Kamen Rider ZO was actually the first Kamen Rider I ever saw. I rented a bootleg VHS from a local shop in Dallas, TX called Pop Culture (we referred to it as Bootleg Bob’s and then when we found out the owner was actually named Ed, Boothead Ed’s). I remember falling in love with this movie and it made me a lifelong fan of Kamen Rider and Keita Amemiya.
The new Limited Menu at Kamen Rider The Diner celebrating Kamen Rider Black, Kamen Rider Black RX, Shin Kamen Rider (the 90s version), Kamen Rider ZO and Kamen Rider J.
Just a reminder, the monster designs from Kamen Rider ZO were nightmare fuel.
shylax asked:
How is Kamen Rider ZO pronounced? If it's pronounced the same as Zi-O, man, that must be really confusing.
The official Pronunciation of Kamen Rider ZO is Kamen Rider Zetto-Oh (かめんライダーゼットオー) which uses the British pronunciation of the letter Z as opposed to the American one.
Kamen Rider Zi-O (prounounced Kamen Rider Ji-O) uses the American version of the pronunciation of Z because it also sounds like the first character in the Japanese work Jikan (時間) which means Time. Combined with the word Oh for King it makes him Kamen Rider Time King.
This is why his primary weapon is the Zikan (Jikan) Girade. For the record, the character Ji (ジ) is pretty much interchangeable with the American pronunciation of Z which is why Gojira (ゴジラ) can be pronounced as Gozira and become Godzilla in English.
So, though the names look similar to people raised with the American English pronunciation of the letter ‘Z’ the difference rests in which version of that letter you use and what it means in the original language.
Thanks for the question!
seatopian asked:
I just finished watching Zeiram for the fist time. I loved the grimy and dark aspect, I feel like it's kind of rare in toku. I plan to watch Zeiram 2 and Mechanical Violator Hakaider, but is there any other toku stuff with that kind of aesthetic?
You can pretty much count on Keita Amemiya’s work to have that kind of aesthetic to a greater or lesser degree. If you enjoy those films, I highly suggest his first Kamen Rider movie, Kamen Rider ZO.
It has some very grungy scenes and seems to be set in a city on the verge of collapse judging from the amount of junk left lying around, decaying buildings and rusting industrial complexes.
It also has some fairly nightmarish monster designs:
And one of the most bizarre and creepy main villains of all time:
I cannot recommend this movie enough if you enjoyed Zeiram or Mechanical Violator Hakaider.
A lesser known film you also might enjoy is Masaki Kyomoto’s 1992 film Skull Soldier.
This is sort of based on/inspired by Shotaro Ishnomori’s manga The Skull Man and features a man named Tatsuya who creates a skull-themed alter ego to murder the corrupt corporate leaders and politicians responsible for the death of his loved ones. It’s a revenge flick staring a masked “hero” facing down the power players who pulls the strings behind society and meting out brutal punishment to them.
And I couldn’t help but mention Ketia Amemiya’s Garo series. It’s set in a slightly darker version of a world much like outs but one haunted with demonic creatures lurking on the edges waiting to posses the wicked and use them to feed on humanity.
These Horrors are opposed by a hereditary group of mystic warriors known as the Makai Knights who use weapons and armor forged of soul metal to defeat their demonic foes. It’s a dark series with some very interesting design work and a mix of henshin hero tropes with J-Horror.
So, those are just a few recommendations if you want more along the same lines as what you have seen. A little further afield, you may also enjoy Kamen Rider Amazons (released on Amazon Prime in the US as Amazon Riders) which is a much darker tale of heroes and monsters than the standard Rider fare.
This show involves horrible half-human, cannibalistic monsters called Amazons created by a Pharmaceutical company in pursuit of regenerative medicines that have escaped and must be hunted down to prevent them from devouring humans. Two Amazons with mysterious backstories end up becoming heroes using special belts to transform and hold onto their humanity who fight to destroy the Amazons/Protect Humanity but have very different motivations and philosophies that inevitably lead them to opposite sides.
Thanks for the Question!
shylax asked:
I think it'd be kind of cool to have a tokusatsu movie night, but a lot of the movies tend to be part of a series, and tend to expect you to watch the series before watching the movie (although Kamen Rider 555's Paradise Lost is interesting since it's an AU movie). Are there any tokusatsu movies that can be enjoyed as a standalone experience? And I guess I'm referring to more henshin-type toku than kaiju-type toku, because obviously Godzilla movies are a thing.
Oh there are plenty of good, stand alone Tokusatsu films you could watch.
Let’s start with three of the best.
Back in the mid-1990s, Toei broke off their tokusatsu hero movies from the Toei Manga Matsuri festival programming they used to be a part of to allow that festival to focus entirely on anime. Instead, they created the Toei Super Hero Fair.
While these also featured the movies for the currently running Metal Hero and Super Sentai series of the time, they were headlined by stand alone tokusatsu films directed by Keita Amemiya (who would later create Garo). I am a huge fan of his work and these three movies are a big part of what made me fall in love with it.
The first of them is Kamen Rider ZO.
This was actually the very first piece of Kamen Rider media I ever saw and it made me an instant fan of the Karate Bugman and his foes. This is a good film that runs less than an hour and presents an entire story from beginning to end.
The next year was another great Kamen Rider standalone in the form of Kamen Rider J.
