Kamen Rider ZO review.

 ZO was quite an ambitious project when it was proposed. Following the success of Shin Kamen Rider (and yes, contrary to the still widely held belief that Shin Kamen Rider was a failure, the film did insanely well on home video and was well received) there were talks of a sequel to Shin which would have incorporated the previous 11 riders, but that fell through and it was decided a new original Rider would be created.

Toei Video president Yoshinori Watanabe, and Bandai Visual president Makoto Yamashina, met with the intention of a joint operation. Bandai would assist with multiple campaigns to promote the movie and merchandise, while Toei focused on the production in-house. The initial vision was to release a 90-minute feature film during Golden Week in Japan, as Toei had great success doing that in ‘91. But after some shaky performance by other Toei Productions in ‘92- likely due to the bubble bursting that same year- it was decided that a shorter direct to video method would be safer than a box office release.

Early story ideas for ZO ranged from the outlandish to the more traditional. Ishinomori wrote a short synopsis where ZO was an extraterrestrial in origin, and this even got as far as concept designs for a spacecraft by Katsushi Murakami. But this was shot down for budgetary and scheduling reasons.

Keita Amemiya’s take was more familiar and even went as far as incorporating Hongo undergoing a new operation that would become ZO. Amemiya wanted to create a Rider for the Heisei era and in doing so literally recreate the original. This was also dropped, but the finished product more closely resembles this concept with a Rider that goes back to the basic premise of being modified. It's funny how that original idea was sort of incorporated for the Rider 1 movie, though.

With a 90 minute runtime out of the question, it was decided the best manner of premiering the film would be at a festival. This led to the creation of the Toei Super Hero festival in which three short films would be shown. ZO would be joined by extended “film” cuts of Janperson and Dairanger episodes.


But that’s enough backstory, let’s get into this properly.

The film starts with Masaru Aso (Kou Domon), our titular Rider, awakening in a dense forest with little in the way of memory. But as a mysterious voice calls out to him to protect Hiroshi Mochizuki (Shohei Shibata), enough broken fragments return to set him upon his journey.

The film wastes very little time. Almost as soon as we are introduced to Hiroshi, he is set upon by one of the main villains, Doras.

Masaru can hear Hiroshi’s cries for help and is able to locate the boy, saving him. In between the ensuing fight, we’re given some brief snippets indicating that Doras was a creation of Hiroshi’s father, and the creature recognizes ZO as a project Professor Mochizuki worked on before it.

The battle is difficult for ZO and he has to rely upon his ingenuity, but Doras is ultimately impaled upon a spike and seemingly dead, allowing Hiroshi to escape where he returns home to his quirky grandfather, Seikichi (Hiroshi Inuzuka). He relates the encounter between the two monsters, noting that one was green like a grasshopper. Seikichi, unsurprisingly, doesn’t buy the tall tale and quickly changes the subject, noting that the two should spend more time together given the absence of Hiroshi’s father. This only causes a frustrated Hiroshi to storm out.

But something Hiroshi said sticks with his grandpa, as Seikichi remembers his son’s research on grasshoppers and goes to retrieve a file, one which just so happens to contain a photo of Masaru. Elsewhere, the Doras is alive and well, but is too weak to fight. Instead, it sends out two underlings in the form of a bat man and spider woman. And yes, I could say Kumo Onna and Kōmori Otoko, but I’m not.

At this point Masaru confronts Hiroshi, but he’s scared off and runs towards a nearby dojo where several familiar faces reside.

That’s Naomi Morinaga from both Shaider and Spielban, and Iori Sakakibara from Exceedraft.

Kenji Ohba from...a lot, but notably Gavan, and Masaru Yamashita from Winspector.

Masaru- that’s ZO, not the actor- explains part of the situation and that he’s trying to protect Hiroshi from monsters, which Hiroshi backs up the existence of. The group laughs off the story...until the Bat man arrives and attacks. Masaru holds off the creature as the others escape. Reiko (Morinaga) and Hiroshi get separated from the rest of the group and are captured by the Spider woman. ZO manages to fend off the bat and arrives to saves the two, killing the Spider creature. But the Bat man returns and captures Hiroshi, flying off until ZO catches up on his motorcycle and retakes the boy.


With Hiroshi finally safe for the time being, Masaru meets with Seikichi and reads over the file detailing how he became ZO, causing a flood of painful memories to resurface. Masaru was the first attempt by Professor Mochizuki to create a new perfect lifeform, free from the restraints of human emotion. Masaru escaped, making his way into the mountains where he collapsed and slept for two years.

