Series Review: Kamen Rider Kabuto

Kamen Rider Kabuto [2006-2007]

"Cast off! Change: Beetle!"

When I got into Kamen Rider as a franchise, I learned a lot about the other previous 'legend Riders' from crossovers. And out of all of the fancy older Kamen Riders, the one that has the most style, that catches my attention the most, is this dude with a slick metallic stag beetle outfit, an almost robotic look, constantly switching forms as he uses "Cast Off" to shed his metal armour pieces to access a sleeker form, and then "Clock Up" to move super-duper fast. Multiple crossover movies would basically have Kabuto team up with his fellow super-fast rider, Faiz, basically having him move in bullet time while the whole world slows around them, fighting against monsters that also move too fast for the eye to see.

And from style alone, Kabuto is perhaps one of my favourite-looking riders. No offense to any other Riders out there, Kabuto is probably who I point to for the most "classic" looking Kamen Rider design. And that's without taking into account just how goddamn cool the whole Cast Off and Clock Up mechanic ended up being.

And being intrigued, as I was, I ended up looking at what's going on with Kabuto's story. It's... it's pretty interesting. A Men in Black style organization called ZECT, who utilizes multiple Kamen Riders to hunt down an alien race called the Worm, who has the ability to perfectly mimic human beings even down to their memories? That honestly sounds like a pretty awesome sci-fi superhero stuff! Sure, it's kinda basic, but after going through some of the... weirder series, I was definitely interested to give Kabuto a try. Everyone I have met had something good to say about Kabuto as a series. I think it's one of the series people like to throw around as a great jumping-on spot to the franchise, and is credited as one of the larger causes of influx of non-Japanese fans into the franchise.

And... and honestly? I respectfully disagree, because I do have a couple of bones to pick with Kabuto. I still like the series enough to watch it to its end in a relatively timely manner, and I very much enjoy the style, but the more I delved into Kabuto as a series, the more I genuinely feel that the reason why Kabuto has so many defenders among the English speaking fandom is that it's one of the first Rider series to get a timely English-subbed release that didn't stop halfway through, making it many people's first complete series. And it's understandable -- it's got enough cool things going on, and it's definitely a relatively solid series (ending notwithstanding), but I definitely think it's far from being one of the best.

Overall, Mostly Spoiler-Free Series Review:

Now, to be fair... Kabuto isn't a terrible series. I've seen other shows that fare a lot worse than Kabuto. But while it certainly has some of the cleanest looking suits both on the Rider and monster side, and certainly has competent actors... the actual 49-episode show is a genuine drag to go through, and a good chunk of it is thanks to how you view Souji Tendou, the protagonist -- the self-styled "man who walks the path of heaven, ruling everything", a gigantic egomaniac who really treads the fine line where his ego is irritating or vaguely funny. And for a good chunk of the series, Tendou's ego falls into the irritating part. The show's also hurt pretty badly by poor pacing, with B-plots being stretched way longer than it should, as well as some bizarre disconnect in the tone the show's trying to show. We could have an episode where we get super-serious revelations about the tragic nature of Sasword, and then cut back to some bizarre deadpan humour about Tendou engaging in a cooking contest with cursed knives and a bizarre Jiiya doppelganger living in the mountain. Unlike most Kamen Rider shows, a lot of the humour in Kabuto is always played straight and utterly deadpan, and that honestly tends to lead to a lot of the supposedly-comedic moments sort of falling flat on their faces.

Throw in the fact that a lot of the revelations aren't sufficiently built up to, and that a lot of the Natives/Worms storyline doesn't really have much of a payoff, and the second half of the series in particular already feels like a mess. And Kamen Rider shows aren't known for their tightly-knit storytelling, but a stronger and more likable cast of characters would've made ignoring some of the bizarre flaws or unexplained plot holes a lot more bearable. Like, what's up with all of the bizarre space/time nonsense? It's brought up in one arc to justify where Dark Kabuto goes to, or where the Hyper Zecter comes from, and then never really mentioned ever again. Where did the Hopper Zecters come from? For that matter, are the Zecters really sentient, and how do they choose the owners? And even then, a lot of the concepts they built up -- the mystery behind the creation of the Zecters, the Shibuya meteorite, the mysterious time-traveling Hyper Kabuto, the specifics of Tendou's backstory... a lot of them all lead to pretty damn underwhelming reveals.

