Rann:  Yeah, I know. Really imaginative name, huh? Well, most other “It Came From Japan!” things are pretty much entirely about the weird items Japan puts out, like the Hello Kitty vibrator or whatever. (Yes, yes, the Japanese like ridiculously cute stuff, ha ha.) While that may eventually turn up in one of these segments, I want to use it more for the entertainment stuff that comes out of Japan that is NOT anime and manga. There’s plenty in the way of live-action series and movies to be had from Japan, and I want to touch on some of them.

(Eventually, I really want to track down a copy of Versus. It’s a Japanese zombie movie that’s apparently been really influential on the whole genre. In Versus, when gun-slinging, katana-wielding badasses get bitten and die, they get back up as gun-slinging, katana-wielding badass zombies. Everyone that’s seen it raves about it, so I want to see if it lives up to the hype. Just that so far I don’t want it $30 worth.)

For the first iteration, if you will, of ICFJ, I’ll be talking about Kamen Rider Den-O.

Rann:  Not particularly, no. Though out of a lot of the Japanese live-action hero series I’ve seen, Kamen Rider consistently has the best sense of design and style. Some of it’s really goofy looking, too, and sometimes in an endearing way. And sometimes not. (There’s a Kamen Rider in a different series who I refer to as the Apple Rider… I can’t help it, his armor looks like something designed not to clash with your basic white iPod.) Garo probably takes the cake of the stuff I’ve seen for sheer badass-looking hero armor, but I’ll get to it later.

American audiences may or may not be familiar with Kamen Rider. The original series was pretty iconic, so there’s some vague recognition outside of Japan. Saban also retooled one version of it, like they did a lot of Japanese hero shows, and made Masked Rider, one of their more short-lived attempts. Like the various Ranger series that have been adapted into all the various incarnations of Power Rangers, Kamen Rider is a franchise that pretty heavily retools itself in every iteration. They have a relatively small amount of things in common, those being:

* An armored hero or heroes, with a naming scheme beginning with “Kamen Rider”.
* A device that the Kamen Rider uses to “Henshin!” (transform), which interacts with a belt he’s wearing.
* Motorcycles.

That’s really as far as the similarities between the series go. The Kamen Rider suits often have a somewhat insectoid theme, but even this isn’t a constant. (In one series, it was bats.)

Kamen Rider Den-O came on the heels of several iterations of the franchise that were fairly heavy and dark, full of anti-heroes and anti-villains. Kamen Rider Faiz had such assholes for heroes and such sympathetic villains that you weren’t really rooting for who you were supposed to. Kamen Rider Blade and Kamen Rider Hibiki, I don’t know a ton about, but apparently both had a rather depressing last arc. Kamen Rider Kabuto is pretty good, it’s another one I’m watching, but there’s no doubt it’s heavy fair. You’ve got a rather stoic, ruthless title character, a mysterious, probably deeply corrupt (and ruthless) corporation, and some of the more chilling enemies the series has produced, who take great glee in slaughtering large numbers of the normal-armored super-SWAT team created by the Mysterious Organization.

So it’s probably pretty easy to see why Kamen Rider Den-O was done. It’s very much a “Let’s lighten it up and just have some fun” take on the series. While other iterations weren’t without their humor, they were very definitely dramatic series with some small humor elements. Den-O comes closer to being a humorous series with more prominent dramatic elements. It feels a lot more like a Ranger series than a Kamen Rider series, at least compared to the more recent fare. Proving that the Japanese and Americans aren’t really that different, Japanese fanboys promptly shat a brick about it. May I calmly suggest that they remove their limited edition Sailor Moon wands from their asses that they used in lieu of a stick? Ahem. Now, that out of the way, let me introduce you to the main character of Kamen Rider Den-O.

Rann:  Hey, I’m serious! Or at least, more serious than I was about Viral. Okay, see, technically, the main character of the show is this sad-sack guy named Ryotaro.

Rann:  That’s him in the center. And… uh… sort of him all around, too, but I’ll get to explaining that in the minute. The reason I said my main man in red up there is the main character is that he shows up pretty early and completely and utterly steals the show. Whenever he is onscreen, whether physically manifesting or possessing Ryotaro (the one with the brushed-back hair and red shirt), Momotaros completely commands your attention. It’s kind of like calling Vegeta the main character of Dragonball Z, or Han Solo the main character of Star Wars. While probably not technically correct, they’re often just more fun than the main guy, and the ones you’d prefer to identify with.

Like I said, Ryotaro is kind of a sadsack sort of guy. He’s pretty much stated to have the world’s worst luck. He’s the Japanese version of Martin Short’s character in Pure Luck, someone who’s so unfortunate that he’s long since stopped pretending it’s going to get any better and just kind of rides it out. I mean, the guy has his mailbox address written in his wallet so that once muggers have taken out the money and tossed it, someone might actually return the wallet to him. It happens to him that often. He’s the sort of character that, even if you identify with him, you’d probably rather not.

This bad luck ties into his interaction with the main foes of the series, the Imagin. (Yes, the series is rather punnish.) Imagin latch onto a human, manifesting as the human shedding sand from their skin, until the Imagin eventually comes forward to form a Contract with the human. At that point, they take on a form taken from the human’s memories and thoughts, and will grant one wish. (More on the outcome of that in a bit.) Ryotaro has an Imagin attached to him, but he just keeps failing to notice it whenever the Imagin pops up and starts to make his introduction. (He drives through the sand pile on his bike, he just walks off and doesn’t hear, etc.)

