Kamen Rider Gaim (2013-2014)

 "Pluck the fruit of Heaven. That the world will be dyed in your colours"
 KAMEN RIDER GAIM

 SYNOPSIS
 Kamen Rider Gaim is, essentially, the story of four people:

 Kazuraba Kota is a man trying to grow up and be an adult and works a multitude of jobs (with varying degrees of success) in Zawame City, a planned community in Japan. He used to be part of Team Gaim, one of the main street dance troupes in the area, but has drifted off as he tries to make his way. Team Gaim, meanwhile, struggling too--the dance troupes are less about dancing and more about the Inves Game--a Pokemon-style duel wherein the participants use Lock Seeds to summon monsters called Inves from another dimension and fight it out. The monsters drop in from a crack to an unknown dimension, and occasionally go out of control.

 One day, Yuya is given a device called a Sengoku Driver by Sid, the local Lock Seed dealer. Before Yuya can use it, he find a crack to the dimension of the Inves and wanders through. Kota follows him, having been drawn back into things by Mai, the second in command of Team Gaim. Kota finds the Sengoku Driver, an Orange Lock Seed, and a rabid monstrous Inves ready for a fight. Kota eventually works out how to activate the belt and transforms into Kamen Rider Gaim:

 

 As he fights (and soon wins) a mysterious woman who looks a bit like Mai appears, and says something cryptic about how if he starts down this path, he won't be able to turn away, wherever it takes him. Soon known as the Woman of the Beginning, she's seen how this will all end--possibly--in an alternate timeline, where a three-way battle for supremacy has/is taking place, and one of the generals opposing Gaim is . . .

 Kaito Kumon. His was a family of note, wealth and influence, until the Yggdrasil Corporation rolled into town, leaving his father destitute and him an orphan. Embittered, Kaito decided that the world was corrupt, and that the strong prey on the week, and resolved himself to seek greater and greater power, in whatever form he could grasp it. That ruthlessness led him to become the leader of Gaim's rival dance troupe, Team Baron, and when Gaim escalates the Inves Game, he soon finds a Sengoku Driver and Lock Seed of his own, and becomes Kamen Rider Baron:

 
  For Baron, this is a god-send. More power, a chance to hurt Yggdrasil and assert his dream of a world where the weak are never preyed upon by the strong. In days to come, Baron will be Gaim's rival. Occasionally their purposes will coincide, but Baron never doesn't see Gaim and his ever-increasing power as a challenge to be met, and as their rivalry escalates and Baron ignores the warnings of the Woman of the Beginning, they seem locked into their prophesied battle more than ever.

 Soon enough, the battle is joined by more Riders, one of whom is . . .

 Mitsuzane Kureshima. The younger son in a powerful family intimately connected to the Yggdrasil Corporation, Mitsuzan joined Team Gaim to find real friends and escape the pressures of being groomed for budding aristocracy. Being close friends with Kota and nursing a secret crush on Mai, Mitsuzane is determined to keep his friends safe, almost to a fault. Using his family's influence to bully Sid into giving him a Sengoku Driver and a Lock Seed, saying that he can surpass his brother if he wants to (more on that in a bit) and he becomes Kamen Rider Ryugen, which is good, because Gaim really needs some help as it seems everyone's getting a Sengoku Driver now:

 

 But he won't stay as Gaim's ally. He's soon drawn into Yggdrasil's orbit, thanks to his family connections, and shown the world that the Inves come from. What he sees is so terrifying that it starts a change in him. Ryugen becomes determined to use any lie, trick, manipulation, or deceit, to protect his friends, whether they would want him to or not. Soon enough, he's willing to kill his friend and his brother and sacrifice hundreds of lives to "keep people safe."

 His path will take him from Gaim's best friend to his sworn enemy, and even darker from there.

 And who showed him this? Who started him down the path to the dark side?

 Takatora Kureshima. Takatora is Ryugen's older brother, and chief of security for the Yggdrasil Corporation. He's also Kamen Rider Zangetsu:

 

 Zangetsu is so powerful that in his first appearance chancing upon meeting Gaim in the Inves' dimension, he beats Gaim down so completely, that for a whole episode Gaim is terrified of transforming again. He warns Gaim that "this place is full of evil. Evil beyond purpose or reason" and warns him to stay away. As the man at the head of Yggdrasil's inner circle, he knows what it's all about: The Inves Dimension is a place called the Helheim Forest. The Forest is a sentient thing, which grows unstoppably, consumes entire worlds, and turns the indigenous people into Inves, if they eat the fruit it generates without a Sengoku Driver to convert it into Lock Seeds. Helheim was once a city, part a great civilisation, but their cities are abandoned (apart from Inves) and their people thought lost.

 And now, Helheim is getting a foothold on Earth. Yggdrasil is slowing it down by burning and destroying it as best they can, trying to keep the situation quiet.