While these are both great movies, Amemiya saved the best for last in 1995′s Mechanical Violator Hakaider.
While ostensibly based on the villain from the 1972 series Android Kikaider, this is a new take on the character set in a Post-Apocalyptic future where the evil mayor of Jesus Town controls his populace with an iron fist and enforced happiness. Hakaider arrives amid this to destroy everything and prove that the Mayor’s version of Justice is just evil in another name. It’s a stylish, fun movie with a fantastic anti-Hero protagonist.
These three films alone would make for a great Tokusatsu movie night as they all run (in their theatrical cuts) under an hour each. However, if you want to look elsewhere, here are a couple of other recommendations.
Toei produced a more “mature” take on their own Metal Heroes with the 1990 V-Cinema (Straight to Video) movie Lady Battlecop.
In this film, a tennis player who is mortally wounded during an attack on her fiance’s government laboratory is turned into a cyborg by her dying lover and seeks justice on the criminal gang who killed him and threatens the entire city. Yes, it’s a blatant distaff Japanese version of Robocop but did Robocop ever have to fight a super buff telekinetic mercenary? I didn’t think so!
Now, if you like your Tokusatsu Heroes of the strange and goofy side, might I point you to the 2011 movie Karate Robo Zaborger.
This functions as both a remake of and a sequel to the 1974 P-Productions’ series Denjin Zaborger but is an entirely self-contained narrative. In this movie, a young man is partnered with a sentient motorcycle that can transform into a robot known as Zaborger to battle the evil criminal gang Sigma. This film was directed by Noburo Iguchi most famous for his films Machine Girl and RoboGeisha. Of all of his movies, this one is the most accessible and fun for fans of Tokusatsu Heroes.
So, there’s five choices to put together or mix and match for a Tokusatsu Movie Night! Thanks for the Question and Happy Viewing!
EDIT: For the Record @neckspike is totally right, watch the Director’s Cut of Mechanical Violator Hakaider. It is longer and makes the movie more comprehensible while also showing off more of the production design and costumes! It’s also the one available on DVD in the US!
Sure! If you can find it, Mirai Ninja (released dubbed in the US as Cyber Ninja) is one of his earliest works and is a lot of fun.
Moon over Tao is also pretty good, mixing a feudal Japanese setting with science fiction elements to craft a story of a mysterious space metal used to forge unbreakable swords, the dark secret behind it, a warlord using said swords to conquer the country and aliens arriving to take back the metal and prevent the release of a being of pure destruction.
His two Kamen Rider films; Kamen Rider J and Kamen Rider ZO are also very worth a look. They are dark, stylistic and were intended to be used as jumping off points for a new series that never came to be.
Amemiya’s early TV work can also not be ignored. He did a lot of work for Toei on shows going back to 1983 and did design work and even directed an episode of 1991′s classic Choujin Sentai Jetman.
Keita Amemiya’s 1991 Science Fiction film Zeiram is a great place to start when looking at his personal creative touches. Though not his first tokusatsu feature film (that would be 1988′s Mirai Ninja) it is the one I feel best reflects his film-making vision in his early days.
There is the intricate world behind the scenes that we only get a glimpse of, the world of interstellar bounty hunters that Iria and Bob come from which we experience mostly from the point of view of Earthling Electricians Teppei and Kamiya. Though we don’t see a lot of it, we get hints of the greater universe in the way Bob complain about their violations of the rules and the permits required to use their more dangerous weapons. We also get little tastes of it (literally in Teppei’s case) by what kinds of food Iria packs as rations, some kind of soft-shelled, giant, albino insect that looks a lot like a cockroach.
You can see this repeated later in the Garo series with the intricate world of the Makai Knights, the Watchdogs and the Makai Priests being just tossed in with little explanation beyond their hierarchy in the first season. Once again, there we have a point of view character in the artist Kaoru. In later seasons, there would be a greater emphasis on world-building but in the first, a lot was kept vague or in the shadows.
We also get the use of a monster that changes forms and becomes more grotesque as it changes. The influence of David Cronenberg’s body horrors and John Carpenter’s visceral 1982 re-interpretation of The Thing are clear. Zeiram goes through many changes, starting off a a hulking bio-mechanical thing, having its flesh ripped away to become and insectoid skeleton and then regenerating from just a head into a fleshy mass of mouths, tentacles and breasts.
We can see this on evidence again in Garo with the way the Horrors change forms during battle or after taking damage. This is also evident in his Kamen Rider films, ZO and J with the multiple forms assumed by the monsters there. In addition, Zeiram creates fleshy servants from the organisms it devours, a power repeated by Doras to create the kaijin in Kamen Rider ZO.
Speaking of ZO, Zeiram also shows off Amemiya’s love of stop motion animation. The skeletal form of the alien monster, how it moves and interacts with the other characters is very reminiscent of the Spider Kaijin from that later work.
Zeiram’s Skeletal form:
Kamen Rider ZO’s Spider Kaijin
We see something somewhat similar later in the clockwork dragon from the first season of Garo and the final opponent in 1995′s Mechanical Violator Hakaider. It’s clear Amemiya appreciates the weird, jerky movements of stop motion and how they work for non-human, insectile or mechanical creatures to create a creepier feel.
These are just a few of the creative touches I’ve seen in his works from the early days down to today. There are many others (I haven’t even touched on his love of run down cityscapes, trash or Noh Masks) and I could go on forever but that’s for another time.