He's Back In Business

About 2 years ago, I decided that I would rewatch and review 2000's Kamen Rider Kuuga in its entirety, mainly to tie in with Decade and the whole Heisei TV Series Anniversary thing. Of course, this idea got sidetracked for about... well, 2 years. But now, 2 years later, here we are again.

I needed something to review to launch the big 2011 return of igadevil.com, so what better than the show which inadvertently doomed it in the first place? (I'll tell that story another time.) So here it is, 2 years in the making...



Igadevil takes on:

Kamen Rider Kuuga Episode 1: "Revival"
Written By Arakawa Naruhisa
Directed By Ishida Hidenori



Next to the premiere of the original series, this is probably the most important episode of Kamen Rider ever made. That's not hyperbole, by the way. The openers of V3, New Kamen Rider and BLACK come pretty close, but all of them had it easy compared to the feat that this little 23-and-a-half minutes of TV had to pull off.

Certainly it can be argued that there are more important episodes to the overall mythology of the Rider series— Rider 2's debut in the original series is up there, since it not only gave us the first other Rider, but the first "Henshin!". Episodes #40 and 41 of the original series, which I'll be reviewing soon, are rightly famous as the first-ever Rider team-up (and first bout of Rider-on-Rider violence!) And there are a bunch more, many of which are, not surprisingly, in the original series.

And you could say there are better episodes, or even better first episodes. Though for my money, Kuuga's first outing is still one of the best. The rest of the series is another, very mixed story, but as far as the debut goes, it's pretty much perfect. It does everything it needs to do, and then some.



Okay, but why is it important anyway? For that you've got to look at the historical context. If you started watching Kamen Rider any time past 2000, it might seem strange to consider a world where it wasn't on TV. These days, it's a regular institution as Super Sentai has been for ages. In the mid-to-late 90's though, it's a different story.

On the one hand, it's not like the years between BLACK RX and Kuuga were a blasted wasteland where Kamen Rider was all but forgotten except for being remembered as the show with the silly little bugmen crashing bikes into each other. It really didn't go through the "wilderness years" that some franchises experience.

It was still ever-present in the public mindset, though like the Ultras basically are now, it was playing second-fiddle to the big guys on TV, only coming out with the occasional movie or video. Even if you put aside the 90's Triumvirate of Shin, ZO and J, the decade or so between Rider TV series was still plentiful on that most important of scales: merchandising!

Again, much like the Ultra franchise during its breaks, Kamen Rider kept coming out with stuff even when there was no new, regular show on TV, and remained a constant fixture in the kiddie magazines. Comics played a bigger role than ever here, and you could write pages on the significance of the SD Riders project alone (something I'll do later this year.)

1998 was a benchmark; even with the passing of Ishinomori, it was here that the gears that would become Kuuga began grinding, and the original series Playstation game, crude as it may seem now, was essential in getting people really, seriously thinking about Rider again. Heck, at one early point it practically was going to be an all-new Rider story itself! 1999 saw the revival of the Calbee Cards that were Kamen Rider's lifeblood in the beginning, adding fuel to the nostalgic fire. And then came the new millennium...



In other words, Kamen Rider never really went away, it just took a coffee break. When Kuuga debuted, everybody was primed and ready, but you still had a generation of kids who'd never known Kamen Rider beyond the printed page or dad's pricey Laser Discs.

Sure there were repeats (although by then, mostly on cable/satellite/web/whatever) but there's just something unique about seeing new, never-before-seen Kamen Rider for the first time on TV. After years off the air, could Kamen Rider come back and make it big once more? Could it win over those kids with a Rider to call their own?

What I'm getting at is, had Kuuga stumbled, we might not be watching OOO these days. There are a couple pivotal moments in the history of Kamen Rider, at least in real-world terms, and this was one of them. There was a lot riding on this one to ensure that it wasn't just going to be a one-off, but the big return to TV that Kamen Rider deserved.

So it's probably a good thing that this episode is very good. No, make that great. Prior to writing this I actually went ahead and watched the next three episodes, and I think they all hold up really well. I'll get into this more in future episodes, but I kinda prefer how Kuuga started to how it eventually turned out. There's a simplicity that comes with not knowing what the hell's going on during these early episodes that I really like. We're right there alongside the heroes.

Also, if for some reason you have not watched this over-10-year-old-show yet (which has been subtitled now IIRC) you may want to stop here since there's spoilers out the wazoo from here on.



But let's stick to just the first episode. The pre-credits scene is still one of the best ever because we never really get all the details there. Godai has the occasional flash of ancient Kuuga, but otherwise, we never do quite get the whole story. How the heck did all those Grongi survive to be revived in the present (well, 2000) day? Seeing as how Kuuga appears to use his original forms and weapons, and we all know what those tend to do. Where is that big fighting taking place anyway? There's a lot left to interpretation.