 And it can't be stopped, only slowed down. Earth has approximately ten years to survive before Helheim infests the entire planet and decimates the human race. The Sengoku Drivers are a means to allow some of the human race to survive in this new horrible world. But they can only make a billion of them in time, which means six billion people will die--becoming or being slaughtered by the Inves. What's more, Zangetsu knows the worldwide panic the knowledge of the human race's imminent decimation would have.

 All of this sits on Zangetsu's shoulders. He tells Ryugen it's the burden the aristocracy must bear--nobelesse oblige--and though he hates what he must do, he does it, because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

 But what he doesn't know is the situation's even worse than that. Because the rest of Yggdrasil's inner circle doesn't share his dedication to saving mankind. Because apparently when Helheim finishes consuming a world, it spawns the Golden Fruit, which, if one eats it, grants that person godlike power. And to them, letting Earth die to become a god is surely a fair trade.

 And things get worse from here . . .Because Helheim isn't as deserted as people think.
 
 ANALYSIS
 Last year, when I started these with Kamen Rider Kuuga, it seemed like the best place to begin--for all Kuuga's warts, it set the tone for the Heisei series that followed, and marked a definite turn from the tropes and traditions that marked the Showa series.

 How appropriate, then, that Kamen Rider Gaim is as transformative a series as Kuuga was--while it thoroughly name-checks tropes and elements of EVERY Heisei series up to this point, whether explicitly or by allusion, it also draws a line under the way Kamen Rider series had been going up to this time. Gone was the monster-of-the-fortnight format, the somewhat ossified primary and secondary Rider dynamics, clearly-drawn hero/villain dynamics, and the notion that anyone in the cast--lead or supporting--was safe.

 Gaim smashes every one of those rules. Episodes flow from one to the other with no set format (Inves can last for one episode or three, or whatever), Riders ally and fight with each other constantly and alliances shift at a moment's notice, by the end of the series even the heroes have done things they bitterly regret or are outright horrible, and anyone--anyone--can die.

 And the plot escalates constantly? Thought the show was going to be a lone Rider vs. the Inves? Nope, it's Rider vs. Rider. Now it's Riders vs. Yggdrasil, etc. At no time is there a safe moment as such before you're on to the next thing (this is not a show that really believes in filler--with one exception) Even when the show does crossovers or promos--there's a crossover with ToQger setting up Kamen Rider War but still folds into Gaim's subplots and keep them going, a later episode sets up the summer movie and seems to be a bunch of nonsense about grasshopper monster possessing people and everyone playing soccer actually sets up the series finale.

 That one exception? A diversion from the main plot (in the midst of one of the biggest cliffhangers in the series) to promo the then-forthcoming Kikaider movie, which wasn't a bad episode, but dropped in entirely at the wrong moment, and having no long-term ramifications at all. And the sodding movie bombed anyway.

 The reason it's such a radical departure is that Toei went outside for the series writer this time--Gen Urobuchi (who wrote, among other things, Fate/Zero and the much-regarded Puella Madoka Magica) longtime Kamen Rider fan and the hot ticket at the moment. Urobuchi must have an encyclopedic knowledge of Kamen Rider, given the density of reference and the way he hits so many different themes and how much care he takes with the cast (not since Kuuga will you get as attached to a cast like this--despite having the largest group of Riders in a Kamen Rider series to date, no one really gets lost in the shuffle, and everyone has clear motivations and is easy to identify with.

 Mind you, Urobuchi brings plenty of his obsessions to the proceedings--Themes of destiny, change, friendship, betrayal, an unknowable horror unknowingly at the door that must be stopped, the damage falling to despair does to people, the burdens people carry, etc. are all on display, dispersed thought all run through this series, but mixed with the Kamen Rider tropes, it manages to freshen both and makes for some pretty compelling viewing.

 Folks, watch this show. I cannot say enough good things about you. For lifers like me, you'll get a pair of fresh eyes looking at Kamen Rider and the road we've taken to get where we are now, a bunch of twists that confound your expectations, and an ending you won't see coming. For new viewers, you get one of the most amazing and complete (no dead spots in this one) I've been working on this for two hours and I could go on and on (I never even touched on the music--the opening theme is amazing in how it gets you pumped for the show and pretty much spells out the course of the series in words an images) but if I did, you wouldn't have to watch it.

 The funny thing is--when it was announced and everyone saw the fruit-themed Riders, everyone was sure it'd be rubbish. I like to think a lotta folks were very happy to be wrong.

 Highest possible recommendation--this show stands with the original, Black, and Kuuga as being Kamen Rider at its very best.

 NEXT TIME
 Well, a year ago, we didn't think a fruit-themed Kamen Rider would work. And now, 25 years after the first time they tried it, we're gonna have a Kamen Rider who doesn't ride a motorcycle. How will it go?

 This starts tomorrow for me, and we'll write it up sometime, hopefully. Coming soon--Kamen Rider Drive!