With Shin Kamen Rider, Hideaki Anno realises a… | Little White Lies

With Shin Kamen Rid­er, Hidea­ki Anno realis­es a child­hood dream

20 Mar 2023

Words by Alicia Haddick

Two figures in colourful sci-fi costumes against a blue sky.
Two figures in colourful sci-fi costumes against a blue sky.
The Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion cre­ator brings one of Japan’s most endur­ing moral­ly grey heroes to the big screen, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Shin Godzil­la and Shin Ultraman.

When Shin Kamen Rid­er was offi­cial­ly announced as Hidea­ki Anno’s next live-action fea­ture in 2021, it was a dream come true for the acclaimed direc­tor. As he put it at the time, Fifty years ago, just like any ele­men­tary school kid at the time, I was fas­ci­nat­ed by Kamen Rid­er. Fifty years lat­er, I began this film project with the hope of repay­ing this big favor in a small way.’

This repay­ment to the child inside defines Anno’s unof­fi­cial Shin series of films, with each film in the series stand­ing as the cre­ators’ dis­tinct take on the pil­lars of Japan­ese pop cul­ture that he was inspired by as a child or that he cre­at­ed in their image. With Shin Godzil­la, despite ini­tial reluc­tance due to his men­tal state at the time fol­low­ing pro­duc­tion of Evan­ge­lion 3.33, it was his chance to become involved with this titan of kai­ju cin­e­ma. Anno has been an hon­est lover for the pan­theon of the genre, even spend­ing time on the set of the Hei­sei Gam­era tril­o­gy with his friend Shin­ji Higuchi (spe­cial effects direc­tor on that tril­o­gy and pro­duc­er on this new Godzil­la) while cre­at­ing a doc­u­men­tary on its pro­duc­tion, and the result offered a fas­ci­nat­ing mod­ern polit­i­cal thriller replac­ing the atom­ic bomb with the 3.11 earthquake.

With Shin Evan­ge­lion, he got to bring a the­atri­cal end to the Evan­ge­lion fran­chise he cre­at­ed in the 1990s at Gainax on his own terms with a more hope­ful end­ing, fol­low­ing con­tro­ver­sy and pro­duc­tion issues mar­ring the ini­tial TV broad­cast. Then, with Shin Ultra­man, he had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to write the script for one of his child­hood favorite tokusat­su (spe­cial effects) heroes.

Of all of these pro­duc­tions, Shin Ultra­man and Shin Kamen Rid­er are the most per­son­al gifts Anno could offer his child­hood self. Far from the first super­hero TV shows to hit Japan­ese screens (this cred­it goes to Super Giant, which first aired in 1957), these tokusat­su icons came into the world dur­ing the for­ma­tive years of Anno’s child­hood in the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s, and not only suc­cess­ful­ly scaled down the high-bud­get pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty for a small­er screen, but spawned icon­ic heroes and fruit­ful fran­chis­es that con­tin­ue to thrive today.

It was dur­ing this era that there was a boom of tokusat­su heroes tak­ing to the small­er screen, cap­tur­ing nation­al audi­ences in an era of increased TV con­sump­tion as more entered homes in the post-1964 Olympic era. Yet it should be no sur­prise that it was Kamen Rid­er that Anno was most drawn towards dur­ing his for­ma­tive years: even in this hero-heavy era typ­i­cal­ly defined by the friend­ly guardian­ship of Super Sen­tai and Ultra­man, Kamen Rid­er stood out as some­thing more mys­te­ri­ous, even cool and mature.

The series was first broad­cast in 1971, with its trade­mark visu­al design and masked hero on a motor­bike present from the very begin­ning. While each Kamen Rid­er has its own unique twist on the core con­cept, each series in the fran­chise typ­i­cal­ly fol­lows a stan­dard­ized for­mu­la: a solo war­rior, with maybe one or two friends in more recent years, fight­ing to pro­tect their friends and save the world against a malev­o­lent orga­ni­za­tion bent on world dom­i­na­tion. Yet where­as its clos­est con­tem­po­raries like Super Sen­tai are much more obvi­ous­ly opposed to their alien ene­mies, Kamen Rid­er often blurs the line between ene­my and friend, with the two using sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy, or even switch­ing alle­giances over the course of their adventure.

Con­cep­tu­al designs for the series were cre­at­ed by man­ga­ka Shotaro Ishi­nomori, whose con­cepts con­jured up an inten­tion­al­ly dark­er hero to its con­tem­po­raries intend­ed almost as a par­tial hor­ror for a younger audi­ence, beyond the hero­ic, action-heavy exte­ri­or. At the time, some dis­en­fran­chised rur­al youth were being sent to fac­to­ries in cities after mid­dle school for work, while those in Ishinomori’s gen­er­a­tion came of age in the fire­bomb-rav­aged after­math of World War II. Ishinomori’s ear­ly man­ga often cit­ed as a large influ­ence on the fran­chise, Skull Man, along­side the creator’s oth­er ear­ly ideas for the series, made ref­er­ence or com­ment­ed on the expe­ri­ences of this dis­en­fran­chised gen­er­a­tion, with a hero who chart­ed his own path to a brighter future.

Black motorcycle helmet with large red reflector light on the front.

It was hope­ful, but with a dark­er under­tone than many sim­i­lar sto­ries of the time, one that the­mat­i­cal­ly lingers with the series even today. Many of its ear­ly ene­mies were fas­cists and ref­er­enced real-world exam­ples of fas­cism in their designs. The ene­mies of the first series were the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion Shock­er, made up of and linked to the Nazis who brain­washed vic­tims into fight­ing on their side as agents, with the pro­tag­o­nist being a char­ac­ter who escaped this process and aims to take the orga­ni­za­tion down.