Hiroshi overhears the story and refuses to believe it, once again running off.
Alone, the boy reminisces about his father, how kindly he was and his love of music, gifting Hiroshi a musical pocket watch. Yet once the experiments started, he became feverishly focused, pushing Hiroshi away both figuratively and quite literally, breaking the watch.

Hiroshi readies tossing the broken gift away but is stopped by Masaru. Understanding the boy’s feelings, Masaru miraculously repairs the watch and recalls hearing the music. He remembers that at one point Hiroshi’s father was a kind man, but something happened and there’s no denying that all the recent events stemmed from his experiments. But whatever happened, they'll find out together.

A reassured and more optimistic Hiroshi readies to leave with Masaru, but his eye is caught by a man calling out to him- who appears to be his father. Once again, Hiroshi runs off, only to realize the trap he’s fallen into when it’s too late. The figure reveals itself as the Bat and takes off with the boy. Masaru attempts to stop the kidnapping but is confronted by Doras, who disables the Rider long enough for the two to make their escape.

When Masaru comes to, he learns the location of the creatures and Hiroshi from a Grasshopper seen near the beginning of the film.
Upon arriving at the facility, the final pieces fall into place. Professor Mochizuki is revealed to still be alive, though captive and mutated.

The Neo Organism, although of his creation, is acting upon their own. The Doras is simply a form of the creature, one that is incomplete and reliant upon a chemical bath to remain alive. Its true form is a young boyish creature similar in appearance to Hiroshi. The creature targeted the child as leverage against the Professor, hoping to force him into completing the project and freeing themself from the dependency.

What follows is a lengthy battle between ZO and the Doras, in which ZO struggles quite a bit. It’s only when Hiroshi learns from his father that destroying the pool would harm Doras that things suddenly turn in the Rider’s favor- but only briefly. ZO is absorbed by the creature which grows even stronger and begins attacking Hiroshi, but suddenly stops when it hears the music of the pocket watch, allowing Hiroshi’s father to finally destroy the pool and ZO to escape. With ZO now free and the life support system gone, the Rider delivers a final devastating kick, putting an end to the neo-life form.

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But there’s little time for celebration. Mochizuki was barely alive as is, and now has used the last of his strength. He sheds a single tear before passing, just as the facility begins collapsing from all sides. ZO grabs Hiroshi and the two escape by bike.

After the long day, Masaru takes Hiroshi back to his grandpa, leaving him with his jacket as he sets off into the sunset, looking back one last time.

Boy, that was a lot denser than Hakaider, huh? And yet the story isn’t much more complicated. It’s shocking how much more happens, and in less time too.

Characterization in particular has more depth. The film manages a wonderful balance between fast action and introspective character moments that slow the film down and allow it to breathe, all while still delivering important information in a mostly natural presentation.

Despite the short run time, we’re able to see things like Hiroshi’s longing for a father he lost well before his disappearance. Short snippets in-between all the major occurrences showing him in his father’s study alone, or flashbacks to the lab where his father became increasingly unstable all do a good job conveying the melancholy the young boy carries.

Masaru is also given a fairly solid story, although he doesn’t have much time for development outside of groundwork. Still, he’s given a decent story within the strict time frame, one that ties in nicely with Hiroshi’s. They hit on the beats one would expect and want from a Rider, particularly the bit about Hiroshi calling ZO a monster and the deeply personal violation Masaru feels from being made inhuman. He also has some good scenes with Hiroshi, most notably when he repairs the pocket watch. Masaru sorta fills that surrogate father or big brother role Riders were so often associated with during the Showa era, which is what ZO feels like in many regards, and that makes sense given that this was made as an anniversary film.


But I do still have some minor issues. Most notably due to the small core cast and strict time, it means that there’s a lot of Masaru chasing Hiroshi down from one scene to the next. If they need to get somewhere, the solution is always to have Hiroshi run there, even if it’s a bit questionable towards the end. The part right after Masaru explains that he was an experiment and Hiroshi runs off is arguably the worst scene when you step back and think about it. This happens right after the kid was tied up by a spider monster and carried off by a giant bat, and there’s pretty much no indication of how much time has passed between him resting back at home and then overhearing what his father did to Masaru. It goes from resting, story, Hiroshi up and running out the door.

