Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What Constutes a Kamen Rider Costume?

Now that the Kamen Rider franchise has gotten older, with so many more and more Riders appear, they start not looking so uniformed. Some series they all have one matching element at least, but some of the Movie Riders look distinctly different. So some don't even look like the main Kamen Rider, so what counts?

Kamen Rider Silvra & Kamen Rider Goldra of the Kamen Rider Den-O/Decade movie, Cho Kamen Rider Den-O & Decade NEO Generations: The Onigashima Battleship. They look more armored and more like monsters than Riders.

Rey's bottom looks like a Kamen Rider but not so much his top, the furry parts remind me of Kamen Rider Imperer (Spear).

Kamen Rider Skull of Kamen Rider W really looks like a plain Kamen Rider, but with a fedora and scarf, some people say it is a lazy design. Could a Kamen Rider just be a guy in a skin-tight suit?

Now the ones that definitely don't look like Kamen Riders are Kamen Riders o the past but went out of the mold like Kamen Rider Amazon...

Kamen Rider Stronger with the big glob on his chest.

Kamen Rider Shin had his own movie but was the Rider that stepped out of the mold that most. He didn't even have a belt, which is the main piece of wardrobe that everyone thinks of it when they think of Kamen Rider. If we didn't know him or that he was a Kamen Rider, we'd think he was just a regular monster.

3 comments:

Dizzy said...

Big eyes. That seems to be the thing. Look at Kamen Rider DeCaDe and W.

C. Bohn said...

Kamen Rider Skull's design doesn't set my world on fire, but given what they were going for I don't see any easy answers to improving it.

In general, Toei seems to put most of the effort into fine-tuning a base hero design that will permit clean, distinct variant costumes. Kamen Rider Skull most appeals to me as a repurposing of the elements of Double's costume. I love how they turned the W piping into a ribcage.

Andrew Chong said...

Kamen rider skull is the best rider design for me so far...also its a very initial concept of kamen rider from Shotaro Ishinomori is using skull concept head before using grasshopper. end up not using skull becos the show is for kids not suitable for those days.