Japanese Super Heroes rule! (Part 1)

OK, heh, I ran out of ideas of what to write, so what better than to admit a few guilty pleasures of mine...

In today honesty moment goes to Japanese Super Heroes! Named "Tokusatsu" in Japan.

OK yeah, some people reading this might think that I'm incredibly nerdy because of this, then again tell me something that I'm not aware of! LOL. As a kid I loved Power Rangers, remember seeing Beetle Borgs, Masked Rider and V.R. Troopers, though they weren't very good, the production was no where as good as Power Rangers were. I knew that there was some Japanese production in their, but is was back before the internet was big, plus by the time I got into secondary school, I stopped watch Power Rangers and the future seasons...

Now fast forward to 2006, I used to listen to a podcast called Otaku Generation, I used to listen to them to found out news on anime and manga. But one episode they started to talk about Kamen Rider Kabuto and started to compare it to the somewhat lack-luster Americanised Masked Rider. I thought to myself, "I remember Masked Rider, it wasn't that great...", but listening into the podcast's review of Kamen Rider Kabuto, something sparked me into wanting to watch it, thankfully, Veho was there, which is no longer around, had plenty of episodes on this Japanese "Kamen Rider Kabuto" to watch. Technically it's sort of illegal since I don't pay money for Japanese TV, but we don't need to talk about grey areas of broadcasting laws here, let's get into more of the fun stuff!

Just after watching that AWESOME intro, I had to watch it! The plot to Kamen Rider Kabuto is set in a post apocalyptic Japan, where a meteor lands in Tokyo and a race of shape shifting aliens called "The Worm" mimic themselves as humans as they go around hunting and eating people. A Young man is waiting for "something" to happen in his future, a for told destiny that he keeps vague, but when he gets himself involved in a worm attack, he receives a beetle shaped object from a parallel universe called a Zector, and with a belt that he's had since the destruction of Tokyo, he can become Kamen Rider Kabuto!

Now I think I went a bit too ahead of myself there, "Kamen Rider"? "Belts"? "Zector"? To put things into perpective, the Japanese Word "Kamen" is mask, so just as I mentioned above, there was an American series called "Masked Rider" that didn't do too well in ratings. The belt? well that's a Kamen Rider's source of power, just like how the Green Lantern has his ring and Thor has his Hammer. A Kamen Rider get his power from a special belt that either summons a metal cybernetic armour, or turns the user into a robot.

"A Kamen Rider? There's more of them!?", yes, Kamen Rider has been a Super Hero series in Japan since the 70s, and even if it had a hiatus durring the early to mid 90s, Kamen Rider is one of the most popular super heroes in Japan. Next to Super Sentai (The Japanese Power Rangers) and Ultra Man.

Since 1971, Kamen Rider has changed a lot, but that's due to inventing a new "Kamen Rider" for each season of the show, unlike American Super Heroes, who are just the hero and nothing else, for example Clark Kent is always Super Man, there's a new person in each season who becomes a Kamen Rider with a different look and theme. There have been 26 different Kamen Riders, the latest Kamen Rider is Kamen Rider Fourze (Pronounced "Four-zay") who has a space rocket theme and gets new powers from plugging in switches into his belt. The show is based at a High School with teenagers rather than the young adults that they've used in previous seasons.

If you're interested in Watching Kamen Rider, you can find plenty of subtitled videos on the internet, but some subtitles are written in a way that expects you already know what certain words and terms mean. So I'll be nice to include them here...

• "Heshin": Japanese for "Transform", the iconic phrase that's used in Kamen Rider to summon their power.
• Rider Belt, Driver, Driver Belt: The belt that's used in order to transform into a Kamen Rider.
• Kaijin: Japanese for monster, in some seasons, the monsters in the show are refered to as kaijin(monsters) before their actual name in revealed.
• Forms: Kamen Riders have the ability to become even more powerful from transforming into a new "form". E.G. Kamen Rider Kuuga changes colour for different powers and weapons, whilst Kamen Rider Double and Kamen Rider OOO (pronounced "Oh-ze" like in "Cherrios") can switch and swap into multiple different forms and combinations made best for the fight that they're in.
• Showa and Heisei Riders: This is a common term used to describe when said rider was around. It's based on Japanese Emperors. The "Showa Era" was between 1945 and 1989, then the Emperor died, the new Emperor announced that the new era would be called "The Heisei Era", from 1989 to the current day. So Kamen Riders before 1989 are described as "Showa Riders", and Riders after 1989 are described as "Heisei Riders".

In 2009, Kamen Rider Ryuki was translated and localise for the American audience, renamed Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight, it was aired on the CW Channel in the States, and from what I've seen it's fairly descent, a lot better than Masked Rider, even though they did change a lot of the plot and some of the character's personalities. It's been announced that Saban, the team that brought Power Rangers into the west, have filed a patent named "Power Rider". People are not too sure if this is Kamen Rider or not, after all they have the Masked Rider after all, which is a direct translation of the name. But it's believed that Saban is working on a localised version of the latest Kamen Rider Fourze for the American audience.

For more details in Japanese Super Heroes, go and listen to the Fwooshcast Podcast, they have a series called Tokusatsu 101 which is an introduction to all things Japanese Super heroes.