Friday, December 25, 2009

Kamen Rider Archetype Personalities


Thanks to RFyleCreatorAnimator to this suggestion and Thank you very much to Igadevil, check out his blog Igadevil's Kamen Rider Blog.

Like with Super Sentai Color Personalities, where certain character archetypes (girly girl, tomboy, stubborn one, bad boy, etc.) are used often in Super Sentai; RFyleCreatorAnimator was wondering if there was common use personalities in Kamen Rider. With Kamen Rider Ryuki for example, you have Shinji (the nice one), Ren (the bad boy that will come around), Shuichi (who is hard to pin point and he is not black/white but in a grey area), & Asakira (psycho). But they all change, their characteristics don't always stay the same. They turn around, either by other characters or circumstances. The two roles that never change and are used a lot is the two main Riders, a happy-go-lucky one and a serious rival who gives the first one a tough time and turns around in the end to work as a team.

Igadevil disagrees:
It's hard to pin down some of them to just being one archetype, I think every Rider is unique in some way from the last guy and from the guy after him. So categorizing them into "happy guys", "angry guys" etc. is difficult for me. I suppose the closest I would come to categorizing them is saying that some have dealt with more personal tragedy than others, but how this affects their personality varies. Hongo (Kamen Rider 1) and Ichimonji (Kamen Rider 2) both underwent similar circumstances, but deal with it in different ways. Likewise with Tsugami (Agito) and Ashihara (Gills), though the latter carries the burden of remembering what happened (sorta.) I think you could divide them into proactive and reactive types depending on the character. Hibiki and Tendou (Kabuto) are proactive, the overall mission of fighting the villains is always on their mind. Ryoutarou (Den-O) and Wataru (Kiva) are more reactive, they spring into action when things happen. Obviously there are exceptions in all cases but again it's hard to pin it down. Look at someone like Tsukasa (Decade), who can be very sarcastic and by turns very honest as well.

If there are any roles that are reused but always with their twists, here are some, even if over-simplified:
  • Happy go-lucky
  • Serious Rider
  • Proactive Mission-minded Rider
  • Lone Wolf
  • Psycho
  • One with supernatural powers
  • Just plain evil

Thank you very much to Igadevil, check out his blog Igadevil's Kamen Rider Blog.

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