Masaru being knocked out and then telepathically being told where the Neo-life form is by a grasshopper also comes off as painfully contrived. It’s scenes like that which are telling that ZO had a rushed production.  This is surprising because, for the most part, ZO doesn’t feel like it had a troubled production given how much quality is seen everywhere else. Even those two issues I mentioned are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. The story and pacing for ZO do such a good job everywhere else you might not even notice some of those flaws.

Overall, the movie does everything you would want and more, particularly if you’re someone with a fondness for Ishinomori’s fascination with Gaia theory. This idea that Riders are an aspect of the earth chosen as a defender is more attuned here in ZO than even Black, leading to a very ethereal undertone. If I give credit to ZO on anything it’s that they play up those more esoteric points while hearkening back to the Showa era roots, but with 1993 sensibilities both in story and visuals.

And that’s something else I have to give major props to. This film is gorgeous in pretty much all aspects. Great set pieces, wonderfully designed monsters, and fantastic stunts.

ZO themself has a design aesthetic very similar to Black. Continuing the jettisoning of the muffler, individual gloves, and boots, ZO has a streamlined continuous design with a slightly organic leathery appearance. Most shocking of all is that ZO doesn’t even have a belt, just a Gem in place of one.

Whereas Ishinomori handled ZO, Keita Amemiya handled the other creatures. The Doras and the Spider Woman are still among the best monsters I’ve seen in Rider. The Bat-man I’m less keen on, I find the face to just be incredibly doofy, but everything else about it is fantastic.

I have similar feelings towards the Neo Lifeform. It’s a wonderfully disturbing design and the initial presentation is phenomenal. But while some of the movements are expressive, others are stiff and a bit too puppet-like. Although it's hard to hold that against the film given the limited screen time. It's clear Doras was the main villainous star. Aside from the monstrous details put into it, there are wonderful visual parallels that contrast between Doras and ZO. When we first see ZO, he’s surrounded by overgrowth and in a forest. The Doras’ introduction is assembling itself in the middle of a junkyard with various discarded components.

Several scenes also reveal the Doras to be more robotic than its predominantly organic appearance lets on. Both it and ZO are a combination of organic and inorganic, but the nuances between the presentation of the two are fascinating. ZO leaning more heavily on nature, and Doras on man-made material.

Also, does anyone else think of the balls in Phantasm upon seeing this?

The fights in ZO are for the most part less about finely detailed choreography and more about just doing cool shit. Ripping off an arm, lots of impaling, using the motorcycle as a goddamn battering ram.

Holy shit.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t good hand-to-hand combat, it’s just fairly standard and that was an intentional decision to replicate the straightforward action of the Showa era. But good camera work can completely change the perception, and the final battle takes the cake with a single shot fight sequence that lasts a bit more than a minute and a half before there’s a cut. At one point the cameraman- who isn’t mounted- is pulled up several feet off the ground and over a catwalk seamlessly.

Damn impressive stuff.

The Spider Woman fight is also partially stop motion in addition to the animatronics, which is interesting if nothing else.

However, some parts have aged poorly or are just plain funny, particularly the CGI. But even some of the practical effects are just really egregious, most notably a hilariously bad dummy shot where it looks like they didn’t even have a proper dummy, but a store display Mannequin.

Another questionable scene is where they appear to have just taken a random newspaper clipping in English and put it in the research folder for ZO. The clipping is about changes in the body, which makes sense...except it’s about menopause.

Humorous bits aside, it’s great being able to see details so clearly on the Blu-ray. This leads me to my next point about watching the film: Find a better copy of the film than the version on Toei's Tokusatsu YouTube channel. It’s incredibly poor quality and letter boxed, meaning it’s a rip from the goddamn laserdisc of all things. Here’s a comparison between the Blu-ray copy I have and the version on YouTube.

That is pathetic.

The audio isn't much better on the Youtube upload either, and that's a shame not only for dialogue, but the wonderful music.


Eiji Kawamura served as the composer for the film and even if you didn’t know that you’d probably guess it right away. As soon as the BGM kicks in it sounds exactly like something that would’ve been in Kamen Rider Black. Very similar beats and exact instrumentation, dude has a style and it’s obvious.

But he also handled composition on the two vocal tracks and their instrumental versions.

The first is Hohoemi no Yukue, an instrumental rendition being used for Hiroshi’s pocket watch. It's nice, it works very well thematically and serves an important role within the film. The lyrical version ties in nicely with the Gaia theory angle. But it's not something I’d typically listen to. I actually prefer the music box rendition over the vocal version.