The Worms themselves are honestly what I personally feel to be the biggest waste, because after the first handful of arcs showing just how emotionally horrifying it is to realize that someone who walks and talks like someone you love might be an alien invader ends up being basically reduced to a generic shock-value revelation, and eventually, everything from the true nature of ZECT, the Native tribe, and the three-way war end up being just so utterly underwhelming and under-explained. We don't really see the Worms as actual people, and even when some members of the cast are revealed to be Worms, the focus is less about how they have been fooling everyone, but how other characters should shut up and appreciate who they are... while still massacring other random Worms. It's a huge disconnect, especially compared to other sympathetic monsters in other Kamen Rider series like the Greeed, the Gamma or the Roidmude.

Plus, the plot revelations just sort of randomly stack up without much buildup or payoff starting around the 30's -- something that Kabuto's staunchest defenders would admit -- making the last 15 to 20 episodes feeling particularly bizarre as the show tries to juggle comedy and underwhelming revelations. And unlike some shows (like Decade or Hibiki), Kabuto doesn't even have the excuse of executive meddling to justify any of these. Even a lot of the actual deaths that happen in the final 2-3 episodes felt less like huge resolutions, and more the show remembering that these characters have backstories that needed to be resolved.

Which is a shame, because the initial opening episodes of Kabuto are pretty solid. We establish the two main characters -- Arata Kagami and Tendou Souji. Arata's a typical Kamen Rider protagonist. A go-getter and just a regular dude who wants to help people out -- kinda generic, perhaps, and a bit of a wimp, but finds himself basically denied the chance to even do his job of protecting people from the Worms when the Kabuto Zecter flies to Tendou instead. Tendou, meanwhile, is an arrogant ass... who has that massive, inflated ego for a reason -- he is just that good. He quite literally is perfect, able to basically beat up any Worm or Rider in his path, he can cook, he can paint, he can speak French... he quite literally is a perfect man and everyone around him other than Arata and Hiyori acknowledges just how awesome he is.

And the thing about making a character with a big ego? You can't make him too perfect without flaws, and expect him to be likable. As problematic as Decade was, that's what the writing team does right. Tsukasa is kind of a Mary Sue himself, having random skills and having a massive ego, but the show and Decade's supporting cast constantly berate and tell Tsukasa off when he's being a dick. Whenever anyone in Kabuto tries to tell Tendou off, they either eventually kowtow to Tendou because of reasons -- there are a lot of the early scenes where Hiyori basically ends up finding herself cooking for Tendou because he tells her to, or things of that sort. The universe quite literally revolves around Tendou because he's so beloved by the writers, and while it's somewhat amusing for like two or three episodes, by the time I was in episode ten and Tendou just keeps looking more and more perfect while still acting like a massive dickbag, I just find myself really disliking him. As the series goes on, Tendou tends to pull new power-ups out of thin air, with the Hyper Zecter and the other non-Gatack Zecters quite literally being drawn across space-time to give him a power-up because he's just that worthy, but Tendou himself goes through very, very minimal character development -- he basically ends up vaguely respecting Arata in the last five or six episodes. Emphasis on the 'minimal'.

There are admittedly some huge revelations that inform us of what his actual plan is, but when we do get those revelations, Tendou's attitude in the earlier episodes berating everyone else for being naive for protecting some Worms and being sentimental ends up painting Tendou as a massive, massive hypocrite (Tendou's reason to wipe out the worms is to allow his Worm-sister Hiyori, who is also amnesiac, to live peacefully). The problem is, both the writing and the scripting are so firmly in Tendou's side that it paints Arata's questioning of Tendou as Arata being the unreasonable one. The climax even has Tendou go around destroying seeming anti-Worm weaponry without bothering to tell anyone else that the anti-Worm weaponry actually is a generic doomsday device that turns humans into Worms, expecting everyone to let him do what's best for them, while at the same time not even trying to explain himself.

The difference between Tendou's writing with other "me-first" characters like, say, Batman, is that Batman-centric narratives will highlight that Batman's loner attitude, while pragmatic, is harmful. With Tendou? He quite literally is the best, and even the writing doesn't acknowledge any of his many flaws. I'm not sure -- maybe if the writing was a bit more hammy, maybe if Tendou's actor was allowed to be a bit more expressive, I wouldn't be so soured by Souji Tendou? We've had assholish protagonists like Takumi and Tsukasa, or egomaniacs like Sento and Sougo, that still end up feeling likable, because their flaws were written as flaws, thus making them relatable. The end result is a bizarre show where Tendou has the personality of an arrogant "the world revolves around me" rival-type character and Arata's the typical plucky protagonist, but they never go through any of the expected character development, and Tendou's specialness continues through the end.