Anyway, through a very odd series of events, Ryotaro comes across an odd train pass and encounters an even odder train situated on a track in the middle of a desert, which he finds by just walking through a door at a particular time while holding the pass. A bit later a girl from the train, who’s been looking for the pass, rushes up to Ryotaro and informs him that he’s got the ability to become a Kamen Rider. So, quaking in his boots but giving it a try because the situation demands it, Ryotaro gives possibly the most unenthusiastic “Henshin!” in Kamen Rider history.

Rann:  Well, it is Ryotaro. This is sort of the base form, or, in its actual term… “Plat Form”. Yeah, it’s an English pun. And that thing running down the center of the helmet? Train tracks. The other forms’ visors slide down it like a train along tracks and lock into place with a classic “train braking” sound.

Rann:  Y’see, Ryotaro basically just provides the body. It’s the Imagin bonded to him (primarily Momotaros) that do the actual fighting. Momotaros is so named because apparently his look is based off of the “Peach Boy” legend, and said character (Momotaro) was Ryotaro’s hero when he was young. Momotaros is annoyed because he thinks he looks silly… honestly, I’m not sure how much more badass being red, demonic, and with horns could be unless he was being voiced by Ron Perlman.

Anyway, the girl (Hana) is pretty annoyed that her new Kamen Rider is carting around an Imagin, especially since when he’s not possessing Ryotaro’s body, Momotaros lounges around on Denliner (the train) with her. Hana is what we in the anime fandom call a tsundere, heavy on the “tsun”. (Meaning, she’s a bit of a bitch.) She also has one of the more bipolar fashion senses ever. Most of the time when she goes running around in the “real” world, she’s dressed quite hot, and then there’s that ugly-ass poofy black skirt and white jacket that seems to be her favorite outfit ever, which she’s usually wearing aboard Denliner. Ugh.

(Also included, for your service, is Naomi, the stewardess. Her stewardess outfit is made of plastic or PVC or something, for no particularly good reason other than that the show’s producers could talk a hot girl into wearing it.)

Rann:  Thought it might. Naomi’s actually a big fan of the Imagin that wind up aboard the train. She smiles, she compliments, she flirts, she makes coffee that is unfit for human consumption but is apparently a huge hit with time-monsters.

Anyway, Momotaros is the key to unlocking Kamen Rider Den-O’s Sword Form, and confronts the Imagin threat to humanity for two very good reasons. The first is that he’s bonded to Ryotaro, so if Ryotaro buys the farm, Momotaros is gonna be tilling the fields. The second is… he really likes to fight, and he doesn’t particularly give a shit for the Imagin’s overall mission.

Which is, basically, the destruction of time.

The deal is, when an Imagin completes a human’s wish, he goes inside that human, to their most prominent, most important past memory. So on that date in the past, the Imagin possesses the human and proceeds to go on a rampage of as much destruction as possible. (Usually, it starts with possession, before the Imagin can manifest its own form physically.) Any destruction in the past translates forward in a sort of instant retcon, but not one that actually goes back all the way. Destroying a shipment of wood in the past causes the house built of that wood to abruptly disappear in the future, leaving the family living in it sitting there looking very confused; destroying the construction equipment of a bridge being built in the past causes the completed bridge in the future to come crashing down.

So the good guys hop aboard the Denliner and cross the Desert of Time to that past date, putting a stop to the rampage. Ryotaro, being a really nice guy, also tends to help the person possessed by the Imagin in some way; making sure they actually got to an appointment they missed the first time around, making sure they get to see a family member one last time, things like that. Which is technically a no-no since they’re supposed to be avoiding changes to the timeline, but the owner of Denliner basically says “Individuals don’t really matter so much”. Apparently just one guy here and there having a bit of a better life isn’t going to bring the world tumbling, as long as the general rampage is stopped.

For me, it took Ryotaro a little while to grow on me. He was annoying at first but becomes fairly endearing on his own after awhile. (He’s still kind of a dumbass at times, though.) Momotaros is awesome right from the get-go. He’s a big-time extrovert who takes no crap. (Except from Hana, but then there’s not a hell of a lot he can do on that score… not only is he male and she female, they’re in Japan, so yeah. Even then, he tends to take the bare minimum of guff off of her.) He’s very big on his own image, loving the whole posing and drama angle of being a Kamen Rider, always announcing himself with “Ore… SANJO!” (“I have arrived!”) whenever Sword Form’s Henshin is complete. At one point, Hana’s standing next to him when he Henshins, and he starts to move, only to notice her there. He shuffles awkwardly, then mutters “Move!”, gently pushing her until she’s back out of the way, then strikes his pose and shouts “Ore… SANJO!” as if he hadn’t been interrupted. You can see why people who consider guys in plastic armor riding around on motorcycles Serious Business were pissed, but to me it just solidifies how much fun Kamen Rider Den-O really is.

Now, to finish up, I’ll post some images of Rina Akiyama, the girl who plays Naomi.

Rann:  And, to really finish up, here’s a torrent for a gravure video of her. Gravure videos are basically really sexy little things with lots of posing and hot/cute outfits, but no outright nudity. Usually, they’re just the one girl walking around, posing, and so on to some quiet, relaxing music. Think of it as ultra softcore. Also, if Hana is more your thing, there’s also plenty of stuff of Yuriko Shiratori out there too.

Kamen Rider Den-O can be found on torrent sites like IsoHunt, so if you like anime, I’d suggest checking it out, since it’s basically just anime rendered in live action. It’s probably better if you’ve got some background in sentai and seinin series, but if you’ve seen more than one episode of Power Rangers at some point, that’s probably enough.