In this Hero Historia, we take an accounting: With so many Riders who aren’t all that special, aren’t there some ladies who deserved the chance to stand proud and shout “HENSHIN?!”
Kamen Rider Majade is the first ever official female secondary Kamen Rider! This is really neat and feels reasonable, following the impactful roles Kamen Riders Jeanne and Na-Go had in recent years. That said, the fact that it took this long highlights the way female characters have been cast aside in the logic of “Kamen Rider is a boy’s show.”
To put some data on it, since Ryuki opened the floodgates to more than three Riders per season, we have seen a total of 243 unique Kamen Rider identities (meaning their own name and suit), but those roles have been held by women only 29 times, 9 of which were in movies or spinoff media.1 Moreover, this counts every time a woman transformed even once using a shared identity. 12% of the total isn’t great for a gender that contains approximately 51% of the human race.
So, building upon this, here is a list of the women who I think would have benefited the most from getting the title of Kamen Rider, whose transformations would have had the most positive impact on their series. The list is sorted with ascending strength of feelings, from “would be neat” up to “I will always be mad about this.”
There will be spoilers below.
The Ur-Example Misaki Yuriko, Denpa-Ningen Tackle (Stronger)
This is the only Showa entry (since we’re focusing post-Ryuki) and it’s a quick one, because all she needs is the title. No new suit, no new effects, you don’t have to change anything other than dialogue! I’m with the Decade crew (as seen in their Net Movies), recognise her contributions and give her the badge.
7: Takigawa Sawa (Build)
Kamen Rider Build feels like a show with fewer Riders than it has, given that with all spinoff media included there are nine by the end, plus non Rider transforming identities like the Hell Bros and the Hokuto Three Crows. Now, Sawa is the spy and information specialist of the team but she gets to display some combat skills, which we find out is the result of her life of training under Nanba Heavy Industries. Of the Nanba agents we see, nearly all of them get to transform. Does Utsumi, a pawn and minor meme character, do enough for the show to get the title of Rider over Sawa? I don’t think so.
6: Saiba Nico (Ex-Aid)
She literally earned it. Normally, this is a figure of speech, but no, Nico used the completely hopeless powers of a Ride Player to clear Kamen Rider Chronicle and earned the right to become Kamen Rider Cronus. This young lady played Dark Souls with her real life for weeks, only for Taiga to overrule her, steal her chance and then lose anyway. Which he should have seen coming, to be honest.
5: Sonoda Mari (Faiz)
The problem with Mari is agency. Agency is a philosophical concept that separates entities with the ability to enact their will from objects, which do not. I’m not saying Mari is totally an object in Kamen Rider Faiz, but she spends more time reacting to the choices others make than she does making her own. Now, giving someone the ability to fight doesn’t automatically impart agency every time (just ask Yamcha), but in Faiz, the threat of violence is often the thing that forces Mari to let someone else take control. Also, Delta is an excellent suit, it should have a primary user whose name I don’t need to look up every time.
4: Sakurai Hana (Den-O)
Ironically, Den-O is a show where the main character doesn’t have much agency. The Imagin, Yuuto, Sakurai, Owner, and Hana herself are the ones making decisions that Ryotaro reacts to. But Hana, whose plot importance grows over the course of the show, spends most of the series confined to the DenLiner. There’s even a very obvious point where she could have gained her Rider form: episodes 9 and 10, where Kintaros is introduced. A major element of this tiny arc is Hana learning to overcome her instinctive hatred of Imagin, forming a bond with Kintaros… who then bonds to Ryotaro and never talks to her again. The buddy cop dynamic that comes from Hana being paired with a slow witted manly bruiser leans to the kind of humour Den-O prefers and would only intensify after Hana is recast as a grade schooler.
3: Aso Megumi (Kiva)
To be as fair as possible, Megumi is already in the 29 listed above for getting to become IXA. Twice (only once in the show). But, in my opinion, her arc, the story of her mother in 1986 and even the growth of IXA’s main user Nago are all improved if Nago swallows his pride enough to retire and she takes over the role. It would be a validating moment for the three generations of Aso women who gave their all to fight. I also know there are people working with Toei who agree, as both the Final Stage live show and the S.I.C Hero Stories give her a Rider identity she gets to keep (albeit ones copied from another character).
2: Takatsukasa Mai (Gaim)
Mai is handed the power to reshape a whole planet, power which can be used to do almost anything the holder can think of, and the only thing she’s allowed to do with it (by the writers and also the power itself in-universe) is give it to a man she thinks deserves it. She activates this power after being vivisected in her sleep and the sum total revenge she takes on her murderer is to walk past him while glowing. He’s very frightened, then someone else kills him without her knowledge. Mai is the overt subject of two textual romantic fixations and three or so subtextual ones and her stated goals are just to return to a life of dancing and hanging out with friends and she can’t even get that. Considering Gaim’s astounding 22 Riders, it seems trivial to let Mai fight for herself.
Honorable Mention: Elizabeth and Queen (W)
This one’s just a missed joke. Kamen Rider W doesn’t need more Riders and Shoutaro’s goofy friends don’t need to do any fighting, but this series has so much comedy and the possibilities of the two inseparable party girls getting this power are clear. It didn’t even need to be in the main series, the Delusion Diaries net shorts are the perfect platform.
1: Shijima Kiriko (Drive)
At the start of the show, Belt-San chooses Shinnosuke to be Drive. He’s the only option. He’s “a superman.” Why? Because he’s smart, dedicated, honest, and capable in a fight. But on the other hand he’s lazy (and possibly suffering from depression exacerbating his lethargy) and tries to refuse the job. So why not Kiriko? She’s smart, dedicated, honest, and capable in a fight and moreover, she wants to be there. Well, the show figuratively breaks the fourth wall in a side series, where we see the one and only time she tried, where she just couldn’t handle the massive power of wearing a car. She gets a pair of custom boots that allow her a miniature Rider Kick, but never transforms. All this in a show with ten officially recognized Riders, none of which are women, not even in movies, and that’s not counting Gold Drive or “Kamen Rider Jun.” Kiriko plays second fiddle to her love interest and brother through the whole series, then post-show we’re told she got pregnant2 and she never appears on screen again, not even in the web series all about heroines teaming up to take the spotlight.
I could go on, but like I said at the top, these are the ones I wanted to talk about the most. I’d like to be clear that I don’t think that these shows are all automatically bad. For all my critiques, I like these shows a lot (Build is top three all time). Being an American adult in 2024, I can recognise that my perspective is very different from the makers of these shows and far from the intended audience. You’re not a bad person if you like or love these shows and can’t bear the thought of changing them, but we should be able to talk about the way our favourite things can fall short.
All that said, what do you think? Would you like to see these versions of the shows? Is there someone you think deserved to make the list? Let me know in the comments to keep the conversation going and I’ll see you in the next installment!
All original images belong to Toei Company Ltd. or Marvel Entertainment, prior to edits made by TokuStats or myself
- Also, if you’re checking my math, do recall that Naki is not a woman. I will not entertain arguments on this point. ↩︎
- Pregnant with a boy who becomes a Rider in the future, even! ↩︎
