Kamen Rider

The Tragic Machinery of Justice

It is easy to look back at 1971’s *Kamen Rider* through the lens of irony. The rubber suits are stiff, the combat sound effects are delightfully exaggerated, and the "monsters of the week" range from the genuinely unsettling to the absurdly baroque. Yet, to dismiss this series as mere camp is to ignore the profound existential wound at its center. Created by the legendary mangaka Shotaro Ishinomori, *Kamen Rider* was never just about a bug-eyed superhero karate-chopping fascists; it was a meditation on the horror of lost humanity and the terrifying realization that the technology meant to enslave us is the only thing that can save us.



The visual language of the series, particularly in its earliest episodes, is surprisingly noir-adjacent. Before the franchise exploded into the colorful, toy-selling juggernaut we know today, the 1971 pilot offered a darker, grittier palette. The direction often favors Dutch angles and shadow, emphasizing the grotesque nature of the antagonists, the Shocker organization. Shocker is not merely a group of villains; they are a creeping industrial nightmare, a remnant of wartime experimentation that seeks to perfect humanity by stripping it of its soul.

The central performance by Hiroshi Fujioka as Takeshi Hongo anchors this high-concept fantasy in palpable human grief. Hongo is not a volunteer; he is a victim. Kidnapped and surgically altered against his will, he is a "Remodeled Human"—a cyborg who has retained his conscience but lost his body. The show’s most potent visual motif isn't the explosion behind the hero, but the loneliness of the man on the machine. When Hongo rides his Cyclone motorcycle, the wind doesn't just mess up his hair; it powers the turbine in his belt that keeps him alive and allows him to transform. He is perpetually tethered to the very mechanism of his trauma.



This internal conflict elevates the action sequences from simple spectacle to narrative necessity. Every time Hongo transforms, he is essentially weaponizing the body Shocker gave him. The famous "Henshin" (transformation) is not just a power-up; it is a reclamation of self. The suit—a blend of organic grasshopper imagery and cold industrial leather—serves as both armor and prison. In the fight choreography, we see a rawness that modern CGI often scrubs away. The stunts, performed by Fujioka himself (until a notorious leg-breaking accident), possess a dangerous, tactile weight. You feel the gravel, the impact, and the sheer exertion of a man fighting a war he never asked for.



Ultimately, *Kamen Rider* stands as a pivotal text in Japanese pop culture not because of its merchandise, but because of its melancholy. It introduced the "Henshin Boom" that would define Tokusatsu for decades, but few successors have managed to capture the specific sadness of Takeshi Hongo. He is the original "Masked Rider," a hero who hides his face not to protect a secret identity, but perhaps because the face beneath is no longer entirely his own. In a modern era obsessed with glossy, invincible superheroes, the rusty, tragic machinery of 1971 reminds us that the cost of justice is often the hero’s own peace.