And I guess we'll quickly go through the side-characters in quick succession before we jump to the spoiler section. Kabuto is a show rich in riders, with Gatack, TheBee (hee hee hee), Drake, Sasword, Punch Hopper and Kick Hopper all being pretty well-defined secondary characters, and that's without counting the non-transforming ones. But that's honestly not really enough to carry the series forwards. Gatack/Arata is perhaps the one we spend the most time with, but while he definitely is better written than Tendou and has a lot of neat character moments, the show wiffle-waffles on how they want Arata to be. Is he always second best to Tendou, or is he going to carve his own path? Arata's overall story is pretty neat, but it suffers from the fact that it's basically the same character arc with a lot of other characters in the franchise as a whole, and his naivety and emotional outbursts are repeated way too many times.

TheBee, despite having the best Rider name ever, never really has a proper, permanent user, jumping from minor character to minor character until eventually just phased out entirely -- it's basically a way to work Yaguruma and Kageyama into the show and make early ZECT feel more alive, before their eventual expulsion from ZECT and the two of them being the most hilarious parody characters in the show, the Hopper Bros. Which are admittedly kind of hilarious, with Kageyama and Yaguruma basically going around as this pair of emo punks talking about how they can "see hell" and acts all emo and shit, but they never really outgrow their ridiculous antics which they also play straight with deadpan humour (it works for the Hopper Bros, though), but the way it's concluded felt sudden and shoehorned.

The two other Riders that are kinda wild-cards are Kazama Daisuke (Kamen Rider Drake), who basically weaves in and out of the show for short three-episode arcs a couple of times, an aesthetic who has a relationship with an amnesiac little girl called Gon, and... and he's honestly just kinda there, y'know? An interesting recurring character, but not enough to be super memorable. Kamishiro Tsurugi (Kamen Rider Sasword) is the exact opposite. He shows up around halfway through the series, and is basically just in every episode proclaiming that he is "the man who stands at the top of [X]!", and Tsurugi is kind of a parody of Kabuto himself, basically claiming to stand at the top of cooking, or romance, or failing, or anything at all, while actually being the sheltered princely son of the Discabil family. While Sasword does have a tragic story involving his past, it's ultimately dragged on and on until you just really don't care anymore, while the actual character just cavorts around and acts like a complete buffoon, repeating the same old "sheltered rich boy has no idea how the real world works" plotline over and over again.

The non-rider characters don't fare much better. A lot of them are just there to add extra bodies to either ZECT or the civilian hangout of the show, the shop where Hiyori works in, but ultimately despite a bunch of the ZECT characters hanging on till the end, the only one that honestly really matters ends up being Hiyori, who turns out to be super-duper important to the plot despite her amnesia, and... and she ends up being spirited away for 20+ episodes, before returning back and basically being used as nothing much more than a plot device. The actual main villains of the show are pretty bland, with the Native Worm representatives being pretty obviously not on the good guys' side and not having a lot of personality, while Dark Kabuto, despite being a clone of Mr. Perfect Heaven's Path himself, ends up being so notably outclassed that I never actually bought him as a threat.

And... and ultimately, I ended Kabuto with a sense that the show could be so much more. It took me a long, long while to finally finish the series, with me going through Drive, OOO and Ryuki in-between the time that I started episode 1 of Kabuto and ended at episode 49, because it's honestly kind of hard to really sit through. I do admit that the Clock Up fights are really fun, but they eventually just kind of drop the super-speed stuff entirely when Kabuto gets his Hyper Mode. Which is a shame -- Kabuto genuinely looks visually great, and I will always enjoy any action scene featuring him, but as far as the actual series goes, I honestly do find it as perhaps one of the weaker entries among the Heisei Kamen Rider series. Power to you if you actually love Kabuto, but between the hard-to-like protagonist and the inconsistent tone and pacing, I really do feel like this one could've been a lot better.

Characters [Spoilers Ahoy]

As usual, I'm going to go through all of the characters and go through them briefly one by one. 

