Kamen Rider W review.

 

Strap in, this is going to be a long one.

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.

Shout Factory's Kamen Rider (1971)

 

I don't normally do posts like this, but given the circumstances, I felt talking about this particular subject was needed.

If you've been keeping up with any sort of Toku news you know that a few days ago Tubi accidentally leaked that the first Kamen Rider series has been licensed and subbed by Shout Factory. This was something that had been rumored for a while to some degree. A bunch of people within in the Toku community with connections and various outlets like Bluefin brands were teasing something KR related happening with Shout about as subtle as a clown with his cock out.