Post by Yuri Petrovitch on May 24, 2014 17:06:40 GMT -5
KAMEN RIDER AMAZON
SYNOPSIS
Abandoned in the Amazon after a plane crash that killed his parents, Daisuke Yamamoto grows up in the jungle, living as a feral savage called "Amazon", his only contact an ancient Incan tribe hidden away in the jungle. Ultimately this tribe is annihilated by Gorgos, head of the Gedon (short for "armageddon") organisation which seecks the Gigi bracelet, the counterpart for Gorgos' Gaga bracelet. Unting the two will give the wielder godlike power and allow Gedon the power to conquer the world.
The Gigi bracelet is hidden in Amazon's village, and to prevent Gorgos getting it, is implanted in Amazon. On the down side, losing it will kill Amazon. On the plus side, it greatly enhances his stretch, allows him to survive injuries that would kill an ordinary man, and allows him to transform into the jungle-lizard like Kamen Rider Amazon. Amazon manages to elude the forces of Gedon and escape the jungle swimming to Japan (somehow, I guess? It's not really on the way) in search of a man called Professor Kusaka, who knows of the history of the Gigi Bracelet.
It's good in that it gives Amazon an ally, but given that Amazon can't really speak the language and is half-naked and pretty much all feral, making friends is somewhat difficult, especially as in his early days, Gedon's monsters have a tendency to disappear and leave Amazon holding the bag when the authorities show up, and since Amazon can't really explain himself, it turns into a weird thing.
However, thanks to Kusaka's nephew, Amazon forms a bond of friendship with him and begins to acclimate and starts learning to speak more proper Japanese and wear clothes and with the help of longtime rider ally Tobei Tachbiana, Amazon soon evolves into a proper hero, and even saves the life of one of Gedon's beastmen, Mole, who becomes his staunch ally. Now fully on the side of good, he soon battles Gedon to a standstill and kills Gorgos.
But no sooner is the threat of Gedon dealt with than a new one arises, led by Emperor Zero: The Garanda Empire. Far more cruel and brutal than Gedon was (and yes, apparently that's possible) Garanda ultimately terrorizes the the city and kills Mole, leading to a brutal final battle between Amazon and Emperor Zero to stop them from unleashing their ultimate weapon: The Helium Bomb.
ANALYSIS
Until Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue came along, Amazon was kind of the black sheep of the Kamen Rider franchise, and it's not hard to see why: It's a really insane series. The spine of the plot if pretty much the classic Kamen Rider formula: Evil organisation with an army of animal/human hybrids, isolated hero, motorcycle, but all the knobs are turned up and the levels are all over the place. Amazon's power isn't technological, it's magic (it's sort of explained that the Gigi Bracelet is ancient Incan super-science, which feels a bit dodgy as explanations go) he's not a man of the world, he's a naive wild child from the jungle, and instead of kicking his enemies until they explode, he usually messes them up, either by slashing them with his claws and causing them monsters to bleed some technicolour arterial spray, chewing them up with his fangs, or just ripping them apart.
Hence Amazon's infamy. It's literally one of the bloodiest Kamen Rider shows ever. Amazon bleeds at the drop of a hat, the monsters bleed buckets of various colous, Gorgos bleeds and his blood catches on fire--just blood, blood, blood. I think the intention here was to do a darker, more visceral Kamen Rider series, and they sort of succeeded there--Amazon is way more brutal a combatant than the Riders before him, even if he himself is a rather good-natured sort. But it makes for a strange sort of contrast in that there's this fish out of water type fella who goes around murdering the hell out of monsters.
And yet . . .it's actually not that bad. I really enjoyed watching it for the first time (at 24 episodes, it was really easy to watch it all over a couple days) and I really appreciated the attempt to shake up the now-commonplace elements of the series in such a way that it feels like this interesting offshoot of Kamen Rider. I wouldn't like every series to be like this, but this was an interesting eddy to explore in the Showa era.
This being an early Showa series, the fights are excellent, and the bloodier tone of them puts them even closer to the fight choreography of Sonny Chiba (and well it should, as Chiba founded the Japan Action Club, which is where the stunt actors for Kamen Rider and its sequels came from) and that very impact-heavy,crunchy feel, is a good fit, especially coupled with Amazon's fighting style, which is a lot more close-in and grapple-heavy than Riders tend to be.
Story-wise, it's all a little rote, I'm afraid, apart from the early flourishes like Amazon being hunted by the police because they don't know he's on their side and he can't explain than the monster was like, just right there. The arc with Mole being a reformed bad guy who eventually becomes a recurring part of the cast is actually very well done, but it's not really foregrounded all that much. With the advent of the Garanda Empire's arc, things actually lighten up a bit, and most of the early dark tone and bloodiness is left behind and things become a bit more standard (until the final episode, in any event), which is a bit of a shame.
After Amazon (which has the shortest run of any of the TV series and was routinely decried for its dark tone and gruesome violence) came something of a course-correction for the franchise--the follow-up series, Kamen Rider Stronger, puts everything back in the classic Kamen Rider mold with all deliberate speed--and also, because it was so unpopular, inadvertently led Kamen Rider's creator, Shotaro Ishinomori to have the opportunity to create a show called Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, which took over Amazon's time slot the week after, and it must be said, .ended up doing pretty well . . .
Anyways, Kamen Rider Amazon probably shouldn't be your first Showa series you check out--to fully appreciate how bonkers and weird it is, you really have to have seen the stuff that establishes the pattern first--but as a later weekend watch, it's actually pretty god and I was surprised by after hearing for so many years how terrible it was and how it nearly killed off Kamen Rider, I really enjoyed it more than I expected. It gets a qualified recommendation from me--I think you'll probably enjoy it.
NEXT WEEK
The armies of Shocker march across the globe, kidnapping human beings and remaking them into cyborg soldiers in their bid to conquer the world. One of these victims is Takeshi Hongo, who rebels against the organization and becomes their greatest foe. In seven, we got all the way back to the beginning to the one that started it all, Kamen Rider