2011-12 Kamen Rider: Fourze - Pictures in the First Post

[KouAidou]

This is less of a problem in a finite series like Kamen Rider, I admit.

Yeah, I think most of the issues you cited could probably be dealt with fairly reasonably in a series that was promised not to run longer than 50 episodes, assuming it was made one of the major themes of the show and they stuck with it. You can come up with plots for that amount of run-time; you just have to be careful with it and not overplay your hand.

Brave of Legend Da Garn and GEAR Fighter Dendoh are both fun mecha series that show school-age kids trying to balance crime-fighting secret identities with school/family responsibilities. Some of the episodes are about that conflict, others just use it for situational comedy, and some just don't make it an issue at all. After all, it would be sort of contrived if there was always a recital or a baseball game or a work deadline when the monster stuff was going down...

 

[Lynxara]

This is less of a problem in a finite series like Kamen Rider, I admit.

Yeah, I think Rider could have a main character who had responsibilities since the double life doesn't have to be extended forever, as it is in most of the American comics you mention. Look at the example of mecha shows, which tend to have year-long runs like Rider. Your better shows always work in a balance of heroic responsibility with other things a character has to do.

For instance, Trider G7 envisions a pilot having to balance the responsibilities of running his father's company and piloting a robot to crush bad guys. GaoGaiGar turned the process of fighting aliens into a superheroic bureaucracy. Zeta Gundam was about Kamille's attempts to balance his responsibility to the world with his responsibility toward individuals.

Writing like this just involves... well, being original. This is genuinely hard to do when you have to fill timeslots year-after-year with no break. I figure it's why Rider reuses a lot of extremely convenient ideas like the loner hero, the central hub restaurant, and extremely human-like but inhuman monsters.

 

[MattComix]

As much as I love the long-lived legacies of American comicbook superheroes I really feel the finite series is a major benefit of Japanese superheroes. The stories can have start, middle, and end and because of the self-contained nature you don't have to worry about another writer coming along and warping your favorite hero into something else nearly or entirely divorced from anything you might have previously enjoyed about them or getting power-sets that they were not ever designed for.

When they want to do a new concept, they do a new concept. They don't try to say..write Hongo getting Den-O powers or the Shinkengers lose their samurai powers and now Chiaki has to be a frog.

There's a core to be true to ideally at least but Hongo's story is Hongo's story. Kotaro or Godai's stories are theirs etc. and you can have them crossover in a way that's loose with the continuity and more focused on the sheer coolness of having them all fighting side by side.

 

[Ceighk]

As much as I love the long-lived legacies of American comicbook superheroes I really feel the finite series is a major benefit of Japanese superheroes. The stories can have start, middle, and end and because of the self-contained nature you don't have to worry about another writer coming along and warping your favorite hero into something else nearly or entirely divorced from anything you might have previously enjoyed about them or getting power-sets that they were not ever designed for.

Oh god this. And when you do a completely new series every year, you stop getting into situations where the writers have no idea what to do with the characters or the plots because the characters have completed their development and the plots have been wrapped up. Case in point? Heroes - the first series was fantastic, but all those that followed just fumbled around with different plot points and ideas. If they had just started something new with the same concept but different characters (as they had planned to do) that probably wouldn't have happened so much. Having a finite series also avoids the issue of writers not wanting to ever resolve the characters' goals because it would mean ending the series (see The Chris Carter Effect on TV Tropes). ALSO it avoids the issue of it being really hard for new viewers to get into long running franchise - I recently tried to get into reading American superhero comics, but most of them have been running for hundreds of issues so there's shitloads of continuity to catch up on, but when I tried to get into Kamen Rider it was easy because you can just pretty much pick a series and it starts at the start and there's nothing to catch up on. I could imagine this being particularly important for a kids' show, where the target audience is only in the age range for a few years before growing out of it, so new fans are arriving and old ones are leaving constantly.

EDIT: What I think would be a nice twist is to have a hero who's worried about balancing his (assuming he's male for the sake of pronouns) job and his secret superhero life, but maybe lets it slide a few times so his boss is getting concerned about him not turning up on time or whatever. So his boss asks to see him and is all like "why did you skip work?". And the hero effectively 'comes out' to him. And then the boss is like "I understand.". I guess they kinda have this in OOO as I'm pretty sure the cafe lady (sorry, I forget her name) is aware Eiji is OOO, but if they played it up a bit more and made a bit of a thing of it it might add a nice little bit to the show.

