Post by Yuri Petrovitch on Aug 16, 2014 11:28:05 GMT -5
"The heavens cry out! the Earth cries out! the people cry out! They cry out for me to destroy evil! Listen up--I am the warrior of justice: Kamen Rider Stronger!"
KAMEN RIDER STRONGER
SYNOPSIS
Black Satan is another organisation determined to conquer the world. Whether by subverting people's control with their Satan Bugs (which allow them to control people's minds) or their cyborg operatives, the Kikaijin. When Black Satan kills Goro Numata, his protoge, football player Jo Shigeru, joins Black Satan, offering himself up as a test subject to be turned into a cyborg, which Black Satan, assuming Shigeru will be a loyal operative.
But Shigeru knows they Black Satan were behind Numata's death, and, thus empowered, escapes before they can brainwash him, vowing to destroy Black Satan as the warrior of justice, Kamen Rider Stronger. Able to generate incredible amounts of electricity (as a side effect of the process, Jo cannot touch anyone in his human form--the massive amounts of electric current would kill the other person instantly) On the way out, he frees another cyborg, Yuriko Misaki, who joins his battle as the Electro-Wave Human, Tackle--the two of them (and longtime rider ally Tobei Tachibana) fighting against Black Satan.
They is helped slightly by the fact that the field commanders of Black Satan, the cyclopean Mr. Titan, and later the card-wielding General Shadow are at odds, both determined to kill Stronger and earn the favour of the Great Leader occasionally interfere with each other and subvert the other's plans. As Stronger and Tackle do more damage to Black Satan, General Shadow finally makes his move, breaking from Black Satan and forming the Delza Army.
Stronger and Tackle finally defeat Black Satan in episode 26, but the Delza Army is even more formidable than Black Satan was. Their cyborgs are totally resistant to Stronger's electricity, and far more ruthless. General Shadow encourages the generals of the Delza Army to battle each other, figuring that will only make them try them work harder to destroy Stronger and Tackle, and conquer the world.
As the war intensifies and heads toward the final battle, there are casualties. Tackle is fatally poisoned by one of the Delza Army, saving Stronger at the cost of her own life. This inspires Stronger to further enhance himself, allowing him to initiate his Charge Up mode (the first Rider form change, though given its limited duration, it's as much a final attack as it is a form change) Charge Up increases Stronger's power one hundredfold, but if he doesn't discharge the excess energy within one minute, Stronger will explode.
Thus enhanced, Stronger carries on alone, until the final battle when he's joined by the previous Riders--1,2, V3, X, and Amazon. Together they make a final stand against General Shadow, and the mind behind the Delza Army, which is literally a giant brain and, it soon reveals, was behind every organisation previously seen in the Kamen Rider shows, all the way back to Shocker. The Riders combine their power and finally defeat him, narrowly escaping his final suicidal attack.
Evil has finally be vanquished and the Kamen Riders stand triumphant.
For a bit, anyways . . .
ANALYSIS
After Amazon steered a bit too far in a dark direction with copious amounts of blood and gore, Stronger was an attempt to course-correct, as you can probably tell from how brightly-coloured it all is. With it's counterpart from Super Sentai (the first Super Sentai, Goranger, was airing concurrently with Kamen Rider Stronger, though not on the same channel--that came later) as an obvious influence (Stronger's look owes a lot more to the Goranger's outfits than the design earmarks of Kamen Riders of the past) a shoestring budget (for all its virtues, you can really see the pennies pinches) a shorter episode order and Amazon's shadow over it, how would Stronger right the ship?
By being ridiculously over-the-top. Witness this clip, from one of Stronger and Mr. Titan's battles, which is shot in the style of a spaghetti Western, for no other reason that it's pretty damn cool:
Everything about Stronger sails over the top, from his boisterous pronouncement of being "the warrior of justice" to his transformation, to the fact that even in his civilian identity, we tends to walk around in shirts with a big "S" on them, just in case Black Satan had trouble finding him, I suppose? He's pretty much straight-ahead, unsubtle, and as full of BURNING JUSTICE as was allowed in 1975.
On the face of it, this would be enough to quickly shuffle on past it, really--write it off as the last gasp of the first generation of Kamen Rider finally starved of budget and ambition, and move on four years to Skyrider when they were willing to spend a little money to revive it properly.
But under all the bombast, Stronger actually has a lot to recommend it. For one thing, there's the character of Tackle and her relationship with Stronger. This is the first Rider partnership since V3 and Riderman, but where V3 and Riderman were enemies, then rivals, then uneasy allies, Stronger and Tackle are more the classic hero and sidekick. Moreover, there's a romantic element overlaid on all this--Tackle has romantic feelings for Stronger, but in the best tradition of shows like this, she never says anything about it before she dies.
