Category: Otaku

59.5 Hours of Kamen Rider!

May 16, 2026

2025 was “the year I got into Kamen Rider” and indeed I did! I invested heavily into DVD sets and started watching the new series as it was released. Here’s the first in a series of my thoughts, presented in the order in which the shows/films were released.

Kamen Rider Black (1987, 51 episodes, 21.5 hours)

The DVD sets I own spanned decades, and for no particular reason I began with this one from 1987. It tells the story of a Japan besieged by an evil group called Gorgom who kidnap two brothers and turn them into cyborgs. One (Kotaro) escapes and becomes ‘Kamen Rider Black’, destined to fight Gorgom to prevent them from destroying the world.

This is a fantastic series! It’s dark and violent with many horror elements and Kotaru’s struggle (as Kamen Rider) against Gorgom seems futile and almost never gives him any respite. The story is insane, with elements like the ‘Century King’, the ‘Sword Saint Bergonia’ arc and the takeover of Gorgom by the evil cyborg ‘Shadow Moon’ but it somehow works and builds toward a superb conclusion.

Many elements of this show reminded me of the classic series Monkey we loved as kids, and of course I already did a blog post about its beautiful closing theme. Black is hailed as one of the greatest Kamen Rider series of all time for good reason, and the only negative about me watching it first was my realization that I may have hit the peak at the very start!

Kamen Rider Black RX (1988, 47 episodes, 19.5 hours)

Black was a success and for the first time in the series history the network wanted a sequel. It was decided to tone down the violence and horror, and add elements to make the sequel more marketable to children. While it has the same actor playing ostensibly the same character, Kamen Rider RX is a very different series.

The cult Gorgom is gone, replaced with an extradimensional invasion from the ‘Crisis Empire’. The bizarre mutant monsters from Black are replaced with robots, and Kotaro is now living with a family and flying helicopters for work! His history fighting Gorgom is given token mention only, and he’s never referred to as a cyborg at any time. Indeed his powers now come from the sun!

While this is undeniably inferior to Black, I still greatly enjoyed RX. The fight scenes are great, and Kotaro still struggles against a vastly more resourceful foe. But he’s received many upgrades, and the lightsaber effect of his ‘Revolcane’ sword in particular is too-good for TV circa 1988.

The show struggled during its airing, and this is apparent with some tonal shifts (they introduce Shadow Moon and even 10 older Riders to lure back viewers) and even though it gets increasingly goofy (adding sidekicks like a token ‘psychic girl’) it never lost its charm for me.

RX was the last Kamen Rider produced during the Showa Era and it would be more than a decade before another TV series would be made. During that period three films were released:

Shin: Kamen Rider Prologue (1992, 1.5 hours)

This is an unusual addition to the franchise, and one of the few Kamen Rider shows where the rider himself is biological rather than cybernetic. The story is that a mysterious group (‘The Syndicate’) is creating soldiers by fusing humans with grasshoppers, and one of their creations manages to escape and thwart their plans. I’ve extrapolated a bit there, since motivations and intents are a bit lost in the script, and overall the story is a bit muddled.

This is a horror film, with not only the villian but also very much the Rider himself being grotesque. There’s a very Cronenbergian feeling to the film, with lots of violence and a shocking (for this franchise) amount of blood. It’s not (close to) great, and I’m not even sure I’d say it’s good – mostly because I don’t like the Rider design – but it was entertaining regardless.

Apparently this was intended as a sort of pilot for a series or film sequel, but was not successful enough for either. As such, it remains a strange oddity in the larger franchise.

Kamen Rider ZO (1993, 1 hour)

This second film was released a year later and the story is even more barebones than the previous. Once again we have a hero becoming a Rider after a scientist grafts grasshopper DNA into him, but his fight to protect a child from the evil ‘Neo-life form’ named Doras raises more questions than it answers.

Regardless, this is a stylish film of near-endless action scenes where ZO faces off against several monstrous threats brought to life with clever use of practical effects and stop motion. The spider creature in particular is extremely well done even today and would have been a real thrill back when the film was released. While short, this was a fun watch.

Kamen Rider J (1994, 1 hour)

The next year we saw yet another new short film, and this one is very similar to ZO from the previous year. The origin story now is that our hero is killed defending a young girl from a space entity named ‘Fog Mother’ and is promptly resurrected by ‘The Spirits Of The Earth’ into Kamen Rider J, who must save the world from ruin.