Does Kuuga only temporarily beat all the Grongi, then let himself be stuck in the sarcophagus to keep them sealed away, because that's how it's supposed to work? Was he in danger of becoming THAT THING which we'll be getting to much later in the series? And who's hand is that!? I love it.

The actual opening credits are great. I prefer the early-series version to the slightly artsier variations to come. Yeah they probably look better, but there's something special about the early music video-ish cut-and-paste look to these. I like the not-in-the-show fight sequence, which goes all the way back to the days of Rider 1 and 2. And then there's the song, which is still probably my favorite opening to come along since Kamen Rider returned to the airwaves. It's an insta-classic.

Oh, and how weird is it to see the credits continue onto the show? I had forgotten about that. I don't think it's been done since aside from special occasions, first episodes and that one of Decade with the abbreviated opening, etc. Much like how the show tells us locations and times (so weird!) it's Kuuga doing things just a little differently than everybody else.

I might as well address the elephant in the room that is Odagiri Jô. By this point, just about every bit of rumor, speculation, fan theory, out-of-context quote and fact (or not) about Odagiri's opinion of Kuuga/Kamen Rider/Tokusatsu in general has been discussed a hundred times over on a hundred internet forums (well okay, maybe like a dozen and most of them Japanese. But still.) At this point, I really have nothing to add, mainly because I really just don't know!

All I can say is that I do have the Terebikun Kuuga book where he mentions hesitation before auditioning, because he didn't think he had the same kind of physical prowess as guys like Fujioka, but after hearing from the staff about the kind of character Godai would be, he was convinced and signed on. And I gotta say, the staff must have told him a pretty good story, because in episode 1, Godai gets his ass kicked! You can almost see Odagiri thinking "What have I done?" as Zu Gumun Ba slams him into that fence.



But we really have to just put all that aside and focus on Odagiri as he was in the series. And there, he's good, oftentimes great. I'm inclined to give the writing as much credit for making Godai work so well. Some actors can work wonders even when the script fails them; others are more tied into the material. If it's good, they soar. If it isn't, they can only really go through the motions.

I think Odagiri falls more into the latter group, because of some later episodes where he's lost as the story around him obsesses on poorly-acted bullying and family draaaaaaaaaama rather than fighting bad guys and making people smile. Luckily, Kuuga's generally written well enough that he still looks interested in what's going on around him. He makes you believe in Godai, to put it one way.

I'll say this: Godai has one of the best introductions of any main hero in a Rider show, ever. It perfectly encapsulates what he's about: protecting the smiles. It introduces his two big trademarks: the thumbs up, and the juggling. The latter is more representative of his quest to become a jack-of-all-trades sorta thing, but as a character trait in itself I like it.

Ideally, we instantly like and trust the guy as soon as the scene ends. It works for the series. Good-natured, likable heroes up against seriously bad bad guys. It's one of those things that basically never fails. Oh, and Godai's one of the few Riders that we actually know the birthdays to. And his blood type!

There are two other major characters introduced in this episode. Sakurako is great, of course, and crucial to our understanding of the show as things go on. I think she's the sort of character you can't really comment on much until the show's over, because her contribution on an episode-by-episode basis appears to be "sits in front of a computer, explains plot." But viewed in whole, she's really Godai's main source of moral support, and this is a show where the main character pretty much has everybody who isn't evil as his moral support eventually.

And then there's Ichijô. I @#$%ing love Ichijô. He is literally like Taki: The Next Generation. I think his series-defining moments come in the next 3 episodes, but he's already showing signs of greatness here. I don't think there's really been a character quite like him since. Hikawa's an obvious suggestion, but I think he's far more representative of what characters like Ichijô have become: the other guy sidekick... who becomes a Rider. Same deal with Kagami. Onodera is sort of like the ultimate version of this trope: he's already a Rider, and Kuuga, no less! Maaaaybe Momotaros and Ankh, but they're really different beasts altogether.

He's also one of Rider's best cops. Ozawa and Hikawa are up there of course, and everybody knows I love Scissors even if he isn't exactly a "good" cop. After Faiz though, things just seemed to go downhill (especially *in* Faiz, where the police were either faceless antagonists or barely able to tie their own shoes.) And don't get me started on Double's. I grew to like the backscratcher guy kinda, but his sidekick was godawful. Terui's cool, but he's so outside-the-box it's amazing he didn't get suspended. And once again, I'd have trouble considering Ankh to be a cop, even if he happens to wear one now and then.

