Shin Kamen Rider (2023)

Shin Kamen Rider (2023)

Starring: Sôsuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe, Tasuku Emoto, Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Suzuki Matsuo, Tôru Tezuka, Nanase Nishino, Kanata Hongô, Shûhei Uesugi, Masami Nagasawa
Director: Hideaki Anno
Action Director: Yuki Yasutaka
Director of Special Effects: Shuncarlos Fukushima, Yusuki Matsui, Isao Morohoshi, Nishida Kiyofumi, Satoro Sasaki, etc.

Hideaki Anno’s “Shin” experiment was a noble one that sought to bring its respective properties back to their traditional roots. It started in 2014 after the release of Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla, when Anno and FX expert/director Shinji Higuchi quickly got the idea of bringing Godzilla back to his horror roots. The resulting film, Shin Godzilla (2016), was a huge success in Japan and despite not being particularly “horrific,” it worked as an update of the source material (moving the metaphor from the H-Bomb to Fukushima) and a social satire.

That was eventually followed by the announcement of Shin Ultraman, which was announced in 2019. That film was written by Hideaki Anno, based on a screenplay he had written back in 2013. Shinji Higuchi helmed the film, while Anno produced, and it didn’t reach Japanese theaters until 2022 (presumably because of the COVID pandemic). Once more, the film was made to return Ultraman to its 1960s roots, especially since the series had become increasingly “toy-etic” following the creation of Ultraman Zero and the ability for Ultraman to mix and match and join into one and all that. So yeah, a return to simplicity made some degree of sense.

Shin Kamen Rider was born in 2013 when Hideaki Anno proposed the idea to Toei Studios. They eventually greenlit the idea and pre-production started in 2015, with Anno onboard as director and screenwriter (Shinji Higuchi did not join him for this). The film was set for release in 2021, which was pushed back to 2023 thanks to the COVID pandemic. The movie (somehow) earned positive critical reviews and was the most successful live-action Kamen Rider film released to theaters, but was the least successful of Hideaki Anno’s “Shin Trilogy.” And really, it’s not hard to understand why.

The movie kicks off with a motorcycle chase between some SWAT-team looking guys driving heavy-duty trucks and motorcycle rider, played by Sosuke Ikematsu (Death Note: Light up the World and The Last Samurai). Accompanying the rider is a young woman, whom we’ll soon learn is named Ruriko Midorikawa (Minami Hamabe, of Godzilla Minus One). They are rammed off the cliff and a supervillain named Spider-Aug (Nao Omori, best known for playing Ichi the Killer) declares Ruriko to be a traitor. Suddenly, the motorcycle rider shows up and beats Spider-Aug’s henchmen into a bloody pulp and rescues Ruriko.

They flee to a cabin in the woods, where we learn that our hero, Takashi Hongo, had been subjected to a series of experiments by Ruriko’s dad, Dr. Hiroshi Midorikawa (Shin’ya Tsukamoto, of Shin Godzilla), to transform him into an insect-hybrid, specifically a grasshopper. He was supposedly the last of such experiments, as the previous insect-human hybrids, the “Augs,” had all gone power hungry. Thus, Midorikawa and his daughter had left the “Organization,” which we learn is named S.H.O.C.K.E.R. (Sustainable Happiness Organization with Computational Knowledge Embedded Remodeling). Before we can learn more about what’s going on, Spider-Aug shows up and kills Dr. Midorikawa and kidnaps Ruriko, He almost kills Takashi, who survives being blown up by transforming into the insect-helmeted superhero, Kamen Rider, at the last moment. Kamen Rider kills more henchmen before finishing off Spider-Aug with the infamous Rider Kick.

At that point, Takashi and Ruriko are picked up by the government, represented by Tachibana (Shin Godzilla’s Yutaka Takenouchi) and Taki (Takumi Saitoh, Shin Godzilla and 13 Assassins). At this point, we learn what’s really going on. You see, there was once a billionaire who wanted to end human suffering and sadness. So, he founded SHOCKER (see acronym above) and developed both an intelligent robot, K (Tori Matsuzaka), and a supercomputer, I, in order to study the world and find out how to end suffering and promote happiness. Don’t ask me how, but apparently creating human-insect hybrids as agents was part of the plan. But the agents started to go rogue and find morally unacceptable ways to promote happiness, which is what led Dr. Midorikawa and Ruriko to escape with Takashi Hongo in tow.

