I don’t understand what Toei Tokusatsu World is thinking, or if it’s higher up at Toei itself. They want to get Kamen Rider to the US, and they partnered with Shout Factory to get Kamen Rider ZEZTZ to YouTube via TokuSHOUTsu, but didn’t stop YouTube from covering the stream now and then with their ads. Plus watching it that way meant the potential of accidentally spoiling yourself if you came in on the wrong time because the replay started right after the previous broadcast ended, meaning coming in at the start was difficult. Eventually they put episodes by themselves, which was the right thing to do. Sadly this hasn’t included the movie that along with the final episode passes the torch to the next series in the line.
So with the next show, that came out a couple of weeks after the last Kamen Rider series (good luck getting US TV to even do seasons right anymore, 8 episodes over 16 weeks if you’re lucky) they decide to post it to their own channel 2 days after the Japanese airing rather than continuing the simulcast with Shout Factory. Word is that they’ll only have it up for about a month before taking it down. It seems they still don’t know how to use their YouTube channel to get their shows to a larger audience and take all the ad revenue (minus what YouTube takes).
The new show is Kamen Rider My-Th, a double pun due to the mythology of the zodiac (the Chinese one, I believe) and that the hero’s theme is based around mice, as the franchise dropped the bug motif a long time ago. I can post the first episode, “The Mouse Meister & The Young Lady”, but watch it fast as it will go away in four weeks. A full review follows, so this isn’t a Saturday Night Showcase. It’s a short-lived bonus showcase unless they’re kind to the international fans and keep it up. As it is it was delayed by the posting schedule, so we lost a couple of days. Since this isn’t the English streaming service you’ll need closed captions set to English (or your language of choice, I guess) to follow along.
So we don’t know a lot so far. It’s only the first episode, though from promotional material we know the basic premise. The Inexplicable, or “Fukashigi” in Japanese, have awakened and causing trouble. The Twelve Animal Signs Alliance are pledged to fight them. However, the agent of the mouse left and his “My-Th Driver” is now in the hands of Sora Otasumi, caretaker of Yuna Mitzuki. Together, probably at her insistence, they are the Society of Inexplicable Incident Investigators, going after the Inexplicable on their own, with Sora becoming Kamen Rider My-Th. The Riders are after some kind of eggs that…form the Inexplicable or something? I’m not sure how that works. However, one of the other Riders don’t like the competition, and unknown to our heroes they have a spy in their midst.
I miss the old insect themes but that’s long since vanished. I also miss the belt being around the waist instead of the chest, where one would think is a better target. I have heard there are some belts that are actually worn like a belt, which I hope we get to go back to. For what we get, I like most of what we saw from My-Th’s armor. The extra hoop things are my only issue. We’ve had brief glimpses of the other Riders, and some I like, some I don’t. Maybe when we see more of them I’ll have a better opinion. The egg theme is an odd choice. It works better than the fruit like locks from Kamen Rider Gaim at least, but why is Sora dropping their energy into actual eggs? Going over the Chinese Zodiac, most of the animals don’t deal in eggs because they’re mammals.
Each Rider has a personality tied to their animal, which makes sense but also has the potential to be silly along with all the pun names. For example the sheep avatar is “Mutn”, a play on “mutton”, and she seems to still be asleep. All of the others save Sora, unless there’s something in Japanese culture and language I’m that uninformed about, have similar pun names, but given that Sora might not be the original My-Th it makes sense for him to break the mold, plus he only seems to have a mousey persona when he’s transformed. The little running wheel attack was also kind of silly, but maybe this won’t be as serious as ZEZTZ, at least at the start.
Sora and Yuna have a fun big brother/little sister dynamic. We don’t know the full backstory yet, but according to the Fandom wiki his family has watched hers for years, like if Alfred was the one to become Batman. I don’t know how her friends are going to fit into the story, or what angle Tatsuomi, who is secretly Kamen Rider Rid (one of the cats), will bring to the proceedings. Or whether we have another example of evil Riders, which frankly is getting a bit played out. Look, I liked Dragon Knight and I want to see more of the source material Ryuki, but I want to see Riders fighting monsters, not each other or some unnecessary external threat like CODE. The second half of ZEZTZ won me over but if the show had stayed in the original timeline I would have been happier. The monster threat should be enough.
Overall I did enjoy the show. I’m looking forward to the next episode, but I’m going to have to make sure I don’t miss each new episode Monday nights at 9PM ET or at least get to it before the four weeks are over. Otherwise I’m going to miss out. I was lucky to see all of ZEZTZ before it was taken down from the TokuSHOUTsu channel, meaning that Saturday Night Showcase is ruined. I’d point to the Ultraman channels but they’ve taken stuff down as well. Come on, Japan. Give us a way to watch the full series of your full franchise. It’s money for you and entertainment for us, plus sites like mine will point new audiences towards you with a share on blogs or social media. Everybody wins.
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