 

[Khaiden]

We already have 3 Riders who do that.

¡

Fixed.

If the main Rider is a mechanical Rider this time... I wonder what are the chances that we'll get altered humans/cyborgs back? I'd like to see some modern designs for cyborg enemies, even if the main hero is just wearing a suit like the usual for Heisei Riders.

I've been watching Super-1 lately, and there are some pretty good moments there regarding this (like a guy called to join Dogma and then being shown a bunch of body parts on a table), but it'd be interesting to see cyborg monster suits made with modern techniques.

I believe Toei's current vision of cyborg monsters is the suits we got in The First and The Next.
I'd love to see things like that on a weekly basis.

I am expecting the designers to integrate the number 4 into the design for the next Rider. Decade was 1 (He is kinda the starting point for a new Heisei era in a way), W was 2 and OOO was 3. The 'new' Heisei Era currently consist of very popular series, so they better keep it up.

If this Rider modifies his arms and has strong ties to the number Four, HE HAS TO team up with Riderman. Forget OOO, make Riderman team-up with him in Movie War.
That is, of course, considering all the other Riders don't appear in this series.

There's a core to be true to ideally at least but Hongo's story is Hongo's story. Kotaro or Godai's stories are theirs etc. and you can have them crossover in a way that's loose with the continuity and more focused on the sheer coolness of having them all fighting side by side.

Continuity doesn't have to be thrown away, they can meet up one day to defeat a threat, then the other go back to their single lives. This was handled well in the old series, with everyone in different parts of the world.

 

[Ryuutaros]

Popular everyday object that can be turned into collectable toys used in the belt + 4 = Rider profit

 

[MattComix]

Continuity doesn't have to be thrown away, they can meet up one day to defeat a threat, then the other go back to their single lives. This was handled well in the old series, with everyone in different parts of the world.

True. I was just thinking more of a situation like for example how Kuuga existed in a world that was not really stylized at all nor had other Riders in it but he'd be included in any big Rider team-up regardless. Or how for the purposes of any given Sentai team-up they all exist in the same setting at the same time even if it conflicts with the setting established in their respective series.

This is the sort of thing that would potentially give your more aggressive american comic continuity-cops an aneurysm.

 

[MrMonk]

True. I was just thinking more of a situation like for example how Kuuga existed in a world that was not really stylized at all nor had other Riders in it but he'd be included in any big Rider team-up regardless. Or how for the purposes of any given Sentai team-up they all exist in the same setting at the same time even if it conflicts with the setting established in their respective series.

This is the sort of thing that would potentially give your more aggressive american comic continuity-cops an aneurysm.

Like the problems editorial has handling Captain Marvel in the DCU. How Fawcett is usually portrayed is jarring compared to the rest of the modern DCU.

 

[Seigi]

Or how for the purposes of any given Sentai team-up they all exist in the same setting at the same time even if it conflicts with the setting established in their respective series.

Which is the role that the Great Leader filled in for the showa Riders. (And Kamen RIder in General with the 40th aniversary movie, I guess). Heisei KR's need more of that if they want to do more crossovers. The great thing with Great Leader was that he wasn't just a convenient plot device, he's evil incarnate. It made "all the good guys have to show up and fight this guy just because" somehwat justifiable, even without continuity.

.. that said, I hope they continue the plot thread with Foundation X and make them this generation's Great Leader-figure.

But what I really hope is that they would put Kamen Rider off on hold for awhile and do other stuff like Metal Heroes. Although KR's pretty much at a high point in popularity, it'd do the series good to take a break for awhile. Having more KR's up to the point where the previous Riders start to feel like "just another Rider" is not good.

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

Toei is probably at the point where they could do three tokusatsu series a year, they did that back in 2004 with they had Sailor Moon, Dekranger, and Blade going at the same time. I think for Metal Heroes to come back, you would really need to do something pretty inventive that hasn't been seen in tokusatsu before or at least in a very long time.

I think Double also showed how to avoid the "just another Rider" syndrome: get fresh blood in the show! You had two writers who had never done any Kamen Rider before with Double and it lead to some really good stories, I'd love it if Kamen Rider could do that year after year, it's not as if there's a shortage of writers out there.