But back to Ichijô. He immediately forms a great comedic relationship with Godai. I hate to keep harping on this, but once again this is where I kinda like early-Kuuga over what's to come: once Godai and Ichijô get all buddy-buddy, things cool down a bit. It's in keeping with the theme of the series (where there are very few truly "bad" humans and people generally get along, unlike most of what would follow Kuuga.) But I do miss that prickly relationship they have early on, with Ichijô downright thinking our hero is out of his gourd half the time. Their initial meeting is one of the best bits of comedy in the series.



The music rocks, with a soundtrack that ranks highly in my book. The theme played during the helicopter battle is basically the unmatched-throughout-the-series Kuuga action theme, and it makes me a sad puppy that Decade never made use of it (though I can understand why.) Though I am a little miffed that some of the tracks are missing from the BGM CDs. And unlike the stock music used in other Rider series, these are original pieces! I'm especially thinking of the heroic-sounding Kuuga theme from the very end of the episode. Unless I missed it, it's not on either soundtrack CD. What gives?

Speaking of music, I'm gonna hold off on talking about the "special edition" movie versions of episodes 1 & 2 for now, but those had a couple of sound effect and music changes to better match with the latter half of the show. Honestly, I prefer the original broadcast version, with the non-screechy Grongi music and Daguba's creepy deep voice (the movie did have the real Daguba kid from the end of the show, but it just ain't the same.)

And speaking of Daguba, let's do that now.

I love shadowy early-series afro Daguba. The pointy white anti-Kuuga guy he turns into might be more visually striking, but once again, there's something about this early version that clicks with me. Like the Great Leader before him, he's purposefully kept hidden from the audience, mostly. We know of him, but we don't really get to know him until the end. In the time between then, it's up to the viewers to imagine why he's the king badass. We're given the occasional scrap of info, but it really is one of the biggest (and best) plot threads of the series: just who is Daguba, and where is he now?

The show does a great job of building him up as a serious threat, with him single-handedly slaughtering a whole research team and resurrecting a ton of evil guys like he does it every day. In retrospect I kinda wonder why he doesn't destroy the belt when he has the chance, but I can buy that it's either 1) indestructible in that state 2) important to the bigger game or 3) Daguba doesn't feel the need to bother. Or 4) it would end the show real quick!

Maybe a combination of the above, though I have to wonder if at this point, they really knew what Daguba's final form would turn out to be. I could swear that some book out there has what the early Daguba's face actually looked like, because I know for sure I've seen it, and it's very different from the final reveal. Then again, if you own the Kuuga Collector's Box like I do, and you've looked at the production art, you know that early on, there were a lot of ideas as to how Daguba would end up looking. Some of which wound up inspiring his lupine counterpart in Decade.

The Grongi: There's a lot more to say about them in future episodes, but we do get a lot of the basics in this one. One of the most distinct things about them is their origin, being an ancient race and all. I partly attribute that to the general trend in some mid/late 90's Tokusatsu to have ancient civilizations/races (Ultraman Tiga, the Gamera trilogy) in the same way that I think Agito has the culmination of the Tokusatsu Psychic (90's Godzilla and Gamera know all about those.) But as we'll eventually learn, there's a twist coming up that puts them closer to the old Shocker & such Kaijin than you'd think at first.

I love the idea behind their language. It's dealbreaker for some fans, but me, I always loved watching the Grongi stand around jabbering away having no clue what was going on. That might come from watching raw Japanese shows even back in the days when my Japanese was, shall we say, suspect.

But it also again ties back to the older shows, particularly the original. One of the coolest and most subtle touches of Shocker (and others) was that they had their own writing system. They don't really dwell upon it in the shows, though I'd bet a cookie that Hirayama has written about it in a book somewhere. It's a logical idea for a secret organization to have their own secret code, and it's a logical idea for another civilization to have their own language.

I also appreciate that it actually has basis in Japanese and if you really really want to, you can make sense of it. The Undead had their own language, though I think it really was meant to be indecipherable jargon, and really played a much smaller role in the big picture. The Grongi's language is part of their whole characterization though, and something to keep an eye (or ear) on as we progress.



This episode's star monster, Zu Gumun Ba (or Xu, depending on who you ask) is awesome. If you're going to bring Kamen Rider back after a rest, of course you roll out the Spider guy early on, if not first. I'd have to say that Gumun is probably the truest successor to the original Kumo-Otoko, moreso than THE FIRST's Spider. Namely, he looks and feels like a literal human/arachnid hybrid, rather than an S&M club escapee.