There’s lots to like here, from the extremely impressive creature suits to the fight scenes to the stop-motion cute sidekick ‘Berry’ the grasshopper! Toward the end it even gets a bit too close to Ultraman when J becomes massive to fight the gigantic Fog Mother. Another fun film.

Shin Kamen Rider (2023, 51 episodes, 2 hours)

This is the third in the series of tokusatsu films made by Hideaki Anno and given the two previous were Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman (my favourite film of all time) I had high hopes to say the least.

It’s a retelling of the original Kamen Rider premise: an evil organization named Shocker is creating mutant/cyborg hybrids to take over the world, and a lone hero – Kamen Rider – fights to stop them. There’s a lot more to it than this of course, including the usual Anno weirdness, but this is a film that asks the viewer to turn off their brain and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

And what a ride it is. This is crazy and weird and wonderful and in my opinion a successful reimagining of the franchise in a way respectful of both experienced and unfamiliar audiences. It was a success theatrically, although rumours of a sequel seem to have amounted to nothing so far. This one is free on Amazon Prime if you haven’t seen it.

Kamen Rider Zeztz (2025, 34+ episodes, 13+ hours)

This is the latest Kamen Rider series and is currently screening (for free) on YouTube weekly. The gap between current franchise entries and the Showa series I’ve already seen is immense, but – much like Ultraman – the same DNA is there and this is still recognizably Kamen Rider.

This time the hero assumes the role of a secret agent in his dreams, and can transform into a powerful hero called ‘Zeztz’ to fight various evildoers. I’m 34 episodes in and loving this show for its characters and stylish visuals and genuinely impressive storytelling. When – more than twenty episodes in – the show revealed everything that had already happened was (spoiler) one lengthy dream I was genuinely surprised! I’m looking forward to buying some Zeztz merchandise during my upcoming Japan trip 🙂

Nearly 60 hours in and I’ve only just started with this decades-old franchise. I won’t be stopping! And yes, I’m still watching Ultraman and I’ve already got a decent DVD collection of old Metal Heroes series as well 😉

New Japanese TCGs (Part 3)

October 28, 2025

It’s time to open some more packs of Japanese TCGs, all purchased during my trip either last year or this recent summer. Most of these are new expansions for old games, but some are brand new games as well.

Shadowverse Evolve is a physical card game based on the digital Shadowverse card game. This expansion – Duet of Light and Shadow – was released in April 2024 and is the 9th of now 18 expansions for the game (they seem to release about every 2 months).

The cards are attractive, which is unsurprisingly considering the games heritage. There were eight cards in the pack, three of which were foil (the three on the left side of the bottom row). The most unusual card was the knight card at lower right, which was made of thicker card stock:

I wonder if this is some sort of avatar card? Surely it doesn’t get shuffled into a deck since it would stand out.

Shadowverse released a switch version which I enjoyed a great deal, and I hope the sequel gets a translation. I’ve never played this physical version but when I was in Japan last year there was an event in Akihabara that drew enormous crowds. It seems to be a successful game in Japan.

Speaking of successful games, Duel Masters continues to be Wizards of The Coast’s most successful game in Japan, outselling Magic The Gathering. These two packs are from recently released expansions.

Duel Masters has been around for 26 years now, and actually began as a manga (which itself was based on Magic The Gathering)! This card game began in 2002 and has to date received nearly 100 expansions. Two attempts to launch the card game in English markets have fizzled, but it remains one of the most successful card games in Japan.

The first photo above shows the cards in the left pack, and the one immediately above shows the right pack. I played the English Duel Masters when it was released and I remember the game world and ‘story’ being fairly insane and this card art seems to suggest that hasn’t changed.

I buy Duel Masters boosters every time I visit Japan since they are cheap (~¥100) and because the special rarity cards are amongst the prettiest in any game. While this example I pulled from the second pack is dazzling, it’s still well below the most incredible cards I’ve pulled from boosters in the past. This seems like a fun game.

Here we have two Kamen Rider Battle Spirits expansions, one very recent and one from a year ago. I’ve opened Battle Spirits before and I knew these cards would impress.

The above are from the left booster pack. Battle Spirits cards are plasticized and feel like thin credit cards. The print quality is exceptionally good, with super detailed artwork created just for the cards. This is clearly a product aimed equally as much at collectors as players.

I’ve read that each expansion introduces at least one new mechanic which is strongly supported by the new cards, so the game evolves with every new set. This is another game with organized play in Japan that must be interesting to watch since nearly every expansion is based on a licensed property.