Beyond this, Kamen Rid­er Ama­zon was crit­i­cized by some for what was seen as an excess of graph­ic vio­lence (and was even­tu­al­ly reimag­ined as an adult-ori­ent­ed series by Ama­zon Prime years lat­er) while Kamen Rid­er Black is often con­sid­ered one of the most beloved series pre­cise­ly because of its heav­ier tone, as two broth­ers take dif­fer­ent sides in its cen­tral con­flict (this also got reboot­ed by Ama­zon Prime for Black Sun, fea­tur­ing Dri­ve My Car star Hidetoshi Nishijima).

The series has even exper­i­ment­ed with the for­mu­la to bring into ques­tion the assump­tion that the tit­u­lar Kamen Rid­er is even a hero. In the 2002 tele­vi­sion series Kamen Rid­er Ryu­ki, thir­teen Rid­ers bat­tle in the Rid­er War thanks to Advent Cards and con­tracts with mon­sters in anoth­er par­al­lel world whose only rule is that there can only be one Kamen Rid­er, while oth­ers must be killed. The process turns some of the par­tic­i­pants into act­ing like the mon­sters they con­tract with, while the war sees the mon­sters them­selves feed­ing on human­i­ty in order to survive.

Kamen Rid­er, his bug mask, and his motor­bike, offered some­thing unique in the realm of tokusat­su heroes. Far from the guardian-like sta­tus char­ac­ters like Gam­era or Ultra­man held, or the bright, col­or-cod­ed heroes of Super Sen­tai, Kamen Rid­er was a lov­able rogue. Undoubt­ed­ly still fight­ing against evil, they were a vig­i­lante who fought alone, strug­gling for­ward with demons of his own to tack­le, fight­ing for and dis­cov­er­ing the mean­ing of jus­tice in the process.

Anno has repeat­ed­ly spo­ken of his love for Kamen Rid­er, in part because of this dark­er tone. In the way that Daicon Film, the stu­dent col­lec­tive of Anno and his clos­est uni­ver­si­ty friends that even­tu­al­ly became ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Gainax, cre­at­ed DAICON III and IV ref­er­enc­ing count­less sci-fi works includ­ing the masked vig­i­lante and his own Ultra­man fan film, pho­tos shared dur­ing his days with the group include Anno decked in full Kamen Rid­er cos­play. While speak­ing with Japan­ese come­di­an Hidetoshi Nishi­ji­ma in a fire­side chat for Ama­zon Prime, it’s the dark light­ing he lingers on, which both made its night­mar­ish imagery scari­er and the eyes of Kamen Rid­er glow­ing in the dark­ness even more striking.

It’s a com­ment that gives at least some indi­ca­tion as to what to expect from his own inter­pre­ta­tion on the fran­chise, as the film remains shroud­ed in mys­tery even as it reach­es the­aters across Japan. The three attempts at the­atri­cal films in the ear­ly 1990s remain the only exam­ples of ani­ma­tion com­pa­ny Toei exper­i­ment­ing with stand­alone films, with oth­er fre­quent the­atri­cal adap­ta­tions of the fran­chise being mere­ly re-edits or crossover films tied heav­i­ly to their TV coun­ter­parts. Trail­ers too have remained vague, focus­ing on strik­ing imagery, Anno’s trade­mark non-stan­dard scene fram­ing and the return of the icon­ic orig­i­nal Kamen Rid­er cos­tume and imagery of the Shock­er organization.

Yet per­haps this tells us more than we think: it’s a return to the roots of the series that Anno has pro­claimed to love so much. It’s a reboot of the ideas of that series mod­ern­ized for a new gen­er­a­tion, like­ly retain­ing and push­ing the the­mat­ic under­tones fur­ther in the vein of his work on Shin Godzil­la. Remain­ing faith­ful is clear­ly impor­tant to the cre­ator hav­ing announced the film with a shot-for-shot remake of the orig­i­nal open­ing theme, even ignor­ing his oth­er live-action ani­mé-inspired tokusat­su direct­ing expe­ri­ence with his hilar­i­ous and enter­tain­ing adap­ta­tion of Cutie Hon­ey that even ref­er­ences Kamen Rid­er through its fight sequences filmed at on loca­tion in the Tokyo Bay.

Kamen Rid­er is defined by a moral­ly-gray approach to jus­tice that sets it apart from Super Sen­tai, Ultra­man or even, to an extent, Godzil­la. Both in the franchise’s orig­i­nal inter­pre­ta­tion of jus­tice inspired by the post-war con­sen­sus and its con­tin­ued update to this idea in reflec­tion of a chang­ing world, you can see how Anno’s ini­tial fas­ci­na­tion with the char­ac­ter influ­enced his lat­er work on defin­ing Shin­ji and NERV with­in Evan­ge­lion. Track­ing the his­to­ry of Kamen Rid­er tracks Anno as a cre­ator, and whether through the franchise’s week­ly kids TV series or its mature inter­pre­ta­tions for the audi­ences who came of age with pri­or gen­er­a­tions of hero, both Anno and Kamen Rid­er can bring their dual con­ver­sa­tions on jus­tice and hero­ism into one film.

So we come full cir­cle. Kamen Rid­er returns to its 50th anniver­sary roots while Anno returns to his child­hood and one of his ado­les­cent self’s great­est influ­ences on his cre­ative career. What­ev­er the result, the essence of Anno as a cre­ator will like­ly unfurl in front of us, and for the child that lives inside.

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