The giant spider web is a classic moment, one of those visuals that you don't forget easily. While Ryuki and Hibiki would take things a step further size-wise, I think Kuuga's got the scariest spider-monster since the original.

Scary of course, because the show takes him deadly seriously as he rampages through downtown Nagano! The body count in this series often borders on ridiculous. I mentioned back in my Kuuga World review for Decade how this series is not one I'd want to be a resident of. It was really kind of eye-opening to watch the first few episodes of OOO, then go back to this.

While I love that show, I got to admit that it feels a lot more 'Sunday morning' than this, even in its own opening day massacre. There, it's all a bit more artful, contrasting the song "Happy Birthday" with the Greeeds kicking ass. It's more about the whole picture than just the violence. Here, it's the opposite. Wanton death and destruction, and it revels in its own brutality. Kuuga had a good way of making you root for Kuuga even if he does at time seem to engage in overkill (see: the Rising Forms) because the bad guys are so bad, nobody else can stop them.



Although he has a heckuva job cut out for him. I'll wait to talk about what I think of Kuuga's design(s) next episode, but it was brave of them to open up with our hero in his weakest state. After all the pre-publicity ads and photos showing Mighty Form, episode 1 has Kuuga spend the duration as the barely-better-than-human Growing Form, aside from that flashback pre-credits scene. Growing lives up to the name, being pretty much a Godai who can at least stand toe-to-toe with Gumun, whereas everybody else gets killed almost immediately. But he's still so much less than he will soon be.

I must mention the Henshin, which blew us all away in 2000 by being unlike anything else up to that point, at least in Kamen Rider. Although he gradually shifts towards something more conventional, early on it's that piece-by-piece thing that really sells the idea that it is Godai under that armor. It's a cool idea and in a weird way kinda reminds me of the original, original Rider transformation where he'd have the suit, but not the mask, while driving really fast on the bike.

I've always loved the big fight in this one. It too is sort of unlike anything else, in the same sort of way as the fight in the premiere episode of Hibiki (much-maligned as that is, I like its almost balletic feel.) It pulls off the unique trick of clearly putting Kuuga at a disadvantage, and yet he's still throwing his all into it.

He doesn't win the fight so much as simply survive it, but it still comes across as heroic. I like that they do try to stress the fact that these guys are super-powerful, pushing trucks and destroying concrete walls. Every once in a while Kamen Rider does that, and I think it's important, because if I were writing a Rider series, (s)he would be breaking stuff all the time in the fights.



And then there's the helicopter. I need to talk about this one for a bit. Even in 2000, the CGI looked rather hokey. For the movie version, they did tinker with this effect as I recall, as it was something everybody would often pick on.

But you know... maybe I've just turned into a bitter old bastard, or lost the true meaning of Christmas Tokusatsu or something, but... I don't really care. Special effects aren't why I watch Kamen Rider, which is why I adore every oddly-proportioned doll, weird superimposition shot or CGI blob of evil that comes along. The chopper looks fine to me.

Yes it's obviously a CG model, but they intermix it with the real one enough that I know they still went the distance. The only time bad effects really bug me is when it's something I know they could have done better practically that they did with CGI or greenscreen and it looks worse for it (i.e. a Rider Kick. Guys jumping off of trampolines always look the best, IMHO.)

Under modern scrutiny, a lot of Kuuga's effects aren't that great, but they said the same thing in 2000 about older shows' effects. And guess what? In 2025 they'll be talking about how cheap and cheesy Double or OOO look, if they aren't already. But screw those future guys with their hoverboards and Neuro-Vision 3000™; Kamen Rider's about more than that. In the end, I admire the imagination. And there's a lot of that in a fight scene where two guys slug it out on a police helicopter over Nagano.



Besides, how cool is that fight? It's true edge-of-the-seat stuff and one of the best fights in the series. I know I keep going back to this, but as my dad said, the first four episodes really are 5-star stuff. It's really some of the closest Heisei Kamen Rider has ever come to keeping the pacing and sensibility of the older shows, just in the 21st Century. It's as good an opening as we could have asked for to herald the return of Kamen Rider to the airwaves.

And hey— an ending credits sequence! Virtually unheard of these days, and weird even by Rider standards (of 2000) as it featured no fighting nor even the hero slowly walking towards the camera. I like how it makes for an effective cool-down after the intensity of the show itself.

I could go on about this episode forever. It really is every bit as spectacular as it was the first time, and I could probably watch it a couple more before going mad and raising my own army of ancient guys. Other episodes of Kuuga, well, I think I'll probably go against popular opinion on those, but right here, right now, it's perfection.

And that's a great last scene.

Next Time: If I make a Top 10 episodes list, this just might be #1.