The high-rarity cards are very pretty. In these two packs I got one textured foil and another with a sort of spiral foil design that rotates as you tile the card. It’s a shame that a much bigger-selling game like Magic can’t implement these types of foils since it makes the cards feel very special.

We’ll end today with the first three expansions from the new Quintessential Quintuplets card game. This game debuted last year, and I believe five expansions are now available.

Each pack has five cards, and three of the cards in my first booster (volume 1) used manga art! I won’t say this looks bad, but it’s an unusual choice given that they do apparently have enough high-resolution colour art to use.

One card was foil, and the effect was a bit lazy since it was simply a background. But looking close I noticed even the manga art seemed unusually high-resolution, as if it had been redrawn.

That’s the second pack, and again the quality of the art jumps out. Games based around anime often suffer from the curse of simply using screen grabs that are not of adequate resolution to look good on a card. That’s certainly not the case here. Look closely and you’ll see the foil also has a flower effect in the background.

This game is based on a manga/anime about a man that tutors five quintuplets and eventually marries one. The catch is the story begins with the wedding, but since the girls are identical we don’t know who he chooses until the very end. It’s wholesome and very well written and was a massive hit a couple of years ago.

I’m a big fan of the story (the manga is one of my favourite completed series ever) and these cards are very attractive. I can see why this has been a success in the relatively short time it’s been out, and I’ll probably purchase one each of the expansions after these as well.

Con Haul

August 26, 2025

Here are some of the items I got at the con. I’m not including the half dozen or so volumes of manga (mostly isekai trash) or the many stationary items (postcards and stickers) since I haven’t yet decided which will be gifts and you may even see a postcard in your mailbox one day.

The above is an English ‘special edition’ of the Weekly Young Magazine, a Japanese manga weekly from Kodansha. This is a hefty (1000+ pages) volume containing the first chapters of 14 series translated into English. Readers can vote on which ones they want to see serialized, but it’s unclear whether this format (an anthology magazine) will continue or if they’ll be serialized online.

This is a beautiful book, printed in Japan and with the same feel as the Japanese anthologies. I had to join a longish line to get one (for free) at the con, and the next day I saw a big pile just sitting around for the taking at Kinokuniya in the city!

This is a vinyl figure of a kaiju that I bought from the designer. The monster itself is from an old (1980s) Korean film which I’d never heard of, but the guy who designed this figure also designed two of the kaiju in the recent Godzilla x Kong film and had a few impressive 3D prints of his work on display. His was a somewhat out-of-place booth for an anime con but I’d been looking for a vinyl kaiju figure and this one wasn’t expensive and scratched the itch.

There were hundreds of anime figures available, almost all of the prize variety. I’ve got loads of these BiCute girls, and picked up the above two at the con. Prices were extremely good – possibly due to competition? – and had I more space I probably would have bought more.

Bandai had a display and shop for Gundam kits, as well as an area where you could sit and make a beginners version for free. I charmed the dude into letting me take one! I like that it’s on a single runner, and will certainly assemble it one day.

I got the above clear file at the Japan Tourist Board exhibit. I was just throwing all the free handouts into my bag and didn’t even notice it was a clear file until I got back to the hotel. It promotes a 2022 short anime that reimagines Japanese castles as transforming robots, which was partially funded by local tourism agencies.

Loads of exhibitors were selling TCG cards, mostly Pokemon and One Piece, but one booth seemed to specialize in Weiss. I’d been considering buying a Weiss box for a while, they had them for a decent price, so I bought this Nikke one. I’ll let it age a year or few before opening.

Speaking of TCGs there were also a few being launched at the con. They all had the whiff of scam about them – companies wanting to cash in on the current TCG mania – but I wasn’t going to decline a free promo card. Maybe I can sell it for a fortune and retire one day. Or maybe not 😉

I’ve put most of ‘the cute stuff’ together. This is what I bought specifically for Kristin, and all of it came from artist alley booths. The envelope with Korean text is a blind pack of animal stickers, and the frog pin was also a blind box item. The bottom left is a capybara coaster. Had KLS been with me we would have purchased much more like this!

Even though it wasn’t a con purchase, here’s a bonus pic: dollar-bin comics purchased at Midtown Comics. I have no interest in recent superhero comics, but always find the late 80s and early 90s stuff a fun read. I wonder which of these will be best and which worst?

Robot Claw