Birth Of The 10th!! Kamen Riders All Together!!! (1984)

BIRTH OF THE 10TH!! KAMEN RIDERS ALL TOGETHER!

 SYNOPSIS
 The Badan Empire is determined to succeed where the other secret armies that wanted to dominate the world in previous Kamen Rider shows have failed. Their leader, Ambassador Darkness (who is the brother of Ambassador Hell from the original Kamen Rider's Shocker organization) has created an army of cybernetic monsters by kidnapping and brainwashing people, one of which is our hero, Ryo Murasame. Kindapped over the Amazon by Badan, he is transformed into a cyborg and becomes one of Badan's most trusted operatives, along with fellow soldier Eisuke Mikage (who is his best friend and mentor, because if there's one thing evil organizations could stand to be better at it's mentoring)  at least until he regains his memory on a mission and escapes the clutches of Badan and begins a one-man war against the organization.

 However, Badan is close to perfecting it's ultimate weapon, the Space Break System, which can warp space and, if you turn up past "high," could theoretically destroy the world. This horrifies the scientists that built it (though I imagine if you're working for an organization led by someone named Ambassador Darkness, you kinda should expect this kinda thing) Armed with the Space Break, Badan makes its move, but who's on the scene to stop them but the Kamen Riders--all nine of them. The Riders have learned that the Space Break needs an element called Badanium (upon reflection, that probably didn't take a huge amount of detective work) to power the Space Break system and they make sure they stop every shipment Badan can put their hands on. This leads to a misunderstanding as Murasame, who calls himself ZX (pronounced "zet-cross" for reasons I don't pretend to understand) and he and the Riders fight for a bit until Kamen Rider V3 beats him down long enough to see some sense.

 After he sits Murasame down and shows him what the Kamen Riders are all about (I really kinda love that the Kamen Riders have been through this so much now that they have an orientation video) Murasame gets on board and joins the Kamen Riders in one last assault on Badan. ZX encounters Mikage, who has been upgraded into the cyborg Tigerroid. They fight to death and just as Ambassador Darkness is about to unleash the Space Break weapon, all ten Riders unite and destroy Badan's cyborg army, only for Ambassador Darkness to trap them within the Space Break. The ten Riders combine their powers and destroy the Space Break and Ambassador Darkness.

 While Earth is saved from the immediate danger, the Generalissimo of Badan appears (actually the Great Leader of Shocker), swearing revenge on the Riders for foiling Badan's plans. The Riders go their separate ways for the moment, having made a friend in ZX, declaring him the tenth Kamen Rider and their new comrade in arms. While the forces of evil may have only been stopped and not defeated, there's a new soldier in the fight for justice and the battle goes on.

 ANALYSIS
 This weekend features the release of Heisei Kamen Rider Vs. Showa Kamen Rider: Kamen Rider Taisen Featuring Super Sentai (heretofore referred to as "Kamen Rider War" because that's way too much to type) which features the return of Kamen Rider ZX and the Badan Empire nearly 30 years after this special aired, so it seemed like a timely moment to revisit the Showa era, especially at this point, because ZX is the last of the "classic" Showa era.

 Birth of the 10th, you may notice, is a hyper-compressed story with a lot of exposition and people recounting the older Kamen Riders and the older evil organisations and generally not much can be said to happen apart from "The Kamen Riders team up and fight some guys" Part of this somewhat thin gruel can be explained by the fact that Birth Of The 10th is a TV special, not a TV series, and that it was the end of a long campaign by Toei designed to drum up support for a full ZX series. That didn't happen, for a host of reasons, which I'll try to explain as we go.

 At the dawn of the 80's Kamen Rider wasn't in great shape. The last series, Super-1 had been off the air for two years and hadn't been very well-received, its timeslot was taken over by the Metal Hero series soon after, which would continue on for another 16 years before Kamen Rider Kuuga returned to the air. Looking at Birth of the 10th, you can kind of see why--it feels very much like it's lodged in the late 70's--the villains are extra campy, the effects are a lot more old-school, and it doesn't feel like it's a product of its time as much as a throwback to a slightly earlier one.

 It's not bad--the action and stuntwork are all incredible and hard-hitting in the way that Kamen Rider stunts usually succeed in doing, and it's great to see the Riders unite against evil once again (remember, this is before constant team-ups were a thing) But it feels like a throwback. We don't really get enough time for Murasame to feel like anything but a pre-fab Kamen Rider--tragic past, turned into a cyborg, fighting against his creators, etc.--which doesn't make him feel like that much of a character (to be fair, ZX's manga series, Kamen Rider SPIRITS, fleshed him out to a much greater degree, but in terms of what's on screen, this is all we have to get a sense of him.

 On the plus side, the intro song, "Dragon Road," is pretty awesome:

 

 And it's getting redone for the Kamen Rider War movie with the original singer and KR's house band. I'm looking forward to hearing the new version.

 In all, it sounds like I'm slamming Birth of the 10th, and I kinda am, but kinda not. As a intro to ZX and a complete story it's rather wanting, but as a record of "classic" Showa Kamen Rider it's a good quick way to get a taste of what that's like. When Kamen Rider returned to the air in 1987 with Kamen Rider Black, it would be substantially different and more timely, and we'll cover that when we finally cover Black soon.

 NEXT WEEK
 Gonna take a break from the reviews to come up with something I desperately need to pin to the top of this page--a master chronology of the series and all its incarnations with links to the ones I've covered for easy reference. I didn't really expect to be doing these this long, and while I'm grateful there's enough interest to keep them going, I thought maybe slotting it in some sort of chronology would help. So, in seven--the Kamen Rider Masterlist! Be here!