My First Full Kamen Rider Series
If there is one major character development I've had with my life and this blog, it's the slow injection of tokusatsu. For years, I've tried to avoid getting into this story style that I knew that I would like. I would watch anime adjacent to tokusatsu for the longest time before I watched The Ultraman and all my will of trying to avoid tokusatsu just completely disappeared. The well broke and I started watching Ultraman mainly with a slow drip of Kamen Rider on top of it. I haven't attached myself in any way to super sentai yet.
I say a slow drip of Kamen Rider because Kuuga is the first full Kamen Rider franchise I've ever watched. I've seen Shin Kamen Rider, Kamen Rider Black Sun, and also Fuuto Pi, but never a full lenghted kamen rider show until now. Kuuga was an experience that I never expected to see and love. My love for tokusatsu is still heavily tipped into Ultraman's favor, but the drip for Kamen Rider has slowly increased its pace because I want more Kamen Rider in my life. At least that will mean that I will watch a series faster than I watched this one. Let's see how that turns out.
A General Story of Kuuga
The beginning of Kuuga is a lot more mystical then I expected a Kamen Rider series to be. That being the entire plot of Kuuga being uncovered at an ancient sight. This is where the entire conflict of the Gorengi being versus the normal human Linto was uncovered. As in the appearance of the special beings of Goregengi who hunt LIno started up once again. So did the appearance of the savior of the Linto, Kuuga. In this case, the Kamen Rider Kuuga who is a Gorgengi but one that is a superhero for the humans/Lintos who can't protect themselves. Or so the Gorengi would think.
In this series, the form of Yusuke Godai is the person who becomes Kuuga. This infinitesimally positive young man who goes on adventures and has learned 2000 different techniques to get people to smile. This person who always works hard and fights hard no matter the situation to get people to move forward in positive ways in all of their lives. The show is part sitcom with a developed side cast during off times and then part police procedure with a superhero as a Gorengi calls murders throughout the show with the police and Kuuga moving out to fight and stop them. Also Dr. Sawatari is the best at uncovering scripts that help Godai to gain more abilities as Kuuga and she is the best honestly. This is Kamen Rider Kuuga in a nutshell.
I Miss This Kind of TV
Kamen Rider Kuuga came out in the early 2000's and western television has slowly been removing shows like this from our main stream. I say mostly because longer crime procedural shows are still a mainstay on cable despite the relevance of cable disappearing. Most shows are shorter with longer episodes that barely give the characters any kind of breathing room to function while focusing mainly on a show's plot. Kamen Rider Kuuga is a show with 49 episodes that span throughout a year to let you feel the lives of Godai and other cast members while solving and fighting the next Gorgengi that shows up that week.
What I am saying is that Kamen Rider Kuuga is the perfect combination of comfy with having plenty of moments to develop its cast and give each one their own arc. It is really easy to just tune into an episode every week to see where the Kuuga cast is this week in the middle of the Gorengi vs Police and Kuuga fight. There is just a lot of people to like and as the show moves on, some more characters are put into the series to make the entire human side feel like some sort of family. I know that at least Tokusatsu series still do this in Japan, but that is disappearing in the United States and I feel so sad about that.
A Best Case Scenario of Someone Gaining Power
Yusuke Godai is a person that shouldn't exist and yet is being placed in the right moment of this show. That right moment being becoming the ultimate warrior to defend humanity known as Unidentified 04 or Kamen Rider Kuuga. Yusuke Godai couldn't be closer to the most stereotypical positive person to ever exist, and yet he is also the best character in the entire show. Kamen Rider Kuuga is a show that knows he is too idealistic and positive, but his actor and character make him feel like one of the many people you could know.
In the escalation of the journey throughout the show, Kamen Rider gains more and more abilities to deal with the different Gorengi that are out there killing people. Godai is a person that wants to protect the smiles of everyone he meets and stop conflicts and his Kuuga powers always comply with his wishes. Sometimes in the most dangerous ways possible like when his new golden powers can killl Gorengi faster and easier than before, but also he literally is a small bomb that can cause damage on Tokyo city streets. When Kuuga becomes the ultimate weapon to defeat evil in the end, no one worries because it's Godai and he is always under control. He's a man that always breaks the impossible just by being him.
