Kamen Rider & Super Sentai retrospective #1: 1971-1982
The Kamen Rider and Super Sentai franchises are almost as old as post-Astro Boy anime, and it’s very intriguing to study how these low budget action flicks for children kept being refined over the years to the point of becoming their own subculture. I am obviously not going to defend writing or character depth, since nobody watches them for that. They were never supposed to be more than men in costumes performing silly martial arts full of firework explosions. So if we stick to how good they are at just being that, let’s go over their historical evolution.
Starting with what began everything, as far as live action henshin is concerned, the original Kamen Rider in 1971. The premise is a simple one of course; a motorcyclist gets kidnapped and experimented by an evil organization, becoming a cyborg aimed at following their orders. An accident during his programming allows him to escape and vows to protect the world from its evil cyborgs.
From here on it’s pretty much episodic with any twists not really changing the formula. Or any other season for that matter. Just to get a taste of how little they gave a shit about the plot, all Showa Kamen Rider series follow the exact same premise and are 95% episodic. The only exception was Amazon but even that one isn’t something worth talking about.
Even so, you still see how the creators are learning as they go, by changing a few things based on performance. For example, using doubles to do the really dangerous scenes. The original actor hurt his leg and had to be replaced by someone else while he was recovering. They excused it in-series as if the hero left a successor to do his work while he is abroad, and from there on most action scenes would happen while doubles are wearing the costume.
Another change is the mass produced grunts who after awhile wear a mask instead of showing their face. This way was making them look robotic instead of human-like, which was much closer to the role they served as zero dimensional opponents. Plus, there was no problem in reusing the same actors throughout several episodes.
Major villains were also introduced after awhile, so the audience will have a specific enemy to hate. Said villains would still have a human face, unlike the grunts, because it was making it easier to show their evil emotions, instead of having a static mask that was showing none. Though in final showdowns they would always transform to hideous monsters, so doubles could perform the dangerous scenes, as well as the audience not seeing them as people anymore.
As I said, following seasons kept repeating the exact same plot, and eventually there was a need to have a show with multiple heroes and more variety in plots. It was getting progressively harder to keep the interest of the audience in a mostly episodic format. It needed something more to fill each episode with, such as more than one main characters interacting with each other, as well as better color costumes that would distinguish them from a distance.
Thus we got Gorenger, the original Super Sentai in 1975. The plot was a simple revenge story with the heroes fighting an evil organization that threatens the world and killed many of their friends. And that’s pretty much the only worthy thing to mention about it.
An unexpected problem arose in JAQK during 1977. So far the premise in all Kamen Riders and Super Sentai was avenging an evil organization for the suffering they caused to the heroes. The second season tried to change that by not having vengeful heroes, as well as the villains using drugs to enslave their victims. Despite trying to be more realistic by not making the good guys being driven by a destructive obsession, and the mind control of the villains having some logic behind it, the audience hated it. It was no longer an empowerment fantasy because it was clashing with real world problems.
You see, people watching these shows were like the otakus of today. Introverts, probably bullied at school or hated America for bombing their glorious country. Watching henshin series was a way to channel their frustration. It’s not that different from many videogames of today that have a grumpy protagonist driven by hatred. “Look at me, I’m wearing a hood, I’m going to kill everybody because society was being mean to me.” Taking this 7 year empowerment fantasy away, pissed off the audience and caused JAQK to be considered a failure for trying to be a bit more serious.
This forced the creators to go for spectacle in Battle Fever J, the third season during 1979. And let’s start by saying these costumes are the worst I have seen in my life. I understand that the creators were still experimenting and how this season was not officially considered a super sentai for many years, but holy crap, does it looks like shit. Do you know what else was shit? Every hero coming from a different country, dancing something relevant from that country and being named after said country. They went for an anti-racism message in this season, and what a better way to do that, than to have every hero being a racial stereotype? So yeah, this season is not only ugly as fuck, it’s also pretentious.
Anyways, as I said they had to include more spectacle so the hatred-filled audience can stay interested, which began the giant robots trend. Because what a better way to waste 5 minutes in every episode, than with stock footage where they have a completely unnecessary battle with the same enemy they just defeated in human size? And surprisingly this filler ended up being what most people remember out of the franchise. What did you expect, it’s a show for kids and eventually manchildren. Moving on.
So far, the villains had no personality, outside of being 1 dimensional representations of evil. This began to change with Denziman in 1980. Queen Hedrian is amazing. Her sadistic laughing and the horrible ways she uses to kill her victims, because to her beauty is ugly, make her the most memorable thing in the fourth season. By the way, does she remind you of someone? Omg, it’s Rita Repulsa! No, actually she’s just the same actress, and she’s pretty damn good at what she’s doing. So good to the point of not having anything else to talk about Denziman; the heroes were boring. Plus, she’s one of the few villains in the franchise who cares about her minions. That’s a trait only good guys are supposed to have, which makes her sympathetic in a twisted way. I strongly recommend checking out at least the first 5 episodes. The horrible deaths and the yandere waifu that is Hedrian make it worthwhile.
Speaking of twists, another villain eventually betrays her and gets trapped in ice. Meaning, this is the season where the villains begin to have internal conflicts, automatically making them more proactive and fun than the boring boy scout heroes. What you need to understand dear viewers, is how my generation, which grew up with these shows, was defining a season’s flair by how much we liked its villains instead of its heroes. We didn’t care about the copy-pasted good guys who only move their butts to stop an enemy attack.
So far, every season of Super sentai was its own universe. They share the same name but they are otherwise not connected with each other. Sun Vulcan is an exception, since it’s a direct sequel to Denziman. The criminal organization that is ruled by Darth Vader (yes, it’s a Darth Vader knock off because everyone was dickriding the success of Star Wars) revives Queen Hedrian as their ally.
And she is back from her frozen prison as a cyborg. With a metal afro. And she eventually back stabs Darth Vader and steals his position as a leader. How amazing is that? Of course the creators eventually realized how creating sequels is a bitch for continuity, and how the older characters were always overshadowing the newer ones. Hedrian was the only thing everybody cared about for two seasons, which was very problematic for any new characters and merchandise they wanted to promote in later seasons. So they sort of stopped doing this tactic.
Not that this made the next season any better. Listen, we were always expecting to be entertained by guys in spandex and plastic toys that are made to look huge. That was a given in any of these types of series. The thing that was making us like a season more than another was coming down to how cool the bad guys were. Goggle V didn’t have that, continuity or not. It was a rehash of Sun Vulcan, minus something like Hedrian. And seriously, fuck the good guys.