Kamen Rider

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Masked Rider

Japanese: 仮面ライダー

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 4

Chapters: 8

Status: Finished

Published: 1971

Genres: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

Theme: Super Power

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Magazine (Weekly)

Authors: Ishinomori, Shoutarou (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 6.91¹ (scored by 1,326 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #10130²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #5954

Members: 3,280

Favorites: 79

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6.91

Ranked #10130Popularity #5954Members 3,280

MangaShounen Magazine (Weekly)Ishinomori, Shoutarou (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /4

Chapters: /8

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Synopsis

The series takes place in a world plagued by Shocker, a mysterious world-wide terrorist organization formed by remaining members of the Nazis. To further its plans for world domination, Shocker recruited its agents through kidnapping, turning their victims into mutant cyborgs and, ultimately, brainwashing them. However, one victim named Takeshi Hongo escaped just before the final brainwashing. With his sanity and moral conscience intact, Hongo battled Shocker's minions as the grasshopper-themed altered human superhero Kamen Rider.

(Source: Wikipedia)

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Background

Kamen Rider was published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment as a 4-in-1 omnibus volume on January 4, 2022.

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Related Manga

Sequel:	Kamen Rider Eve
Side story:	Kamen Rider Spirits
Spin-off:	Kamen Rider Kuuga
Alternative version:	Kamen Rider Black
Other:	Shin no Yasuragi wa Kono Yo ni Naku: Shin Kamen Rider - Shocker Side

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Characters

Hongo, Takeshi

Main

Hayato, Ichimonji

Main

Kumo-otoko

Supporting

Koumori-otoko

Supporting

Reviews

Feb 11, 2015

CptSpace

Recommended

So...the 1971 Kamen Rider manga.

Well, it's even darker than the way the TV show began, for one thing, and even if Ichimonji's introduction does, as in the show, bring some moments of levity, the darker parts are still just as dark. The art, being pretty old, is dated in quite a few panels, with proportions and such, but when Ishinomori wants to draw something detailed for an emphasis or large panel, he does it well. Kind of like a proto-Kurumada (Kurumada is the mangaka of, among other things, Saint Seiya and Ring ni Kakero) in that respect, I guess.

The story (which is entirely separate from ...

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Jul 20, 2023

DrGlitch

Recommended

Spoiler

Kamen Rider has a cult following, and its author Shotaro Ishinomori has done a lot for Tokusatsu, making his authorial fixations (armored heroes, futuristic technology, monsters, SF and cyborgs) quickly become genre codes, but even the biggest fans of the license mistakenly forget that this manga was the Rider's first foray into Japanese fiction, and that's a shame, because well, it's a great manga!

The Kamen Rider manga lays the foundations for the character: a man turned cyborg with the grasshopper as his motif, facing off against an evil organization (Shocker) and its cyborgs with links to animals, having to protect a character who is often ... female and linked to his creator, and questioning his humanity, which is now more that of a super-powered monster (reinforced by stylized scars on his body) than that of a fragile human.

The manga unfolds in two parts, the first in the first volume being pure Kamen Rider, with the introduction of the metamorphosed character (Takeshi Hongo) and his questioning of what little humanity he has left, since he's now a cyborg who can kill very (too) easily, various confrontations with Shocker's henchmen with their varied animal abilities (spider, cobra, bat, etc.), all tinged with iconic special attacks and topical themes in '71, such as ecology and the purity of the air caused by factories. It should be noted, and this applies to the entire manga, that while most Kamen Rider series are accessible from a very young age, with fights that are certainly choreographed and dynamic but light on violence, this manga is very bloody, with the Rider not hesitating to dismember his opponents or impale them, Despite this butchery, the character and even the author like to remind us that his monsters were basically human and therefore victims of modification, notably in the arc on the Cobra Man and his wife Medusa, an arc that begins to show that Shocker's monsters still have some humanity in them, the chapter ending tragically, Medusa accidentally kills her man in the hysteria of battle and can't live with his blood on her hands, preferring to end her life and join her man, followed by a scene in which the Rider gazes with great sadness at the corpses of his opponents, whose humanity has returned in the last moments of their lives, giving the work the advantage of not being Manichean.
The second part of the second volume is innovative: during the 13 Riders arc, in which the Rider confronts 12 of his clones, Takeshi Hongo is seriously injured during the confrontation and is temporarily replaced by one of the clones freed from Shocker's grip during the battle (Hayato Ichimonji), who takes on the role of Kamen Rider to continue the work of Shocker's traitor, A new, less tragic and brighter protagonist, as well as more investigation-oriented chapters tinged with Japanese mythology, Ishinomori also introduces in this second part that toys exist in the work's diegesis, as he begins his final arc (Masked World) with children wearing Kamen Rider and Spider-Man masks, far removed from the horror of murderous confrontation or the loss of one's humanity, and closer to the childlike innocence of seeing a classy good guy against a disgusting bad guy, It's also in this second part that we learn more about Shocker, and the manga doesn't hesitate to bring its reader back to reality: the manga's big bad reveals to the Rider that his plan to control the masses was in fact an idea of the Japanese government, and that Shocker has only taken this plan and made it better, showing the Rider that he's facing a dangerous enemy, but one that has distanced him from the real enemy since the beginning of the manga, if today this kind of "the enemy is the government that manipulates us" message has been overused and misused in a lot of fiction (and incidentally made laughable by boomers on facebook with 240p meme's) in 1971, in Japan, in a superhero manga that at the time of its end of publication was a TV series, the program that all children talk about, well, you had to dare, and he ends his manga with a cold pessimism and the final sentence