We All Have Monsters Inside Us
First of all, the Gorengi are absolute monsters. They hide as humans who dress up as JoJo characters before plotting their next moves. There are so many of them who take on the death game of trying to kill a certain amount of humans by the end of a specific time period to do something. So that plays heavily into that the mystique of the monsters are around us when their human forms go away to reveal whoever they truly are. So it's nice that the Gorengi finally realize that the Linto are not just prey because they are fighting back until Kuuga shows up to finish the job.
Which is a good transition to humans. If there is an example of a monster inside of a person, it is Kaoru Ichijo. The guy is a literal crime fighting machine in a good sort of way because he's great. I mean he is a good guy who works too hard, but he does want to go around and shoot Gorengi when he gets the chance. He does become a lot more sociable over time to the point where he can make jokes, but his true nature is an unstoppable cop. ON the other end is Godai as Kuuga who does control the metal inside of him, but so much of his insanity is tested by what the power is doing to him and there are moments when he feels so much rage for once in his life.
A Little Positivity Changes Everything
This is where the sitcom part of the show appears for Kuuga. I say that in a positive way because there is a large extensive cast that keeps the show going in human ways outside of Godai and Kuuga fight scenes. There is a doctor named Enokida that helps Kuuga and the police to a ridiculous amount that she barely sees her son. An actor working at the restaurant Godai helps at struggles with her career. A middle school girl struggles with her dad being killed and struggles with her next move to high school. Godai's former teacher struggles with his career after he has a tough round of students. There are more of them because it's a huge cast, but this is an example.
Godai is that endless positivity that people need to continue. Once again, he is that cartoon character who is endlessly positive in a world of doubt and darkness. People die by the hundreds every day in the city and Godai has to face the toughest opponents ever. He still spends a lot of time, when he is not fighting evil, to give the character some sort of motivation or finding a new way to seek life. His thumbs up is infectious and it changes the lives of people because of just how pure and honest he is. That shining beacon that everywhere can trust. The world becomes better just because Yusuke Godai is in it.
CG, Costumes, and I love this show
I'm just going to say it now, the cg must have been good in the early 2000's. Basically because you can tell that they don't belong and at least they are placed in supernatural elements which wouldn't fit that world anyway. Otherwise, this is a pretty lavish sort of production with one guy in a Kamen Rider suit of some color (because Kuuga has different powers for different colors) and power against an enemy suit every episode until that guy is defeated. The suits look fantastic and the choreography for the fights is usually fantastic. Same with the motorcycle scenes across the city because they are so high energy and genuinely exciting to watch. Then there are scenes about two guys in the water trying not to drown while attempting to fight each other.
The cinematography is great and I love the different kinds of scenes that fight the emphasis of their situations. I love the use of the very Matrix-like filter that is used when the Gorengi meet each other and plot their latest scheme. Mainly because they don't fit Tokyo at all. The very sitcom kind of scenes are very flat and ordinary because these are people's lives and should be treated pretty normally. Then suddenly the camera kind of explodes in energy when the police and Kuuga fight against the Gorengi in whatever scheme they are currently up to. It all works with a great soundtrack that connects everything in all ideas and themes of the story there too.
I think you guys know where I'm going with this, but Kamen Rider Kuuga is great. I think usually a show with this episodic nature would be weighed down by so many things, but there is a good sense of family and escalation which gives the show so much more momentum than you would expect it to have. Kamen Rider's gain of power and then worrying about that power is an arc that only works because the show is that long and episodic. It means seeing the gradual change as Godai is consistently challenged and interacting with a great cast. Kuuga is so much fun and so heart felt that I can't help but indulge in all of it too. I left this show with something missing in my heart because I won't see this cast in this scenario again. Absolutely solid watch.
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