Kagami Arata (Kamen Rider Gatack/TheBee III):
And let's start with Kagami first, a.k.a. Gatack, a.k.a. the third TheBee. And... I think we've discussed him a fair bit in the main review part... he's the earnest, plucky, and sometimes overly-naive protagonist, and while technically the secondary protagonist to Tendo's numero uno, I do feel that Kagami deserves equal billing as one of the two main characters of the series. If nothing else, the writing for Kagami is certainly a lot better than it is for the relatively static Tendo. If nothing else, the writers for the anniversary series Zi-O agrees with me on this, allowing Kagami to finally be recognized by the Kabuto Zecter more than ten years after the whole Kabuto series.

And Kagami's... he's initially just kind of here as sort of the everyman that isn't quite sure about what's going on. He's part of ZECT, sure, and he knows enough as a random ZECT trooper agent about both the Worms and the Rider project, but is completly blindsided by so many things-- like the Worms' ability to mimic the memories of their victims, or Tendo's arrival, and whatnot. Kamen Rider Kabuto is also a series that initially deals with secret identities a bit, with Kagami keeping his life and work at ZECT a secret from his friends (basically this just means Hiyori), but that aspect gets sort of dropped. Ultimately, Kagami's a foil to Tendou. He's the straight man to Tendou's antics, the one that questions what the fuck Tendou is doing sometimes and is without fail almost always proven wrong because Tendou's always perfect and doing the right thing. Eventually, and after a very brief stint with TheBee Zecter, Kagami ends up finally becoming a permanent Rider. It took 22 episodes, but it's a genuinely sweet moment for the underdog when he finally braves the deadly Gatack Zecter and ends up transforming into the "God of Battle", Gatack. And... and it's something that sort of gets swept under the rug as turns out Kagami is part of an ancient deal made with his father and a clan of Native Worms, and a good chunk of his angst in the later part of the series is whether his efforts are for naught because it was his engineered destiny... which also gets swept under the rug in favour for a pretty generic "trust me" friendship moment with Tendou. Ultimately, he's... he's honestly more of a reactionary character, if admittedly a very likable one.


Tendou Souji (Kamen Rider Kabuto)
Our main lead, Tendou Souji, the man who walks the path of heavens to rule over everything, and a man who has the compulsion to say "grandmother says..." before delivering some zen koan, is Mr. Perfect Gary Sue himself, Tendou Souji. And... and what's there to say about Tendou that I haven't said before? He's arrogant, but rightfully so, because the world quite literally revolves around him. Women love him, he wins every fight he's in, he's a first-rate cook, he's able to speak French and English, he can beat up random super-spy agents with his bare fists... you wish you could be Tendo Souji, and all that. He's no-nonsense, he will wipe out all the Worms, and woe betide anyone who gets in his way.

And while his identity is shrouded in mystery and it's initially implied that he has something to do with the death of Hiyori's parents during the Shibuya meteor incident, turns out that Tendou is actually Hiyori's elder brother of some sort -- it's kind of convoluted, but basically, Tendou's parents were killed and mimicked by Native Worms... who also mimicked Tendou's unborn sister. The Worm-mimic parents were killed by the Shibuya meteorite, but not before raising the Worm mimic of Tendou's sister, which he resolves to protect no matter what, regardless of whether she's a Worm or not.

To complicate matters even more, Tendou also lives with a different little sister, Jyuka, which is his step-sister... and basically, Tendou's relationships with Jyuka and Hiyori are probably the only thing that humanizes him. Because he goes into a manic big brother mode whenever any of those two are potentially harmed. And, as mentioned above, the fact that Tendou is specifically trying to get rid of the human/Worm conflict by killing all of the Worms other than his own sister is extremely hypocritical, particularly the couple of times when he actually killed some less-than-harmful Worms. Again, sadly, we never really get Tendou being properly challenged about whether his status as the one who walks the path of heaven is rightfully deserved or not, because power-ups appear before him and he can just figure out everything. Honestly, the concept of Tendou as a man who is supposedly perfect and the best isn't bad, but the fact that he never really grows out of it, nor does he ever get that aspect challenged, really ends up making him a pretty bland protagonist.

Some people do note and analyze that Tendou might be a partial deconstruction and a bit of a parody of the "god mode character", but honestly, I don't see that -- or if he's meant to come off that way, the show doesn't do a particularly good job doing so. Some other people note that Tendou works as a decoy protagonist for Arata, which... kinda-sorta makes sense, but even at the end of the show, Tendou's screentime and focus still eclipse Arata. I'm not sure if the intention was meant to be one or the other, but... eh.


