Kamen Rider X (1974)

 KAMEN RIDER X

 SYNOPSIS
 Keitaro Jin has invented a process to turn human beings into super-powered cyborgs built to withstand the pressures of the ocean depths. This has made him a target of the sinister organization known as the Government of darkness, or GOD for short. They want to take Keitaro's process and use it to enhance their present cyborg soldiers into an unbeatable army of super-agents. Their agent within Keitaro's lab betrays him and causes his son, Keisuke Jin, to be murdered along side him.

 With the last of his life, Keitaro rebuilds Keisuki into the Kaizorg, a super-strong, super-durable, cyborg. When Keisuke activated the Perfecter unit, he can transform into Kamen Rider X, a lone soldier in the war against GOD. Soon, Keisuke befriends the mentor of the Kamen Riders, Tobei Tachibana, and soon forges an alliance with Kamen Rider V3 and Kamen Rider 2. Determined to destroy GOD at all costs, Kamen Rider X begins his crusade, ultimately challenging GOD's leaders Dr. Curse and the mammoth King Dark.

 ANALYSIS
 A general note about the Showa series--these reviews will be a bit lighter on specifics than usual. Partly because Showa Rider shows don't tend to have very complicated plots, and partly because my access to full runs of the show are very limited (of the 35 episodes of Kamen Rider X, only 6 were available for me to see, and the spine of the show is still properly building until about episode 8.) things will be a bit more threadbare in terms of discussing the actual meat of the episodes.

 In terms of this show specifically: Yes, this is the show with Starfish Hitler. Kamen Rider is a strange show and Japan is a very puzzling country at times, what can I say? And Starfish Hitler isn't the only example of that--the whole show begins on this bizarre note where Keitaro and Keisuke seem to hate each other hand have their weird dysfunctional relationship based on punching and denigrating one another, until Keitaro recreated Keisuke into Kamen Rider X. Then all of a sudden Keitaro has done all of this for love (he's also managed to build an undersea lair and translate his brain into a computer to assist X in his mission) and you think "OK, this show's gonna be like this, then."

 Then in the very next episode, the moment X asks him for some understanding about what it's like to live as a cyborg Computer Dad says "I don't want you whining to me every time you have a problem, and self-destructs, taking the base with him.

 OK then.

 GOD is a very strange organization. They seem to follow the IMF method of sending their agents self-destructing messages, but rather than just being consumed in a fireball, they usually transform into something inexplicable like a garden gnome. They also change methodology as far as their monster go--the early ones are based on Greek mythology--Hercules, the Cyclops, etc. But later on they move to combine animals with the most evil men in history--Hence, Ant Capone, Starfish Hitler, and Spider Napoleon.

 Kamen Rider X is part of an interesting stretch of Kamen Rider History. After having a surprise success with Kamen Rider, and then doing even better with the follow-up series, Kamen Rider V3, the later attempts to recreate that success ended up with mixed results. Kamen Rider X was not as profound a success--running only 35 episodes, though it is still fondly remembered--X's rival villain, Apollo Geist, returned in Kamen Rider Decade as one of the commanders of Dai Shocker and made it into the video game Kamen Rider Battride War as Decade's main villain.

 It's not really that bad a series. It has everything that the Kamen Rider series up to then had done--angst, darkness, drama, incredible fight scenes, and in the rivalry between X and Apollo Geist, a sub-arc that really drives the story along and keeps it from becoming too samey (previous Rider shows had had recurring nemesis, but rarely ones that consistently stood toe to toe with the hero) it's just that X never really clicks with the viewer in the same way that the previous two series did. The franchise will struggle with this for an extended period--X, Amazon, and Stronger both suffer from reduced episode counts and mixed receptions, and it's only with the putative reboot New Kamen Rider/Skyrider that things get substantially righted.

 But it's an interesting show to get a sense of the flavour for the times and how they'retrying to keep the general formula but still play around the edges with it. It's well worth a look  if you want to see the Showa era trying to decide "what shall we do now?"

 NEXT WEEK
 An organization called Shocker kidnaps Takeshi Hongo and turns him into a cyborg, planning to make him a soldier in their ambition to dominate the globe. But Hongo rebels and begins to battle Shocker and Kamen Rider, which forces them to create a second Kamen Rider to eliminate the first. In seven, we go back to the beginning with a twist as we look at 2005's retelling of the original Kamen Rider story, Kamen Rider: The First