Kamen Rider Amazon
A-MA-ZON!
Deep in the Amazon jungle, a young man lives in isolation from humanity, having been stranded there as an infant. One day Gorgos, the ten-faced demon and leader of the monstrous organization Gedon, appears in the Amazon in search of an ancient Incan treasure that had been spirited away long ago. The treasure, known as the Gigi Armlet, is forced onto Amazon by a shamen, and his dying words compel the young man to go to Japan in search of the truth of his origins. Gedon pursues him and kills the man who was to teach the young man what he had to know, and thus does he transform into the brutal Kamen Rider Amazon to defend a home he hardly knows.
Kamen Rider Amazon was the fourth Kamen Rider series, broadcasting from 1974-1975, and it was an unusual and experimental series; at the start of the show, the main character Amazon does not speak any Japanese at all and so there are frequent intervals where the narrator will pipe in and explain what is going through Amazon’s head. Personally, I thought the narrator was an unnecessary annoyance, as much of what he talked about was stuff that Amazon’s actor was conveying through his body language and vocalizations, and since I’ve brought the issue up, Amazon’s actor was pretty dang good, having the very difficult task of expressing himself without words. In addition, outside the narrator, the writing on the main character is very strong, avoiding the obvious trap of making him into an idiot and instead showing him to be very intelligent and cunning, capable of forming complex and multi-layered plans that on multiple occasions catch his enemies off guard.
Sadly, the writing on the supporting cast is for the most part abysmal; Masahiko the requisite child, his older sister Ritsuko, and returning Kamen Rider Mentor Tobei Tachibana are just awful. They are not interesting, they are not useful outside of a few early circumstances, and they are not fun. The shining and glorious exception to this is the Mole Beastman, a monster-of-the-week who survives his encounter with Amazon, is rescued by Amazon, and they end up becoming super-special-awesome bestest-best friends forever and they are just delightful together.
Another aspect of the show that is experimental is how brutally violent the action is; where in previous and subsequent shows the hero would punch and kick the monster until they cleanly exploded, Amazon claws and jabs and slices and bites until he’s torn his enemy apart and they bleed all over the place until their untimely death. There are a couple of early monsters who flee from battle against him and are brutally executed by their master for dereliction in duty, and near the end of the series a monster eagerly runs back to his master, begging to be executed rather than letting Amazon finish him off. Being that Kamen Rider of this era was all about the hero straddling the line between human and monster, this sort of action is all in line with both Amazon’s individual expression and the larger themes of the franchise as a whole.
Unfortunately, all this experimentation did not seem to go over very well at the time; the show was immensely retooled halfway through with the villains being replaced and Amazon learning Japanese practically overnight after episodes of him struggling with just a few words at a time, and ultimately ended up being cancelled, forcing a rushed and anti-climactic conclusion.
It has its good points, but both its inherent flaws and the degree of tampering it was subjected to do hold it back. I can recommend it, but you need to leave behind any preconceptions you may have about it and let yourself be open to what the show is.
Deep in the Amazon jungle, a young man lives in isolation from humanity, having been stranded there as an infant. One day Gorgos, the ten-faced demon and leader of the monstrous organization Gedon, appears in the Amazon in search of an ancient Incan treasure that had been spirited away long ago. The treasure, known as the Gigi Armlet, is forced onto Amazon by a shamen, and his dying words compel the young man to go to Japan in search of the truth of his origins. Gedon pursues him and kills the man who was to teach the young man what he had to know, and thus does he transform into the brutal Kamen Rider Amazon to defend a home he hardly knows.
Kamen Rider Amazon was the fourth Kamen Rider series, broadcasting from 1974-1975, and it was an unusual and experimental series; at the start of the show, the main character Amazon does not speak any Japanese at all and so there are frequent intervals where the narrator will pipe in and explain what is going through Amazon’s head. Personally, I thought the narrator was an unnecessary annoyance, as much of what he talked about was stuff that Amazon’s actor was conveying through his body language and vocalizations, and since I’ve brought the issue up, Amazon’s actor was pretty dang good, having the very difficult task of expressing himself without words. In addition, outside the narrator, the writing on the main character is very strong, avoiding the obvious trap of making him into an idiot and instead showing him to be very intelligent and cunning, capable of forming complex and multi-layered plans that on multiple occasions catch his enemies off guard.
Sadly, the writing on the supporting cast is for the most part abysmal; Masahiko the requisite child, his older sister Ritsuko, and returning Kamen Rider Mentor Tobei Tachibana are just awful. They are not interesting, they are not useful outside of a few early circumstances, and they are not fun. The shining and glorious exception to this is the Mole Beastman, a monster-of-the-week who survives his encounter with Amazon, is rescued by Amazon, and they end up becoming super-special-awesome bestest-best friends forever and they are just delightful together.
Another aspect of the show that is experimental is how brutally violent the action is; where in previous and subsequent shows the hero would punch and kick the monster until they cleanly exploded, Amazon claws and jabs and slices and bites until he’s torn his enemy apart and they bleed all over the place until their untimely death. There are a couple of early monsters who flee from battle against him and are brutally executed by their master for dereliction in duty, and near the end of the series a monster eagerly runs back to his master, begging to be executed rather than letting Amazon finish him off. Being that Kamen Rider of this era was all about the hero straddling the line between human and monster, this sort of action is all in line with both Amazon’s individual expression and the larger themes of the franchise as a whole.
Unfortunately, all this experimentation did not seem to go over very well at the time; the show was immensely retooled halfway through with the villains being replaced and Amazon learning Japanese practically overnight after episodes of him struggling with just a few words at a time, and ultimately ended up being cancelled, forcing a rushed and anti-climactic conclusion.
It has its good points, but both its inherent flaws and the degree of tampering it was subjected to do hold it back. I can recommend it, but you need to leave behind any preconceptions you may have about it and let yourself be open to what the show is.