beyond the bugmen, part III

BEYOND THE BUGMEN: A KAMEN RIDER OVERVIEW SERIES

Part III: The Friendliest Man Who Loves Space, Fourze

Kamen Rider Fourze (September 4, 2011-August 26, 2012) is the first chance that I have to bring up that a lot of Kamen Rider series have various teams from the anime industry working on them. In this case, the head writer for Fourze was Kazuki Nakashima, who is best known for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill (readers of Study of Anime will know that we all love both of those series here). The writing style definitely shows – it's a very energetic, bombastic series, set in a school called Amanogawa High School. Kisaragi Gentarou is our main hero, a pompadoured prime example of the “delinquent” trope.

You can't see it here, but he has the GOOFIEST smile.

But he's the farthest thing from it – Gentarou is “the man who will befriend everyone in this school” as he says in the first episode. He is generally a very upbeat, friendly character, completely going against his appearances. He's joined by a group of students that supplement his ability to use the Fourze Driver, either with knowledge of the various Astro Switches, or knowledge of the school itself. It's a series very driven by friendship, and it's very rare to see one of the monsters outright destroyed – I can only recall one instance of a defeated monster never being redeemed. This is crucial to the theme of the series, and it's pretty apparent why they chose this sort of series when you look at the time around it.

Sendai Airport flooding after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011, and the ensuing disaster conditions were hard on the whole country. From power and water outages, the meltdowns at Fukushima, and more damage, the country was struck by disaster. In the timeline of Kamen Rider production, around March of every year, the series for the following year begins its production and writing. Fresh off the heels of the earthquake, the production team ended up making a cheerful, uplifting series that still manages to hit hard (I legit cried at the end of this one, y'all).

Remember that last section when we talk about our next series, because despair becomes a VERY important plot point...

beyond the bugmen: part II

BEYOND THE BUGMEN: A KAMEN RIDER OVERVIEW SERIES

Part II: The Greedy Selflessness, OOO

Kamen Rider OOO, pronounced O's, is the next series in our look at the Kamen Rider franchise under a microscope. Airing from September 5, 2010 to August 28, 2011, the series follows Eiji Hino, a wanderer with a tragic sort of backstory, and a desire to help others. Soon after we meet Eiji, we are introduced to his “sidekick”: a floating hand named Ankh. Ankh is one of the Greeed (no, that is not a typo), a race of monsters that are made of coins – silver coins called Cell Medals make up their physical forms, and the Core Medals (each with its own color scheme and animal motif) make up their actual being. The Greeed create monsters from humans' desire, and hunt down their Core Medals so that they can take over the Earth, as they had tried to do 800 years ago.

In OOO, more than almost any other Rider series I've seen to date, the theme is so easily seen. Eiji represents a selfless hero, giving up all he has to save others, and even keeping little for himself outside of the fight – he believes that as long as he has a pair of underwear, a little money, and somewhere to sleep, he needs nothing else in the world. This actually starts to become a problem, as Ankh wants his Core Medals back, and will do anything to have them. He can't fight, though – which is why he helps Eiji to transform into OOO in the first place. When he starts putting innocent lives in danger, Eiji makes him promise – either he starts paying more attention, or he'll never transform again (mind you, this is while both of them are dangling from a collapsing skyscraper).

Later in the series, the emphasis begins to shift – rather than simply following the fight between Eiji and the Greeed, we see a fight between three sides of the Greeed. Uva wishes to gather Cell Medals to boost his power, Mezool tries to keep the group together and find their Core Medals, and Kazari flip-flops between the sides of the Greeed. In the end of the series, things happen that make Eiji realize that being entirely selfless is just too hard, but being too greedy is not good, either. So, he's left to take a pragmatic view on greed – want and desire for things, but do not be afraid to help others.

beyond the bugmen: part I

BEYOND THE BUGMEN: A KAMEN RIDER OVERVIEW SERIES

Part I: The Half-Boiled Noire, W

Hello, everyone! It's been a long while since I was made an editor of Study of Anime, and I feel like I've done nothing with it. So, as the cherry blossoms begin to bloom (yeah, real original analogy there, self), so, too, will this site bloom with new articles. This is a deconstruction of my Kamen Rider analysis panel, which looks at every Kamen Rider series, from W to Ex-aid, under a microscope. There will probably be more added to this as we go, but for now, here we go with Kamen Rider W.

Kamen Rider W (or, as it's pronounced, Double), aired from September 6, 2009 to August 29, 2010, and was the first series in what some call the "Neo-Heisei" era of Kamen Rider. The eras mainly refer to the era of Japanese history the series was made in; however, the fandom has started to refer to any series that was worked on by the series creator, Shotaro Ishinomori, as Showa era, and anything else as Heisei. Whichever it is, W was considered the start of a 'new' era, as the series preceding it (Kamen Rider Decade) was sort of the end of a decade of series.

The series stars our main hero, Hidari Shotaro, who transforms into the "half-and-half Rider", along with his partner, Philip. Right away, the series screams "film noire" at the top of its lungs. Shotaro himself is a detective, who wears a suit, a trilby hat, and drinks coffee (we'll get to THAT little tidbit later). Film noire is a genre that tends to focus on crime films, with especially cynical worldviews. Shotaro himself identifies as a "hard-boiled" detective, which in his terms, means "Not being swayed no matter what the situation. It's a man-among-men lifestyle." However, the various characters throughout the series comment that he is half-boiled (yet another joke about the two-in-one Rider concept), and in the end, it is described as his greatest strength: a hard-boiled detective is not swayed, even for the best of reasons. Shotaro is often swayed by someone in need, and thus, is too compassionate to be truly hard-boiled.

Bringing me to my next point is another aspect of Shotaro's character that he uses as proof that he is a hard-boiled detective - he drinks coffee. In America, that doesn't seem like much - Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and various other companies started here for a reason. In Japan, though, there's a trope with the cool, "lone wolf" type character. They tend to drink coffee, properly brewed either by a drip brewer or a French press. My theory about this comes down to time. Canned coffee drinks are very popular throughout Japanese vending machines, but it's rare that we see anyone sitting down to drink a proper cup of coffee. Thus, it is used for the calm and collected characters, who have the time to sit and wait for a cup to be brewed.

Kamen Rider W is one of the most well-loved Kamen Rider series to this day, for good reason. It established many of the tropes that we'll see throughout the rest of the Neo-Heisei era, and its theming creates a world with interesting characters, with plenty of motives to keep the viewer guessing. If I had to recommend somewhere to start, it would be one of my first choices.