"We human have used science, "the weapon of civilisation", to fight the wrong ennemy"

Graphically, Shotaro Ishinomori makes no secret of the fact that he was influenced by Osamu Tezuka, whose assistant and close friend he was, and the manga has this pudgy chara design, with prickly silky hair and highly expressive characters that are more like the cartoon Tezuka is so fond of, and that screams 60s-70s when you see it. This is an era of the manga that I love artistically, but where Ishinomori is impressive is in the action scenes, His cutting is perfectly legible, using gigantic squares that we always (and wrongly) associate with Toriyama, and he doesn't hesitate to show moments of a fight like a fall from the sky in 4-5 pages to make us feel the intensity of the fall, He takes great care with computers, mechanisms, motorcycles, etc. It's clear that the author has mastered this field, and takes pleasure in creating "mecha-porn" during his motorcycle scenes, or during the final arc in a supercomputer.

Kamen Rider is an excellent manga classic whose influence and impact on Japanese culture is unquestionable

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Aug 11, 2022

Sereju

Not Recommended

Spoiler

[SPOILERS]

For reference: I am reading the 50th Anniversary Edition. YMMV.

Good Lord what a mess. Where do I even start with this?

The art is good... when it is anything but the human body. And don't get me wrong I am not talking about the overly cartoony nature of some of the characters (although that was also very distracting at times). I mean that Ishinomori cannot draw the human form in a believable way. Looking at the panel on page 19: Kamen Rider's chest is comically large. He looks like Bob with bitch tits from Fight Club. If Kamen Rider wasn't wearing his outfit this wouldn't even ... border on parody. It'd be a fucking full scale invasion parody.

However, credit where it is due: the drawings of architecture in this book is amazing. The background of the double page spread on pages 108 & 109 is a stunning example of what I mean. Every drawing of buildings in this book is either that good or better too. In fact one of the things I liked the most was the backgrounds. There are a lot of drawings of secret laboratories that are really fun to look around and imagine what all the buttons and screens are for. And Ishinomori's action staging is really something. There is never a doubt about what the characters are doing or how they are moving and it makes every fight flow naturally. Which is good because they are the meat of the series.

The story on the other hand... Well let's start with what I liked about it: I liked that Kamen Rider dies. It was genuinely the most surprising thing about the entire story. Like; who in their right mind would just kill off their main character and replace them with the villain that was introduced in that same chapter. That might seem like it happens fast but the whole story is at such a breakneck speed that it actually seems to play out... well "naturally" isn't he right word but it just works. His brain washing being undone by being shot in the head might be a bridge too far for some people's suspension of disbelief (there is a suspension bridge joke in here somewhere). But how the old Kamen Rider becomes a brain in a jar that basically serves as Alfred at the Bat-Computer for the next arc or 2 is so smart and cool. It made the consequences feel legitimate. The stakes just feel so much higher when you kill off the protagonist. I know that this only happened because the actor playing Kamen Rider in the show tie-in was injured and they needed to replace him, and the story in the manga needed to reflect that. But I thought it was a stroke of genius, accident or otherwise.

With that out of the way lets shit all over this: Ishinomori is clearly making this up as he goes and he does not have a good memory. Early on it is established Kamen Rider can recover from injury very quickly (page 45) but it never comes up again. In fact at one point he gets shot and seems to not recover at all for the rest of the scene. What is the point of setting up a power if you are never going to make use of it? I don't think Ishinomori was setting anything up at all. He just thought "oh yeah he should be able to do this.". If you are like me and enjoy fictional worlds with consistent rules; I think you will find a lot of this book very groan inducing.

Ishinomori breaks the rules of his own world all the time. He has absolutely no patience for the building of a his own narrative. And he introduces and discards characters so abruptly that it honestly made me feel like their were pages missing from my book (there were not I assure you). He draws a good book and no one can say that it is boring to read. But not only would I not revisit this; I also would not recommend it to anyone with the intention of reading an engaging story. Nor will I seeking anything else from the Kamen Rider franchise.

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