For anyone that watches live-action Japanese shows with special effects, often called Tokusatsu, one of the most well-known franchises is Kamen (Masked) Rider. Starting in 1972, Kamen Rider had annual shows for quite a few years, all set in one continuity just like Power Rangers. The exact situation would never be the same, but it would be close enough: evil organization wants to take over the world and there's a hero that can turn into a guy in spandex who fights their monsters. Several of the Riders would have backup in the form of a secondary Rider (what happened in the first two shows) and usually previous Kamen Riders would show up late in the show to help out.
The franchise went into a lull after the 10th Anniversary Special, briefly reviving for Kamen Rider Black and its sequel, Black RX, in the late 80s. Black RX would actually be used for Saban's Masked Rider show in the early 90s, although it drastically changed the situation and earned the ire of Kamen Rider's creator, Shotaro Ishinomori. Three more specials would be made in the 90s, but for the year 2000, Ishinomori began drafting up plans for a new Kamen Rider show only to die of heart failure three days before his 60th birthday.
As someone who likes a lot of Japanese works, I must say this is extremely tragic. Ishinomori is possibly the most prolific comic writer of all time with over 128,000 *pages* written all on his own over the course of his career. He helped start the franchise that would go on to become Power Rangers and always was able to come up with clever ideas for stories.
Nevertheless, plans for Ishinomori's new Kamen Rider show did not die with him and began in January, 2000. Briefly before the first episode, a titlecard was displayed, saying that Kuuga was dedicated in memory of all of Ishinomori's contributions.
I am only eight episodes in, but I can confidently say that you'd be hard pressed to find a better show to dedicate to a great storyteller.
Kamen Rider Kuuga tells the tale of Yusuke Godai, a young man who describes himself as a "chaser of dreams" and who works at a coffee shop. He is also a complete metaphorical boyscout, who spends his first scene cheering up a girl who was crying at an airport because she got lost and he keeps her company until her parents find them. Throughout the remainder of the show Yusuke maintains this heroic and altruistic nature, helping people out no matter what their situation and being a kind and courageous person.
The main plot kicks in even before this, during the excavation of a cave that holds a collection of strange artifacts including a stone belt and a coffin with a decayed body in it. However, the excavators are all killed when a monster awakens, before it goes on to summon the entirety of its comrades from a gravesight nearby. These creatures are the Grongi, members of an ancient clan who warred with humanity's ancestors and were defeated by a lone warrior in red.
Now one member of the excavation group had actually not been at the site, a college student named Sakurako who still witnessed the bloody carnage of the death of her friends by the Grongi through a camera feed. A friend of Yusuke, she's horrified by the sight and Yusuke, naturally wanting to help, goes out to investigate the cave. By the time he arrives police are all over it, and it's here he and the audience meet the detective Kaoru Ichijo, who continues to play an important role throughout the series as a close friend to Yusuke.
However, the Grongi are long since gone, scattering around Japan and killing people for the sake of their "game". And all too quickly Yusuke and the Nagano police department meet one based off of a spider and proving too strong for the police. It's here that Yusuke discovers the strange stone belt from earlier and, bombarded by strange visions of the red warrior puts it on and attempts to fight the Grongi, nearly getting himself killed in the process before a suit of white appears over his body.
He has become Kuuga, the bane of the Grongi. And it falls on him and him alone to defeat their ranks, no matter how difficult it may prove.
Now admittedly the shows special effects are lacking. It came out in 2000 and it really shows how limited CG was in the early days. It doesn't hurt the show at all though, which has great acting, a wonderful story and soundtrack, and exciting fight scenes between Kuuga and the various Grongi. Along the way during the early episodes, Sakurako works on translating the ancient text from the cave and we learn that Kuuga has various forms for fighting and the first 10 or so episodes serve to introduce us to them and their uses and we meet various characters and see how Yusuke interacts with them all.
We also get to see the Grongi interact when they're not killing people and it's probably one of the best ways to show enemies plotting and planning while at the same time keeping them seem inhuman. Because as it turns out, Grongi (or at least early Grongi) don't know modern languages, and instead speak a strange gutteral language filled with gibberish (actually Japanese run through a cipher) which helps make them seem alien even when they take humanoid appearances.
Now for the longest time there was a "Kuuga Curse" going around when it came to fansubbers where any attempts to sub Kuuga would end in failure, but recently a group known as Midnight Subs has been blazing through the series and actually has vowed to finish subbing the show within another nine days.
Anyways, if you want to see some awesome live-action goodness or were just interested in shows like Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, I cannot recommend Kuuga enough.
The first twelve episodes can be found subbed at SCS's blog:
http://scs-works.blogspot.com/The remainder of the episodes that are subbed can be found on Midnight Sub's blog:
http://midnightcrewsubs.blogspot.com/
Kamen Rider Kuuga, Sometimes the old shows are the best
Aug 14 2010, 10:02 PM