Kamishiro Tsurugi (Kamen Rider Sasword)

He gets a whole lot of screentime, and basically takes over the resident comedic relief the moment he's introduced. And... and honestly, it gets old fast. As noted above, Tsurugi claims to be another person chosen by God, boasting that he's the top in the world at whatever it is people are doing. And while not entirely competent, Tsurugi's behaviour tends to be played more for laughs because he's an ignorant rich boy. At least he's competent as the scorpion-themed Sasword, even if he tend to cause more fuck-ups especially early on in his appearances. Eventually, though, Sasword ends up being in full comedy relief mode, whether it be him trying to restore the Discabil family fortune, his antics with the sacred family blade Discalibur or trying to hit on Misaki because of his sister complex, or befriending his best friend KaGA~mi. And, trust me, while Sasword is fun in his first five or six episodes or so, he gets old really fast. 

Thankfully, Sasword does have some nuance to him. Initially introduced as a Punisher-style hero hunting for a mysterious gray Worm who has killed his beloved sister (Tsurugi has one hell of a sister complex), the audience and Arata later learn that the very Worm that killed Tsurugi's sister is... Tsurugi himself. Because the Tsurugi we've been following throughout the series is actually a Worm who has killed the Kamishiro siblings, took Tsurugi's form and memories... and completely forgot that he's a Worm, except during times of stress. The problem is that while this is certainly a tragic storyline, the among of episodes between the revelation and the payoff is basically half the show, and while both moments are pretty strong, everything in between is honestly just a bunch of silly comedy that's just buying time, waiting for the series finale before doing anything with Sasword. I'm not going to complain too much, though, because at least Sasword's story, what little it is, ends up being executed decently. 

Yaguruma Sou (Kamen Rider TheBee I / Kick Hopper)
The Hell Bros time! Yaguruma was originally introduced as a badass ZECT agent, leader of the Shadow squad, preaching about "perfect harmony" and basically being a team player. Everything that Tendou isn't. He ends up being the second Rider we see in the show, being the first out of four people who would don TheBee Zecter (hee hee, TheBee) and basically proving himself to be as competent as Kabuto... but due to some angry competition with Tendou and an obsession to beat him (it involves tofu -- Kabuto's weird that way), Yaguruma gets kicked out of ZECT and stays out of the show for a while...

...Until he comes back after his subordinate Kageyama's been similarly disgraced. We never learn where he got the Hopper Zecters, or why he suddenly swapped out his suit for some leather, chains and cowboy boots, but he shows up as Kick Hopper, proclaiming that he's seen the hell that other people can't see, and basically acts as a parody of darker-and-edgier characters in these superhero shows. Sadly we really don't do anything much with the Hopper Bros afterwards, but it's easy to see why they're so goddang popular in the fandom. The way they talk about falling into shadows and their bizarre brotherly (and some might say, outright romantic) relationship is the only time where the deadpan, ridiculousness-played-straight comedy of the show ends up working out. It's just kind of a shame that in the greater scheme of things, the Hopper Bros are just kinda in the background.


Kageyama Shun (Kamen Rider TheBee II / Punch Hopper)

Kageyama gets to stick around a bit longer. Initially succeeding his disgraced team leader as the second TheBee, Kageyama ends up being a bit of a rival to Tendou and Arata... and is kind of a loose canon. Kageyama's kind of a dick, and basically ended up failing his boss Mishima, making an enemy of Arata when he tried to trick Arata into killing Tendou, and eventually "saw hell" when TheBee Zecter rejected him during a multi-way fight between ZECT, Kabuto, the Worms and his former commander, Kick Hopper. And thus thrown out by ZECT, Kageyama ends up being recruited by his "aniki" (big brother) Yaguruma, and he becomes Punch Hopper.


And, again, the Hopper Bros are pretty hilarious for what they are, especially their random emo lines, constantly comparing themselves to trash and talking about how they can't see the light or whatever. They're pretty fun for what they are, and Kageyama gets a brief time to shine when he tries to "return to the light" and reclaim TheBee once more... but everything that goes on with Kageyama's storyline is played up for laughs, even his attempted redemption. Eventually he dies when he wears the plot device necklace that the Natives are distributing, which transforms him into a Worm and ends up as such an anticlimactic end when Yaguruma is forced to put down the Worm-transformed Kageyama. As much as I do like the Hopper Bros' antics, this is definitely a death that felt randomly shoehorned into the climax. The Bros are at least pretty funny, even if they're not particularly well written or developed. The actors clearly are having fun, as are the dialogue writers.


