What would the Kamen Rider franchise be like today if Shotaro Ishimori didn't die?

[Solari]

I don't know what exactly you mean by "main actor", but Minato's actress did do transformed stunts (according to the Kamen Rider Wiki, she was the main suit actor, but I will take this in a grain of salt). But nonetheless, I doubt she was just capable of doing it. I bet she is an actual stunt woman, who was professionally trained. They wouldn't just decide to let someone do their stunt work just because they can do it, because the slightest mistake can COST to the production of the series. And I doubt that's something Toei or Bandai wants to risk. A professional stunt man/woman will have WAY more knowledge about avoiding possible injuries, strains and wrong body positions than someone who probably learnt the art by himself.

Yup, she trained in JAE's training school and now is under management of JAE
(JAE[Japan Action Enterprise] is the company which trained and manages most of the stunt people in Rider and Sentai series)


The action director do sometimes let actors do some out of suit fighting action(especially if the actors themselves request) before the transformation, but it's usually quite brief.

Personally, I rather like the short untransformed fight scene between Chase and Gou in a recent episode of Drive...

 

[Toku Prime]

The third aspect to mention with the whole "actors doing all their own stunts" idea is scheduling. As a few people have pointed out above, Kamen Rider Marika was played by a stunt performer who wanted to do some acting as well. But when you think about it, Marika doesn't transform that often. She has a lot more drama scenes. I'd suspect one of the main reason for that is the amount of time available. They have to film a full episode in a week and the stunt actors will need time to choreograph and rehearse the action scenes to make sure that they go smoothly on filming day. But while they do that the episode's other scenes are being filmed. Marika's actress can't be in two places at once, so she kinda had to either have action and not much out of suit time, or dramatic scenes and not much action. And Toei are well-known for their crazy tight scheduling, so I doubt there's any way to have it so someone can do an equal amount of fighting and acting in the same episode.

Silly Prime, you act like toku still does out of suit fighting. :laugh:

Well, this weeks Ninninger? Clearly not the same cailbre as the in-suit fighting, which is exactly what I was taking about. :sweat: