Great Leader essay

Who is the Great Leader of Shocker?

That itself is a fairly easy question. The Great Leader of Shocker was the villain of the very first season of Kamen Rider, leader of the evil underground organization known as Shocker (And later in the series, Gel-Shocker). Shocker aims to take over the world via a number of zany schemes, and are the reason for Kamen Rider's very existence. For most of the series, he took on the form of a crystal inside a large monument of the Shocker logo, a large bird. He only communicated to his minions through this blinking crystal, and was never seen in person until the very end of the series, where its revealed he's a red Klu Klux Klan member. When Kamen Rider unmasks him, his real face turns out to be a slithering mass of snakes... except even that wasn't true, as underneath the snakes was a pale, cyclopian monster. Even when presumably killed, its revealed that the Great Leader they faced was only a copy.

So, what the hell IS Great Leader? He has great influence over the entire world and commands an army of monsters, but he also has supernatural powers and a face like a Gorgon. Its never truly made clear in the series if he's a byproduct of experimentation, fitting the show's more sci-fi fantasy aspects, or a full-on supernatural entity. A number of interpretations have been made over the 40 years of the franchise's history, none of which seem to offer a satisfactory, or even consistent, explanation.

The first thing to note is that Great Leader appears many times over the course of the first ten or so seasons, from the original Kamen Rider, all the way to Kamen Rider Black RX. In each series he shows up with a new form and modus, with the only true consistency being his voice actor, Goro Naya (And after his passing, Tomokazu Seki). We'll go over each of them soon enough, but first we should cover the closest thing to an official origin for the original Great Leader of Shocker, as described by the producer of the Kamen Rider franchise, Toru Hirayama. According to Toru, Great Leader was a Tibetan monk with supernatural powers, apparently capable of raising the dead. After discarding his emotions, he transcended to a higher form of existence, leaving his humanity behind to become an immortal being that can take on many forms and never truly die. This somehow results in him forming Shocker.

This is arguably the only origin of Great Leader that truly works with any sort of canon... But its also possibly the most ridiculous one. And that's really saying something. It also still doesn't explain how, exactly, Shocker came to be, or even how Great Leader even works. Its a bit of a mess. Something to note is that Great Leader, as he's known in the series, was a completely different character in the eyes of series creator Shotaro Ishinomori. Ishinomori, despite being the creator of the Kamen Rider brand, never wrote for the television series, and instead produced a 4-volume manga series that diverged greatly from the show. In the manga, Great Leader is revealed to have been a massive robot known as Big Machine, somewhat more sensible than the origin created for the TV show, though still very odd.