Kazama Daisuke (Kamen Rider Drake)
There was apparently a fair amount of scheduling problems with Daisuke's actor, meaning that out of the secondary riders, Daisuke's the one that appears the least. That's not a bad thing, though, because in the main story arcs that he shows up in, Daisuke goes through perhaps the most earnest and well-paced storylines out of the non-Gatack, non-Kabuto riders. The first one involves him just being kind of a freelancer who just wants to do his job killing Worms while being a beautician, all the while caring for an amnesiac little girl called Gon who survived a Worm attack. Daisuke and Gon are a fun pair, and the arrogant Daisuke eventually relenting and allowing Gon to find peace and return to her mother is well-done... as is the follow-up arc of Gon regaining her memories as Daisuke's partner, and trying to make sure Daisuke understands that they're a team. It's a pretty solid storyline, even if it does admittedly suffer from some pretty eye-rolling convenient amnesia.

Not my favourite rider of the series, but not one I dislike.


Dark Kabuto
Dark Kabuto is a mysterious person trapped in the enigmatic Area X, where ZECT is experimenting on something, and ends up abducting Hiyori before arriving in a slightly modified version of Kabuto's suit. Says something that the antagonist that makes Kabuto put the most effort is essentially a clone of him, yeah? Dark Kabuto's basically as conceited and cocky as the real Kabuto, except the actor clearly loves hamming it up a lot more as Dark Kabuto. Turns out, though, that Dark Kabuto is the first of a new generation of experiments by the Natives, a human that is transformed into a Native and forced to mimic Tendou. Which is kind of convoluted, but okay? Dark Kabuto himself doesn't really have a whole ton of personality beyond being evil, and later on regretful, and ends up sacrificing himself when he takes away the Native leader with him. Kind of a bland villain, if we're being honest, even if Dark Kabuto's suit is pretty cool.

Kind of shame, then, that he's basically never felt like a threat, more of an annoyance because he's the only one that can access the pocket dimension where he's holding Hiyori. The fact that he doesn't have a Dark Hyper Kabuto form means that Tendou alone already has a leg up on Dark Kabuto, and that's without calling in for help. Gotta feel bad for this dude, he really doesn't stand a chance.


Kusakabe Hiyori
Characters like Hiyori is kind of a recurring trope among Kamen Rider. A mysterious girl with a mysterious past and partial amnesia, strongly tied into the main mystery of the plot, without any real agency of her own as the other main characters try to figure out what's going on with her? With Hiyori, though, she gets the brunt of it pretty badly, spending a good chunk of the episode off-screen and abducted into a bizarre space-time paradise by Dark Kabuto. She does get a couple of neat scenes early in the series, basically being the only one to give Tendou any sort of grief -- although she still unfortunately obeys a lot of Tendou's "cook for me, don't complain!" verbal abuse, as well as some really obvious written-as-flirtation lines between Tendou and Hiyori prior to the revelation of their relationship, both of which are pretty uncomfortable to watch.

There is an attempt to drive a wedge between her and Tendou when she mistakes Tendou as the killer of her parents in the Shibuya incident, but turns out that she's his sister, and also a Worm, and... and honestly, after the abduction and her eventual rescue, we don't really mention her Worm-ness at all, and Hiyori just sort of gets shoved into the background. Part of it is technically because of her actress's health (which necessitated the hiatus and kidnapping in the first place), but honestly, it's not like the character really had anything going on for her beyond "she has some vendetta due to an encounter with Kabuto in the past".


Mishima Masato (Gryllus Worm/TheBee IV)
Oh hey, it's freaking Goro-chan from Ryuki! And that's probably the most memorable thing abotu Mishima. He's basically your typical obstructive bureaucrat for ZECT, basically the face making all the amoral decisions. Sure, he doesn't go out of his way to launch bombs or anything, but he's clearly a massive dick who doesn't really care about any of his subordinates, and... and basically spends the entire series just giving that assholish, condescending look to the camera. He briefly becomes another wielder of TheBee for all of two episodes, and actually ends up being kind of the final enemy faced in the series with the revelation that he's been transformed into the Gryllus Worm, the strongest among the Natives. Mishima is certainly kind of an interesting antagonist for the series to end on, and definitely a far more interesting one than Negishi, but I dunno... I really wished they had let him do more, y'know? He's just such a one-dimensional character for the rest of the story that I kept referring to him as "Goro" until the last episode when I learned his name.


