Cheesy ‘Rider’
Hideaki Anno’s ‘Shin’ monster/mecha/Tokusatsu trilogy closes with a whimper.
Shin Kamen Rider
Director: Hideaki Anno • Writer: Hideaki Anno
Starring: Sosuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe, Tasuku Emoto, Shinya Tsukamoto, Toru Tezuka, Toru Nakamura, Takumi Saito
Japan • 2hrs 1min
Opens Hong Kong June 22 • IIA
Grade: C+
Full disclosure: You may have to look up times for Shin Kamen Rider | シン・仮面ライダー under the title Shin Masked Rider. I’m using “Kamen Rider” because that’s what we all know it as (it’s in the damn song) – especially y’all Kamen Rider nerds out there. Also: I’m not a Kamen Rider nerd. I was more into Gatchaman and Battle of the Planets, so the venerable tokusatsu superhero (he lived a short time from 1971-1973) is a bit outside my purview. No doubt Kamen Rider superfans are going to dig animator Hideaki Anno’s third (and final?) “shin” movie – after the best one, Shin Godzilla, and the amusing Shin Ultraman, and not counting Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, which some do. But fair warning for newbies and tag-alongs: Shin Kamen Rider is 30 repetitive minutes too long and loses its charm pretty fast. Like any genre IP, you won’t be able to convince fans of that, but objectively speaking Anno has missed an opportunity for a cheesy-fun retro amusement and wound up with a thoroughly battered dead horse.
Just wait for the song
Curiously, Shin Kamen Rider has re-imagined the sinister SHOCKER as “Sustainable Happiness Organization with Computational Knowledge Embedded Remodeling”, and as a vaguely megalomaniacal mad scientist organisation creating super-powerful human-insect (mostly) hybrids on a quest to ensure human happiness worldwide. Uhhh… sure. Point is, SHOCKER this time around is not a global terrorist group comprised of the world’s remaining Nazis, who are dead set on finishing the Führer’s goal of world domination. This time around, Takeshi Hongo (Sosuke Ikematsu) is not a runaway from Nazis, he’s Grasshopper Aug Rider, scooped up by mad scientist Hiroshi Midorikawa (Shinya Tsukamoto) and his stoic daughter Ruriko Midorikawa (Minami Hamabe) for a righteous cause. Strangely, sadly, the Nazi plot line would have been timely, but whatever. After a violent throwdown with SHOCKER thug Spider Aug, who has a fabulously lo-fi tentacle head and sounds like Nao Omori, and a crash course on the power and correct use of his “prana” (the technobabble is truly inspiring) from the Midorikawas, Hongo also agrees to work with shady anti-SHOCKER agents Taki and Tachibana (Takumi Saito and Yutaka Takenouchi).
That is literally the intro to the action in Shin Kamen Rider, simultaneously overstuffed and empty, and a prime example of reverent homage rather than truly fresh genre filmmaking. Anno’s absolutely nailed the zoom-mad, early-1970s aesthetic, all whip pans and bombastic spaghetti western score (regular anime composer Taku Iwasaki turns in great work), and the final three-way boss fight with Hongo, another Grasshopper Aug ally, Hayato Ichimonji (Tasuku Emoto) – who ends the film poised to star in a sequel if it happens – and Ruriko’s brother Ichiro (Mirai Moriyama), a SHOCKER leader and Butterfly Aug is disquietingly stagey in a good way. But it takes too long to get there, and spews out too many of the same stunts, effects and action sequences along the way. Admittedly this could have gone much, much worse; fortunately Anno himself is a fan, and he’s obviously having fun with Kamen Rider, not making fun of Kamen Rider, but his sincerity and good intentions do not a narrative make. Cap it off with fan service-y appearances by genre vets Masami Nagasawa, Kanata Hongo and an unhinged performance by Toru Tezuka as Bat Aug and you have a fairly insular film that’s far gorier and less gleeful than the material demands. But, hey. You can’t tell me Strange New Worlds isn’t the greatest Star Trek ever. I won’t try and tell Kamen Rider diehards this shit’s not awesome. — DEK