Both Takashi and Ruriko accept the invitation to assist the government in defeating the different Aug(mentation) agents, starting with Bat-Aug (Toru Tezuka, of Shin Godzilla and Doomsday: The Sinking of Japan). Bat-Aug has developed a virus that not only makes people easy to mind control but causes them to dissolve into soap suds at Bat-Aug’s command. After all, isn’t overcrowding a cause of unhappiness? Why don’t we just dissolve half of them, Thanos-style, and let the rest enjoy the remaining resources? Then, it’s onto Scorpion-Aug (Masami Nagasawa, of Shin Ultraman and Kingdom)…whose plan is…I dunno. After her, the next agent is Hiromi, aka Wasp-Aug (XxxHolic’s Nanase Nishino), who has perfected mind control. After all, if you can rob people of their moral agency, they can’t do anything that would make others unhappy? Anyway, all of that is a lead-up to the powerful agent, Butterfly-Aug, who happens to be Ruriko’s brother, Ichiro (Mirai Moriyama, of Seven Souls in the Skull Castle and 20th Century Boys 3: Redemption).

When Hideaki Anno wanted to return Kamen Rider to its early 70s roots, he was quite literal in it. I’m guessing the origins of SHOCKER were updated: it is no longer founded by former Nazis, so no Starfish Hitler (sorry, fans). The film plays like condensation of the original series, but sadly, the script is episodic to the point that it feels like those old Tokusatsu films that were actually just multiple episodes of X show edited together for that year’s edition of the Toei Cartoon Festival (or Toho Champion Festival). This is especially true for the first half of this two-hour film, which feels like three separate 20-minute episodes edited into a single narrative. For each 20 minute-block, Kamen Rider has to fight a different Aug with a different plan for world domination (or happiness dissemination).

That might be fine if each of their plans led into the other, but they don’t. So, there is no real flowing narrative to follow, just Kamen Rider fighting a different villain with a different EVIL PLOT. We never get enough time to grow to hate the villain and the stakes never feel that high because we start expecting Kamen Rider to dispatch the villain and move onto the next. And two of the villains--Scorpion-Aug and K the robot--really do not do much. The former just shows up, kills a bunch of SWAT team members, and then is dispatched offscreen. She could have been removed from the film without affecting the narrative at all. The latter watches what's going on, but doesn't really participate in the film's plot, so I'm still not sure what his point was.

Things start to improve in the second half when Butterfly-Aug (aka Ichiro Midorikawa) steps into the limelight. At least the film has settled on a final villain to focus on with a single specific EVIL PLOT to execute. The second half does have an episodic quality to it, although it is less apparent. This time, it feels like two thirty-minute episodes, one of which introduces Kamen Rider V. 2, aka Hayato Ichimonji (Tasuku Emoto)—another character from the original series. But his introduction as an adversary and switch to being an ally is rushed, having been handled in a single 30-minute block.

The film’s episodic structure guarantees lots of action, but never allows us to really get to know the characters. It doesn’t help that the main characters—Takashi Hongo and Ruriko Midorikawa—play the proceedings so seriously that the film stops being fun whenever they’re not punching monsters or shooting robots. We get to know a little about their backstories, but like a tokusatsu show, twenty minutes only gives you so much time to introduce the villain monster, establish the fiendish plan, offer some basic character development, and give us an action scene or two. If I’m watching an original film, I want the qualities of a film, not six theoretical episodes stitched together.

Shin Kamen Rider feels a lot like Godzilla Final Wars, although the latter was a lot better than this. Both films were a return to the old 1970s tokusatsu aesthetic and used some modern effects techniques to give the film an old school look. Godzilla Final Wars pulled it off a lot better, because despite its everything-but-the-kitchen sink approach and purposely kitschy effects, they were both consistent and in service of a single narrative. A cluttered narrative, but a single one, nonetheless. The effects in this film range between silly costumes for most of the Aug agents to really bad CGI, especially for Bat-Aug. That was awful.

While Godzilla Final Wars returned to the 70s in terms of special effects—at least with the kaiju, the spaceship stuff was a little more modern (for its time)—it at least kept the action itself firmly in the 2000s. Being a Ryuhei Kitamura film, that meant that it spent a lot of time aping The Matrix, but the fights had their moments. In Shin Kamen Rider, Hideaki Anno keeps the action in the 1970s, too. It feels like he asked action director Yuki Yasutaka (Dead Sushi and Bloody Chainsaw Girl) to make the fights feel like the sort of thing you’d see in a 70s episode of a tokusatsu show, too. There are a few moments here or there, but the choreography is largely pretty sloppy, covered up by a thin veneer of CGI and wirework and coated with a lot of unnecessary blood (including some horrendous CGI blood splatter). Most fights start with an exchange of blows and quickly moves to Kamen Rider finishing off his opponent with a Rider Kick. Even the final showdown with Butterfly-Aug, which should be an awesome two-on-one, is mainly a few CGI moves and then two guys awkwardly wrestling on the ground.

So, Shin Godzilla brought Godzilla back to his 1950s roots, or at least tried to. It doesn’t replicate that feeling but is a great film in its own right. Shin Ultraman tried to bring that series back to its 1960s roots and seemed to do a good job at it. Shin Kamen Rider tries to be a 1970s throwback, but in my opinion, just fails at it. As I said before, Godzilla Final Wars did a better job with it and viewers should stick to that.