Tackle is one of the most complicated characters in the history of the franchise to unpack, because while she should be a major step forward (the first female Kamen Rider!) there are a lot of circumstantial things that make her a very problematic character. It's a long-standing policy of Toei's that Tackle is explicitly NOT considered a Kamen Rider, and well, let's talk about this right now.
The actress who played Tackle, Kyoko Okada, suffered severe asthma all her life (it would, in fact, claim her life a few years after Stronger) As she was both the suit actor and out of suit actor for her character, that meant her actual physical activity was severely limited, which is why her most common attack--an over-the-shoulder throw--was conceived. That's fine, except in any show except Kamen Rider, which lives and dies based on its frenetic action.
Instead, Tackle is generally captured by the bad guys and tied up, leading to Stronger having to save her. While in terms of character she's actually way more serious-minded and heroic than Stronger is at times, this really comes off as rather sexist, and the whole character is problematic, especially when compared to her Super Sentai counterpart from Goranger, Momoranger, who is a mistress of disguise, a super-spy, and explosives expert who can rumble with the rest on equal footing.
The notion of her not being a Kamen Rider is poetic and rather poignant as explained in the series: To Stronger, the life of a Kamen Rider is one of endless battle and constant self-sacrifice and standing apart from humanity even as you fight with all your strength to protect them. By not declaring her a Kamen Rider, Stronger could be said to be allowing her to rest as a normal human rather than a warrior in an endless battle (and Tackle is very rarely brought back in revivals and reunions, which, coupled with the death of the original actress so young, adds even more poignancy to the whole business) Unfortunately, taken out of context and looked at in light of the whole series.
Thankfully, the idea of a female Kamen Rider is carried forward into the Heisei Era, initially just a throwaway bit in Agito, to a special feature of the movies, to finally a regular part of the cast in Hibiki, Wizard, and Gaim. So progress is being made, even from such a rocky start.
One of the other elements that separates Stronger from the rest of the Kamen Rider series is the character of General Shadow. Cosntantly operating according to his own wishes and his own code (often he will release hostages instead of killing them, or abandon a mission objective just to pursue his rivalries with Stronger and Mr. Titan) until finally breaking from Black Satan, he remains an enigmatic figure (and is pretty well a constant presence when reunions and revivals happen--he even made an appearance in Kamen Rider Taisen) and one of the more enduring characters of the entire franchise.
It's obvious as Stronger winds towards its conclusion that it was meant to be a grand finale for the Kamen Rider franchise--hence the appearance of the previous Riders and the revelation that the Great Leader of the Delza Army was actually behind everything. That wouldn't be the case, of course--Kamen Rider would return, again and again. For some reason, people never seem to get tired of a bug-man on a motorcycle doing karate on monsters and kicking them so hard they explode. 40 years beyond Stronger's ending, and closing in on 50 years total, Kamen Riders will never die--they'll always be back.
COMING SOON
We're all caught up!
This is the final regular Kamen Rider review here at the TI, but I'll be back in October with a review of Kamen Rider Gaim, and possibly earlier than that if Heisei Kamen Rider vs. Showa Kamen Rider (Featuring Super Sentai) gets subtitled in time. For those of you who have followed these reviews faithfully, I sure do appreciate it and I hope I shed some light on this bizarre yet enduring thing for you and I appreciate you all cheering me on through the ups and downs of 45+ years of Kamen Rider history.
So I'll leave you with two teasers for the next time we meet:
In the planned community of Zawame City, everything is overseen by the Yggdrasil Corporation. Desperate for some way to express themselves, the youth of the city form street dance troupes, eventually holding contests to determine whose the best. With the introduction of Yggradil's newest creation the Lock Seeds, these contests soon become the Inves Game, wherein the teams summon monsters from another dimension to do their fighting for them. But what no one knows is that the dimension they're summoned from is a place called the Helheim Forest, where a terrible secret, and the seeds for the end of our world our growing. Coming soon, Kamen Rider Gaim:
As the war against Helheim continues, an old foe resurfaces--the Underground Empire Badan. The Badan, led by their own Rider, the sinister Kamen Rider Fifteen, have engineered a battle between the Heisei Riders and the Shower Riders, turning those who fall into Lock Seeds. But what's behind Badan's ambitions, and in the ultimate battle between the old school, who will stand tall? Coming soon, it's Heisei Kamen Riders vs. Showa Kamen Riders: Kamen Rider Taisen (Featuring Super Sentai)
