanting nothing is as destructive as wanting everything. Very similar to Godai, once upon a time he was out in the world doing good, but all he did was make things worse. People died, and he is convinced that it was his fault. Far better to never be important ever again, and pretend that life is just there, nothing special to it at all. But he is pulled back in and forced to care. People around him doesn’t let him hide behind that false smile, they pry and dig and force the truth out.
During the show we see Eiji confronting his fears one by one, slowly letting himself hope, letting himself want. He still suffers flashbacks, but he is moving on. Little by little, with the help of his friends, he conquers his trauma and makes himself into a new man. Not the one he was, that innocence is lost forever, but someone new. Someone that can not only pretend to smile, like Godai. Someone that can not only endure for the sake of others, like Haruto. But someone that can live for their own sake, with their own hopes and their own dreams.
Eiji is the one that finally manages to reach out for that hand in the end.
So, in a way, these three shows ties together one personal story. Eiji and Haruto has been where Godai is when Kuuga ends, and one can hope that Godai and Haruto will one day get to move on in the way that Eiji finally manages to do.
BIG Spoilers for the end of all three shows:
Kamen Rider Kuuga was originally planned to end with Godai’s death, but instead he runs away. It’s the only solution for him really, he is too hurt, too dangerous and Tokyo is filled with too many memories. If he stayed, he might become the same kind of monster that he killed. So he flees the country and abandons the people that he loves in the process.
Kamen Rider Wizard ends two times. But regardless of whether it is the ending of the show, or the Wizard x Gaim movie, they all end in stasis. Haruto starts the show on the run from his past and his old friends, and he ends up still on the run (but with new friends). His Underworld (which in Wizard is the symbol of your trauma and the source of your power) has changed from the accident that claimed his parent’s lives, to Koyomi’s death. He has changed, but he is still standing in a similar spot, surrounded by dead loved ones.
Kamen Rider OOO ends with Eiji falling into the arms of his friends. The person that brought him back to feelings and pain and hurt might be gone, but even with Ankh’s medal being broken, he still finds the strength to move on. It is a sad ending, and one filled with pain, but it is a hopeful one. Eiji has finally accepted other people’s help, and in the Movie War Megamax, he seems to be a much happier and well-adjusted person.
Bit of an interesting topic here… Has anyone heard of Card Warrior Kamen Riderbefore?
From what I’ve been able to find, it was a Bandai toyline and manga from 2009 that introduced these neat little exclusive forms for a bunch of Riders. A lot of them, most notably the early waves, seem to be a Rider combined with a thematically appropriate robot creature. For example, Ichigo with a grasshopper, or Knight with a bat.
The figures themselves seem to be little chibi-esque dudes, and each comes with a card of the animal/insect robot they combine with.
I wasn’t able to find pics of every figure released, since the line is so obscure, but here are some I did find of the boxes. There was also a Hibiki and a couple others but I didn’t realize tumblr had an image limit.
