So I'VE been watching the original Kikaider series.

This is a character and franchise who I've been a fan of for years, ever since the anime showed up on Adult Swim years back. I've always wanted to see the original show because it sounded really cool to me, especially the finale and everything building towards it-and Kikaider 01 sounds out right balls out insane and fun!

And then I watched the show.

Now one thing I feel the need to clarify right away-the monsters are bad, yes. But I can respect most of them, black crow can go fuck himself however. He's a fucking seal he's not a bird.

I can respect them because I can see what they were aiming to do-Kikaider fought robots, which they distinguished from Cyborgs over at Kamen Rider, by removing the overtly humanoid aspects of them and making them more monstrous and abstract. So a lot of the suits are really fucking big and elaborate for Toei at the time, but also really awful generally. There are a few exceptions though and they're rather beloved by me for that.

The ones that super fail however get no pity Black Crow fuck off you dumb seal bird.

The writing has some more going on for it than the usual for the era-the aspect of Kikaider's nature as an android is gone into way more than Kamen Rider's cyborg status, and they do a few neat things with it.


The other thing to get out of the way is that this show is formulaic.

That is, not in and of itself, bad.

Might make it hard to marathon run, but then it was never designed to be watched in rapid succession, so I cannot and will not fault it there.

The fact that the show follows a formula does not make it bad. It didn't make Kamen Rider V3 bad, it doesn't make most things bad.

Its the gimmick of it that makes the show frustrating as fuck to watch. There are three main beats to this problem. The first and most excusable is Kikaider, jiro, has an incomplete conscious circuit. That is what protects him from the evil Professor Gil's influence and control, but it's incomplete nature means that Gil can ALMOST take control, making Kikaider nearly seize up in pain and deliberation.

This by itself isn't a bad thing, and it's used effectively a few times. The issue is that it is used almost every single episode without fail at a certain point in the story in the same way to the same result and it gets old very, very fast and very annoying due to the sound of Gil's flute.

But, whatever. It's done right a few times, that's cool.

The second gimmick, almost worst, is the AMNESIA DAD ADVENTURE sub plot. Effectively, the main characters father has amnesia and is wandering around Japan, getting jobs left and right like he's David fucking Banner some how, and in EVERY EPISODE until it's resolved, the main characters juuuuuuuuuuuuuust miss him or almost get him until he wanders off again.

This goes on for 30 something episodes out of a 43 or so episode series.

It is the worst kind of on going plot thread. NOTHING ever changes with it, nothing ever advances.

You could skip from the first or second episode where this gimmick is introduced, to the last episode before it's finished (not the episode where it IS finished, as they actually start moving the plot along just before it) and not miss a goddamn thing because the show just spins its wheels for 20 plus fucking episodes.

The only reason this isn't the biggest load of the show is because it ends 7 episodes before the finale.

The last problem with the formula never ends.

The last problem is the Detective character, played for comic relief, and his awful shitty insult to God existence. The man is awful, with almost no morals, incompetent in the worst ways, greedy, back stabbing, and was directly responsible for people dying more than once.

And we get to deal with him every goddamn episode.

The reason he really bugs me though-Kikaider is a shockingly brutal little show. If you're a guest character, you count yourself lucky if you survive the episode. Men, women, children, all are slaughtered by the villains-except this douche bag. People can drop like flies around him, and he'll still be there smirking away making dumb jokes and acting like Scrappy fucking Doo but with a ninja gimmick.


What makes this all worth it?

About 7 episodes before the finale Hakaider shows up.

Hakaider makes it all worth it.

The fights he has with Kikaider are badass, he is badass, and half of the formula problems vanish BECAUSE of him.



KIKAIDER: Good for only like the last 8 or 9 episodes.


Kikaider 01 on the flip side looks like a show that the produces created out of sheer boredom induced insanity from Kikaider and made the most badass thing they could.