The other is Ai ga Tomaranai (tl: Love Doesn’t Stop), which largely serves as ZO’s theme song. Now this I can get down with, and it's probably one of my favorite rider themes. I also want to take a moment to talk about this song because there are some interesting tidbits I found while looking into ZO.

For the longest time, I was under the impression that it was not an original song but a cover...which itself was a cover. In 1988, J-pop Duo Wink did a cover of Australian singer Kylie Minogue’s single “Turn it into Love”. Wink’s version, Love doesn’t Stop -Turn it into love-, would be used for the opening to the J-drama “Chase Me” So why am I telling you all this? Because There’s a fuck-ton of information about this song. I can tell you that- confusingly, Wink’s cover was released a month before Kylie Minogue’s version. I can tell you that Minogue’s single was exclusive to Japan where, even more confusingly, it is called Ai ga Tomaranai, a title that was added to the Wink track and what ZO’s is also titled.

I can find all this and more, but when it comes to ZO? All I can find is that Eiji Kawamura and Susumu Yoshikawa were fans of the band INFIX, who they got to perform this song. Lyrics were written by Akira Otsu and the composition was handled by Kawamura. All the information regarding ZO seems to treat it as an original track. INFIX isn’t listed anywhere when it comes to all the various covers, nor is Wink or Minogue mentioned with INFIX. It has the same title and it even has segments that sound similar, but it doesn’t seem to be considered a cover by any official source that I looked at. Honestly? Listening to the two back to back, it sounds off. Similar in areas, but really off because there are just too many differences and ultimately aren’t the same.

I guess it isn’t all that odd. Faithfully by Journey and If I’d been the one by .38 special aren’t related and yet they sound incredibly alike- more so than ZO’s theme does with Wink. That’s not even getting into Elecman’s stage from Megaman.

But it’s still really confusing to have ZO’s theme have the same title as a very popular J-pop song from five years prior with a crap ton of other covers.

Subs

I ain't got a segue here, nor do I have much to say. The fansubs I used were by Weaboo Shogun/Sailor Otaku with timing by MegaAnon of MFC. If you’ve seen my Winspector review you know they do good work. There is one bit I want to point and it’s mainly because it’s oddly similar to a scene in Hakaider, or rather vice versa. It doesn’t have to do with the movie itself but the subtitles.

After the Doras revives, we’re given a POV view of the Doras and there’s Japanese text that says something along the lines of their combat energy being insufficient or low, which is why it sends out the Spider and Bat monsters. This is not translated. I dunno why, it’s just funny to me that a fansub for a ‘93 Toei superhero festival film, and the other for a licensed film from the ‘95 festival, both have POV shots with untranslated text. Fan, licensed, it doesn’t matter. No one wants to translate text...unless it's the opening credits apparently, because ZO does that too.

So reception at the time of ZO’s original release seems to have been fairly good, but clearly, the smaller scope of the picture was a good call given some of the shortcomings ZO did have, mostly with its gross. But this was by no means bad. ZO was successful enough that there were even plans for a series. Amemiya had some concepts showing ZO with silver arms and boots akin to the Shin Ichigo suit, along with a muffler and even a belt.

But like with Shin, these plans fell through and instead J was put into production.
Thankfully, unlike Shin, ZO functions just as well as a standalone piece with the possibility of a sequel, but one that isn’t necessary.


As for what I think of it? I think ZO is wonderful and one of the best short stories done with a Kamen Rider, and possibly one of the best Tokus of the early 90s. I think I’ve made quite clear they do a great job with the characters in the time allotted to them and pack a lot in. ZO was the perfect way to celebrate Rider’s 20th anniversary...even if it was actually the 22nd by that point. The presentation is solid and it holds up remarkably well even today.


Above all else, ZO is a perfect concentration of everything that is Kamen Rider. If you have ever had an interest in the franchise but weren’t sure where to start or maybe a 40+ series was intimidating, I truly believe ZO is the absolute best solution to that. In under 50 minutes, it hits every major beat while still delivering story and action within the time constraints. ZO does as much as possible with the concept in as little time offered without ever being suffocating.

I cannot suggest this enough. Give it a watch, you have nothing to lose on something barely over 48 minutes long. Just be sure to track down a good quality copy, Blu-ray quality if you can. Again, the one on Youtube is not worth your time. Both the film and the viewer deserve better.