Kamen Rider Amazon (1974)

Kamen Rider Amazon is surprisingly one of the least talked about Rider seasons despite being one of the more experimental and short lived tokusatsu shows from the early Showa era. It currently exists as the shortest Kamen Rider show due to its early cancellation due to an over-amount of gore/violence for the time it was aired. With the Kamen Rider Amazons (2016) reboot bringing back attention the the once forgotten rider, lets take a look at his show and how its quality stands so many years later.

The story revolves around Amazon (Yes this is his actual name) surviving a plane crash as a young child and being adopted by an Incan tribe. After living his early years as a wild child in the woods, his tribe is massacred by the newly resurrected Gorgos, the "Ten Faced Demon". Amazon becomes in possesion of the "Gigi Armlet" which is one of two powerful artifacts wielding a secret power, the other being owned by Gorgos. He flees to Japan to escape Gorgos but is followed and begins to get attacked by various minions of the Ten Faced Demon. He meets Tachibana (The mentor of all Showa Era Kamen Riders) as well as a Brother and Sister who he becomes close friends with. The cast are all pretty lovable and Amazon's friendship with the Brother becomes important later on as its this friendship that allows Amazon to start learning Japanese. Every episode follows the standard Showa era formula for tokusatsu: Enemy appears to steal/mess with children, Amazon shows up and saves the day after facing a small hardship. The amount of gore present surprised even me in the current day, wondering how this was allowed on a kids show from the early 70's. As for the soundtrack, its nothing amazing or memorable. At the same time it does its job well and doesn't have any noticeably bad tracks. Though the shows episode count was cut from 48 to 24 during production, the story's quality doesn't take too much of a hit from it. The only noticeable setback this caused was the final episode had noticeable pacing issues and the ending left a lot of things feeling rushed. Overall it was a pretty entertaining watch despise the obvious tropes, cliches, and low budget feel of the era this show was from. I would heartily recommend this show to anyone looking for some early 70's cheesy action with Karate Bugmen.

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Going Gigi!

Kamen Rider Amazon is a short-lived Showa-era Rider series that has a lot of things that really pulled me into it. For one, I really enjoy how plot-centric the episodes were for most of its runtime. Showa-era Riders, even one highly regarded for its plot like Kamen Rider Black, tend to fall into having episodic, monster-of-the-week stories for a large majority of their runtime due to the sheer amount of episodes that must be created. Amazon, on the flipside, is about half the length of the standard Kamen Rider series, giving it much less time to have meaningless fluff, and tends to have more opportunities to focus on its plot and character development. Seeing Amazon change throughout the story, going from a human-hating person who cannot speak any words to someone learning language and being able to trust other people, was interesting. It was also very interesting that half of the story focused on a group who were specifically aiming to kill Amazon to collect his power, and those around him became threatened due to this. It further drove the concept of someone's power, even if they are working for good, causing innocents harm, and it's a theme that Kamen Rider has toyed with in this era from time to time and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, in the latter half of the season, even including the penultimate episode, we get episodes that seem redundant, odd, unnecessary, and kind of boring. They star a villainous group with the generic goal to take over Japan and then the world, instead of their aim being to defeat Amazon itself. It changes the vibe of the series and makes it much less fun. I suppose even a Showa-Era series with half the runtime of a regular series ends up with pitfalls in plot.

The cast is for the most part alright. Unremarkable people, with some standouts being the return of Tobei Tachibana and the recurring Mole Beastman. Tobei is still kind of a doof from time to time - you'd think spending months fighting Shocker alongside Hongo years ago would teach him to be a little more on the defense, but ah well.

What I absolutely adore in this series, however, is the practical effects. Monsters release bursts of blood, whether it be humanlike red blood or spouts of multicolored foam. Amazon is seen taking chunks out of baddies, whether it be by chopping parts of it off with his hands or ripping it off with his teeth. It leads to a fun and grungey feeling that you just don't get when compared to the standard Toku fare of a monster falling down and then jump-cutting to an explosion. Not that I hate the explosions of Toku villains, it's just that the practical effects of "blood" and "gore" are a good change of pace that further sells the more grungey feeling of this series. I really like Amazon's design as well - the asymmetrical lines across the suit's body give it this sort of alien feel that helps to sell the more monstrous fighting style of Amazon and help sell how out-of-place Amazon is when compared to some of the other Riders. The monster suit designs are kind of rough, unfortunately.

Overall, I think Amazon is a really fun showa-era series. I've got myself a bit of a soft spot for it! I'd definitely recommend Kamen Rider fans check it out, as it touches on important things in Kamen Rider - whether it be for the better or for the worse.

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