The lurking horror element in Kamen Rider....

[Medivh]

Wow, all of a sudden I'm making posts....eh, happens. Anyway...

So I know you're probably going to read this and go 'pffft! yeah right! this isn't gonna happen!' but play along with me anyway. Anything's possible, after all.

Now...I have a friend who's a game designer. Went to school for it and all, graduated a few years ago and he'd been having a tough time finding a paying job in the field ever since. Everyone wants unpaid interns, but noone wants to actually hire anyone it seems. He's started a small studio for the time being and we're all pulling for him. He's doing mobile-phone games at the moment.

Since he's more on the tech end than on the creativity end, he usually comes to me to help him form ideas better. Even if they're not gonna be made for a long time. Him and his team tend to like horror games alot, and while I'm not a huge fan of horror, he asked me what I would do if I could make a horror game, and, weirdly enough, I thought of Kamen Rider.


I feel like, if taken in another way or another direction, we could get some genuinely good stuff out of Kamen Rider. Just off the top of my head I could imagine an entire game just based on Rider 1's initial escape from SHOCKER. Part Metal Gear Solid, part Resident Evil/Silent Hill. I mean really, who knows what kind of horrors SHOCKER has in the halls of any given base? Let alone one where people are being modified to be Kaijin. Combine that with the element of Rider 1 being, well, weak....newly switched on...not all of his powers even active yet...even though I'm not a huge fan of creepy games...I'd play the heck outta that.

But...is the potential really there? Furthermore, would it be right to take such a darker tone with a series we know and love? Does the franchise even have enough of a mythos that can be converted? I know some early Showa era Kaijin are pretty creepy, but...foot soldiers in spandex kinda...aren't.

Been thinking about this for the last few weeks and, well, I'm still relatively new to the franchise. Figured I'd ask the pros around here if it could really fly....

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

A good portion of the early Kamen Rider episodes, about the first 13 or 14, have a lot of horror elements. Deceptive lighting, weird angles, bizarre effects, it's basically what I thought made Kamen Rider stand out from other series at the time. (aside from being generally awesome)

This is the sort of thing that seems like it could have worked a lot better in the past than it ever could these days. A lot of the older shows did carry this stylistic difference that made them creepy and bizarre as part of their charm, I don't think you'll find that in modern Rider, at least not without being done poorly most of the time. (Kuuga, Agito, and Hibiki come to mind as those that pull it off nicely)

 

[Black Fang]

Ironically, Kiva (a horror-themed show) ended up having less horror than the aforementioned Kuuga and Agito.

Though I can't remember Hibiki ever having the same "horror" feeling that Kuuga did. For one thing, the Makamous never seemed particularly aggressive or sadistic.

 

[Medivh]

Ironically, Kiva (a horror-themed show) ended up having less horror than the aforementioned Kuuga and Agito.

Though I can't remember Hibiki ever having the same "horror" feeling that Kuuga did. For one thing, the Makamous never seemed particularly aggressive or sadistic.

Well, parts of Hibiki had less of an outright horror feel as most people know it (terrifying monsters, walls-bleeding insanity, dumptrucks of blood and gore). It had more of a...creepy feeling, I guess. Unease. It was never particularly strong, but it could have gone there without much effort. The first few scenes with the Douji and the Hime in the first few episodes were examples of this. They didn't do it much, or terribly well, but I can see where the possibility is there. and it continued on into the story, especially when they began making their way more and more into the human world, looking as radically different as they did. The Grongi in their human forms were a good example of this. Dressed the way they were, acting the way they were, if you saw someone like that on the street, sure you're not gonna be scared, but unless you're incredibly jaded to stuff like that, it'd unnerve you to some degree. If only for the 'man...that guy/girls is CREEPY!' moment.

Sadly, I think Kiva went for the more romanticized version of vampires and all that. It had the chance, but I don't think it was a missed shot or someone otherwise screwed up. What they did with Kiva was, I think, what they set out to do. It was meant to be less Hellsing (Crispin Freeman, not Hugh Jackman) and more Twilight. It had the potential, but I don't think they ever had any delusions about the direction they wanted to go in.

 

[MattComix]

In much of Kamen Rider there is a bit of a horror vibe but it's also still fun, cool, superhero action not some hyper-grimdark splatter-gore type thing. It's more kind of the atmosphere brought about by the threat of the monsters.

As I said in another thread, Kamen Rider tends to fight the evil that is just hidden from view, lurking around the corner, or creeping up behind you as opposed to the evil that drops out of the sky the way Sentai and Ultraman does.

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

As I said in another thread, Kamen Rider tends to fight the evil that is just hidden from view, lurking around the corner, or creeping up behind you as opposed to the evil that drops out of the sky the way Sentai and Ultraman does.

