HENSHIN!

I don't think 2020 was a good year for anyone. It certainly wasn't for me.

Sure, it had its moments. I met some of my best friends that year. I played some good games, listened to good music, ate some good food, etc. But 2020 overall was not a good year. Controversial statement, I know.

That February, basically on a whim, I applied for a study abroad program in Nara, Japan. To say I was excited would be an understatement. It was fixing to be the highlight of my year, my college education, probably my life. And then in March, it was gone, just like that. Suddenly I was back home, away from my friends, in a house that seemed adamant on making me go berserk. One of my favorite parts of college was living alone, and now I was back in a space that wasn't truly mine. It was maddening.

I wanted to find something to watch pass the time. I wanted it to be in Japanese so I could stay familiar with the language on the off-off-off-chance the trip was merely postponed and not canceled (we were all guilty of some wishful thinking in the early pandemic). I didn't realize it at the time, but most of all, I desperately wanted it to convey this feeling of hope to contrast with all the fear and anxiety around me.

That was when I found Kamen Rider.

I first became aware of Kamen Rider because of anime. It gets referenced and parodied all the time because it's super old and super iconic. It has been on the air in some form since 1971, and the franchise has grossed approximately one bajillion dollars in that time. Everybody in Japan knows Kamen Rider.

The operative word here is Japan. In the United States, where I'm from, very few people know about Kamen Rider. After the success of Power Rangers, Saban tried to bring KR Black stateside in the form of Masked Rider, but it was quite bad and barely lasted a season. KR Ryuki also got an American adaptation called Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight but I didn't see it and neither did anyone else. In the US, the consesus was "Power Rangers rules, everyone else get outta here."

On the surface Kamen Rider looks very similar to Power Rangers. It's a guy in a silly costume saving the world from other guys in silly costumes and he does so through a series of dropkicks and special effects. The biggest difference between the two franchises is that instead of a team of guys as our heroes, it's just the one guy. Maybe a handful of others are thrown in for spice but typically there is a single main Rider as our protagonist.

What makes him a Rider? His sick-ass motorcycle.

Where does Kamen come from? That's his mask.

Truly a dirt-simple concept.

At least, that's what I thought.

The original Kamen Rider series has a bonkers premise. Our main character is named Takeshi Hongo. He's a regular college student with a 600 IQ and a love of motorcycle racing. One day he races down the wrong road and ends up captured by the terrorist organization Shocker. The mad scientists turn Takeshi into a wind-powered grasshopper-themed cyborg super soldier so they can use him for world domination. Luckily he manages to escape the cave before they can flip the final mind control switch.

Takeshi then decides to use his newfound powers to stop Shocker's plans, thus becoming Kamen Rider. Did I mention that Shocker was founded by escaped Nazis after World War II? And that the monsters they send out look like this?

Confused and more than a little intimidated by these discoveries, I decided to start my journey a little closer to the present day. Kamen Rider now is now ostensibly made to sell toys to children, and it's very good at it (see the above referenced one bajillion dollars). I watched Power Rangers as a kid, so I knew more-or-less what I was getting into as far as target audience went.

I did some research, asked a few people online, and eventually got directed to one Kamen Rider Ex-Aid as a good starting point. This premise was even wackier than KR 1. A bunch of doctors suit up in these googly eyed plastic suits of armor and the monsters they beat up are sentient computer viruses that come from video games and also infect people IRL? And this is where y'all want me to start? Okay Internet, I'll bite, just because this looks too stupid for words.

By the third episode, I was pretty interested. By the sixth or seventh episode, I was hooked. By the twelfth episode (IYKYK), I was LOCKED IN. I needed to see where it went.

By the end of the show I was a fan for life.

Kamen Rider has been around for a while, and it's changed a lot. Like with Power Rangers, each year's season is its own contained story for the most part, with any crossovers being for promotions and fanservice. Some seasons are very lighthearted and some seasons are grimdark. Sometimes they play the premise completely straight while other times they take the piss out of it. Sometimes real life writes the plot and they have to backtrack out of story threads they can't use anymore. Sometimes the show wasn't supposed to be about KR in the beginning and you can tell.

I haven't watched every piece of content attached to this goofy superhero franchise, so I can't speak to the quality of absolutely everything. What I can say is that Kamen Rider has always had one consistent theme, and it's a theme I find very comforting in dark times:

The guy who puts on the mask takes on an absolutely massive burden. It would be so easy for him to be as evil and destructive as possible. The instinct for such things is baked into his being. It's not just confined to the belt or the suit; it's a part of him. Sometimes it's like he has more in common with the monsters he's fighting rather than the people around him. If he's not *less than* human, he definitely feels *other than* human.

But despite all of that, despite the instincts and the isolation and the fear, he chooses to do good. He chooses to protect humanity, not destroy it. Even when humanity takes him and rips away everything that makes him human, he still fights for them. He has been dealt a bad hand, maybe even the worst hand you can possibly be dealt, but he takes his cards and says "okay, how can I use these cards to help others?"

I could go into all of the technical reasons I love Kamen Rider. The intricately designed suits. The fight choreography. The myriad of charming characters. The weekly release schedule discouraging binging the whole series in one go. But that core theme? Choosing to protect when it's so much easier to destroy? That's what did it for me in March 2020 and that's what does it for me now.

As I'm writing this, Kamen Rider Zeztz is airing. For the first time ever, Shout Factory is simulcasting the series on its TokuSHOUTsu YouTube channel subbed in English. I am SO HAPPY that more people can experience this franchise. This show means so much to me. I found it at a time when I was really struggling and it made those dark days just a bit brighter. I want more people to watch Kamen Rider and fall in love with that hopeful energy. Even when shit gets bad, people can choose to have hope. YOU can choose to have hope.

I hope to see you drop-kicking your demons in an abandoned quarry soon.