By Ethan Gurr
edited by Kwame Obiri-Addai
Directed and written by legendary maker of great things Hideaki Anno and produced to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Kamen Rider, Shin Kamen Rider recently hit Amazon Prime and of course you know I had to watch it. Much like Shin Ultraman, this film is a reimagining of the original series covering several arcs. Unlike the Ultraman, however, the original Ultraman series the original Kamen rider clocks in at a massive 98 episode length which would be near impossible to fit into one movie. Anno has mentioned in passing that he has sequels planned out but would need Toei’s approval and that he's taking a well deserved break for the first time in 30 years so much like the announced Shin Ultra7 movie, for any sequel to this, it will likely be a good while before we see anything.
So what's the plot? “Hongo Takeshi awakens to discover he has been transformed into a grasshopper-hybrid cyborg. Becoming the Masked Rider, he must fight the mysterious evil organization SHOCKER to protect all of mankind.”- IMDBs summary of the movie. But to expand on that, Hongo, working with the daughter of the man that turned into a cyborg and two government agents, sets about working through the known-about evil cyborg agents of SHOCKER. Here, they are reimagined from their original nazi selves (think marvel's Hydra) and into an allegory for Happy science, the nameSHOKER even being an acronym meaning Sustainable Happiness Organization with Computational Knowledge Embedded Remodeling.
The most negative thing I can really say about this film is that Anno recreates the original 70s series style and if you didn't like that and didn't enjoy Shin Ultraman, this film probably is not for you. Speaking personally, this movie was made for me and I loved it.
Sorry this is not as much of a review as some of my others, but if I kept going it would just be the words “I LOVED THIS GO WATCH IT NOW ON AMAZON PRIME” over and over. Oh, just a heads up, it’s on Amazon Prime as “Shin Masked Rider” so when you go watch this, go search that.