That seems to be the approach some newer series take actually. A lot of the older series definitely go for you described as evil lurking around the corner.

On the subject of Hibiki, I always thought it went for a horror tone in terms of mood, not outright violence. You had a lot of strange lighting with the villains, the creepy music, and just weird camera angles and mystery to them that never made you sure what they really were. A lot of the Douji and Hime designs were pretty creepy though, much more than your generic puffy monster suit that tends to look more menacing on paper than in practice. For a series that could be pretty damn happy, it could also lend itself incredibly well to the more bizarre aspects of horror.

Though perhaps I'm just thinking more along the lines of it being eerie than straight up horror, I don't think they're totally independent of each other. Agito would play itself like that at times as well, the one scene that comes to mind is in the late 20s when the two Shouichis meet and there's this strange green filter over everything and a creepy sense of being watched.

 

[MattComix]

That seems to be the approach some newer series take actually. A lot of the older series definitely go for you described as evil lurking around the corner.

The thought had occurred to me but even a show like Kabuto where the plot literally starts when something falls out of the sky the monsters are disguising themselves as humans taking on the forms of the people they kill.

I guess my point is that ideally it's an element of Kamen Rider and not that Kamen Rider is a horror movie with karate. :laugh:

 

[Black Fang]

Well, parts of Hibiki had less of an outright horror feel as most people know it (terrifying monsters, walls-bleeding insanity, dumptrucks of blood and gore). It had more of a...creepy feeling, I guess. Unease. It was never particularly strong, but it could have gone there without much effort. The first few scenes with the Douji and the Hime in the first few episodes were examples of this. They didn't do it much, or terribly well, but I can see where the possibility is there. and it continued on into the story, especially when they began making their way more and more into the human world, looking as radically different as they did. The Grongi in their human forms were a good example of this. Dressed the way they were, acting the way they were, if you saw someone like that on the street, sure you're not gonna be scared, but unless you're incredibly jaded to stuff like that, it'd unnerve you to some degree. If only for the 'man...that guy/girls is CREEPY!' moment.

On the subject of Hibiki, I always thought it went for a horror tone in terms of mood, not outright violence. You had a lot of strange lighting with the villains, the creepy music, and just weird camera angles and mystery to them that never made you sure what they really were. A lot of the Douji and Hime designs were pretty creepy though, much more than your generic puffy monster suit that tends to look more menacing on paper than in practice. For a series that could be pretty damn happy, it could also lend itself incredibly well to the more bizarre aspects of horror.

Though perhaps I'm just thinking more along the lines of it being eerie than straight up horror, I don't think they're totally independent of each other. Agito would play itself like that at times as well, the one scene that comes to mind is in the late 20s when the two Shouichis meet and there's this strange green filter over everything and a creepy sense of being watched.

I'll grant you the Doujis and Himes. But even so, the Makamous actually came off more like creatures from cryptozoology than much else. Notice how their only victims tended to be people in remote areas. Now while that itself can be creepy, I think it helps when the characters actually acknowledge it. You never saw anyone not part of Takeshi talk about strange occurrences, feeling scared, or anything like it. Not even any local legends, as far as I remember. Compare that to Kuuga, where they was a visible atmosphere of fear toward the Grongis.

In short, it seemed like if the Makamous were left alone or weren't disturbed by people wandering around their turf, nothing would ever happen. Which would make them just strange animals.

 

[Medivh]

I'll grant you the Doujis and Himes. But even so, the Makamous actually came off more like creatures from cryptozoology than much else. Notice how their only victims tended to be people in remote areas. Now while that itself can be creepy, I think it helps when the characters actually acknowledge it. You never saw anyone not part of Takeshi talk about strange occurrences, feeling scared, or anything like it. Not even any local legends, as far as I remember. Compare that to Kuuga, where they was a visible atmosphere of fear toward the Grongis.

In short, it seemed like if the Makamous were left alone or weren't disturbed by people wandering around their turf, nothing would ever happen. Which would make them just strange animals.

Very true. Like I said there was never a huge horror element to them, it was more just...unsettling. Not to mention Hibiki isn't considered the Black Sheep of the franchise for nothing.

 

[planetxleader]

I've always heard that Kamen Rider had its roots in horror and this surprised me. I'd really love to see the original series someday.

So yeah, I'm hardly well-versed in Rider shows, but before my laptop died I was deep in some Kamen Rider Blade, which definitely had a dark, creepy edge. In fact, to me, Blade feels like a post-apocalyptic story even though civilization appears to be normal. I don't know why, there's a strange feeling of doom and struggle underneath everything, and I got this simply from the first three episodes (I was hooked after ep. 2).