With the tokusatsu community abuzz about Ride Kamens, the team behind it revealed even more information about the upcoming project, this past weekend.
Early this weekend, the Ride Kamens social media team provided new updates, revealing the information they had teased in their initial posts. In case you missed it, you can catch up on what Ride Kamens is and what information we’ve received here.
With regards to the new news, first things first, the biggest piece of information we received is a full teaser trailer. This has, fortunately, been subtitled by fans which you can watch below.
From this trailer, we not only get a full body look at the Ride Kamens version of Ichigo and their driver, but four other people; one of whom, I think is safe to assume at this point, is going to turn into Ride Kamen Den-O. From this, it’s also clear that, firstly, this game will feature original characters turning into reimagined versions of beloved Kamen Riders, similar to ULTRAMAN, the spin off/sequel to the classic Ultraman series that reimagined the Ultra Brothers as heroes in power armour. Secondly, this game appears to be trying to appeal more to a female demographic. From the focus on attractive males all designed by Utsumi Hiroko, someone who’s worked on some of the biggest Shōjo (girls) manga adaptations like Banana Fish (2018) and Free! (2013), and the fact that the developer Liber Entertainment games mainly make Idol collecting games, make it very apparent this is not something aiming just at tradition Rider fans but a new demographic. All of this could just be their way of making each Rider unit as appealing as possible but, to me at least, it seems like they are targeting a female demographic, something that Rider has traditionally avoided doing but have begun to do more recently with the franchises first female secondary with Kamen Rider Majade. It’s good to see them expanding.
In amongst the new information was a story synopsis, which was translated by Flame over on Discord, the synopsis is as follows:
The story takes place in “Rainbow Face City,” a city where nature and civilisation are in harmony. One day, the protagonist learns of the existence of a “Masked Rider” who has lost his true memory due to the remodeling of the human body performed by “Chaos-ism. The protagonist takes over the role of “agent” supporting the Masked Rider from his late father. Together with 16 Masked Riders, all of whom have different ages, professions, and beliefs, he becomes involved in a battle to change their “predestined destiny” and regain their memories!
This tells us the role that we will be playing in this game. We are the sixteen Riders’ “guy in the chair”, coordinating with them from base, filling in for our recently passed father, in a battle to regain all our memories. As far as narrative conceits to include the player and justify them being faceless while ordering all the gotcha units they rolled for, “you’re the guy in the chair, feeding them info” is a pretty solid one.
We also got a tease of the sixteen Riders this silhouette:
Additionally, we got this image showing the silhouette for the other main Riders.
All in all, pretty interesting stuff. I’m not sure if this will ever be released outside of Japan but, as someone that really liked the previously mentioned Ultraman spin off and its Netflix anime adaptation, I’m excited to see Kamen Rider take a stab at its own equivalent.
What do you think of Ride Kamens? Are you excited ? Who do you hope makes it in the first sixteen? Do you think this will see a release outside of Japan? I look forward to reading your comments. As always, I’ve been Ethan: Writer, reviewer and transforming Kamen Rider pretty boy for The Toku source. I’ll see you next time.
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