Shin Kamen Rider and Shin Ultraman: My Thoughts
Date: 2025-1-3
Shin Kamen Rider
I’ve never been the biggest fan of tokusatsu shows, but I imagine that’s maybe a consequence of my exposure being incredibly limited. Like most folks my age the majority of my exposure to the genre came from the Sentai stuff brought over to the States with Power Rangers (and for me in addition to being a Power Rangers nut, I also loved Super Human Samurai Syber Squad—which was a Power Ranger-ing of Gridman). Also as a quick side-note, the Mystic Knights of Tir-Na-Nog was *not* an adapted Japanese show and was apparently Haim Saban’s attempt at making a Made In The USA tokusatsu.
All of that is to say that the existence of Kamen Rider only became known to me when I got more online throughout my childhood/tweendom through the 90s and by then, shows like that were shoved into the part of my brain reserved for “kid stuff” without a lot of nostalgia.
So I was sort of the perfect audience for a movie like this: generally-aware-of-the-thing-with-maybe-a-bias-towards-wanting-to-know-what’s-up-with-it-without-having-to-dive-into-50-years-of-history
And I absolutely loved it. In broad strokes, I absolutely loved how this movie just went for it, right from the jump without any origin or quips or self-effacing negative self-awareness. “Ok, this is a grasshopper man who rides a motorcycle and certain folks turn into foam when they die, bing bang boom.”
As a lifelong comic books nerd, this treatment and attitude—one whereby the world the characters inhabit is treated just-so as opposed to trying to make it “realistic” or whatever—is what I always wished for, and so I was completely floored by this in the same way I was by one of my all time favorite movies Speed Racer.
Above and beyond how much I adored the earnestness and the “they just went for it”-ness of Shin Kamen Rider, I also loved all of the effects. The clones of our gal all dying at once and turning to foam was genuinely shocking, and the transformations of the Augs were genuinely off-putting. I loved the fight choreography and the all the flipping, and probably my favorite thing in the whole movie was how the final fight turned into a really messy brawl. It wasn’t fancy and choreographed and full of trading super-powered attacks—it was just two guys rolling around with their leather outfits and boots squeaking as they tried, exhausted, to get the upper hand. Genuinely awesome, and (in a recurring refrain) I wish western superhero movies had the guts to treat some fights like this; I think Syder’s Superman/Zod is the only one that gets close.
Above and beyond the fighting and aesthetics, I found it genuinely affecting at times, I think as a consequence of the material not doing any winking and treating its characters as if they’re real people instead of variations on Robert Downey Jr.
I’m being harsh on western superhero movies in this writeup, which I think is a consequence of how much I genuinely care about superheroes. I’ll be reading comic books on my death bed; I love capes a lot. I’ve spent the last 25-or-whatever years going to western superhero movies hoping they would treat their characters like this movie does.
I don’t know how lifelong Kamen Rider fans feel about this movie—I imagine it’s seen through the lens of what I imagine are a lot of retcons, or getting the continuity wrong or whatever. To those people I would say, “that’s totally fair”, but I appreciate this movie for giving me a look into what seems like a pretty awesome hero and a look into what a superhero movie could be, if we want it to be.
Shin Ultraman
I could not get enough of the smirking charisma of Manifilas—absolutely masterful work by that actor
I loved this. Watched it back to back with Shin Kamen Rider