Tadoroko Shuichi & Misaki Yuzuki
Part of Arata's ZECT team, Tadoroko basically acts as the stern mentor, and Misaki acts as the serious partner lady. They show up practically in every episode, yet they... really doesn't have much going on about them, yeah? They basically go around the same sort of "should we trust ZECT or Kagami?" plot ad nauseam, without really having much going on other than them being stern. Misaki ends up being the substitute for Sasword's sister complex, being deified as "Misakinu" and ending up at the butt of a bunch of lovey-dovey obsession jokes that is nowhere as funny as the show thinks it is, and it basically just builds up to the eventual tragedy when Sasword eventually dies. Tadoroko, meanwhile, is revealed to be a Native Worm around the final arc, but honestly, we really don't do anything much with that information other than yet another assertion that not all Worms are evil.


Kagami Riku
Arata's dad, Kagami Riku, ends up being revealed to be the head of ZECT, and is all shrouded in mystery and whatnot. He's clearly pulling strings, he knows a lot more than he lets on, and he gives a lot of enigmatic lines about what's going on with the mysterious Area X and the Rider Project... and, again, the revelations really doesn't feel all that amazing. He's basically kind of an accessory for Arata's story, giving him someone to angst about, while Riku himself felt woefully underused throughout the rest of the season.


Tendou Jyuka, Gon, Jiiya & Takatori Renge
These are basically the "satellite characters", because I really don't have a whole ton to say about them. Jyuka is a happy, super-excited little sister that basically hangs out her god-like big brother and lives a happy life, and basically exists to show that Tendou has a life outside of being Kabuto, and also to be a damsel in distress a couple of times. Gon is the little kid in Drake's storyline, and has actually a pretty well-done storyline for the arc that focused on her amnesia.

Jiiya, Sasword's butler-slash-adoptive-father, is perhaps the one out of these four to have the most screentime, but is basically an exaggerated version of Batman's Alfred. He gets a lot of great hammy lines, and while Tsurugi's comedy bits tend to be hit-and-miss, Jiiya and Tsurugi together never fails to be hilarious. Jiiya does get a couple of mini storylines going on here and there that basically shows off just how much he loves his charge, but otherwise he's still kind of a satellite character.

And then there's Renge, who is Tendou's subordinate in the brief moment that Kabuto joins ZECT, and ends up being such a fangirl for Tendou's friendship and cooking that she basically became a permanent fixture among the supporting cast. She... she fights with string, but ultimately is kind of just there.


Native Worms: Mamiya Rena, Nogi Reiji, Negishi
The big revelation that the Native Worms are a third faction of Worms that arrived earlier than the Shibuya meteorite, and is working with ZECT for cooperation, is an interesting one, but we quickly learn that they have their own plans going on that doesn't mean complete happy cooperation. Mamiya Rena, the Uca Worm, is the one that has the most face-time for the middle portion of the show, acting as the Natives' main face. She's got a neat little face-net-veil thing, and gets a fair amount of awesome lines, before getting thrown into a pretty neat, if heartbreaking, bit as her human and Worm personas end up fighting for control, and she has to be destroyed by the Kamen Riders. Kind of a shame, though, that this seeming buildup of human and Worm personas fighting for control never really comes up again -- Hiyori and Tadoroko are almost always human all the time, while Sasword's conflict is less about two personalities, but more about keeping the beast side in check. . See what I mean about Kabuto introducing plot points that are never really followed up again?

Reiji, the Cassis Worm, is notable because he lasted a whole long while, basically acting as a recurring enemy for almost ten episodes and being a pretty fun smarmy bastard, eventually evolving so much that he can copy and reflect Kamen Rider attacks. He's a neat little miniboss! Negishi is supposedly the leader of the Natives, but ends up just sort of being completely eclipsed by Mishima and Dark Kabuto, and is sort of kinda pointless.

Costumes & Gimmicks
As mentioned above, one thing that Kabuto does get right is the costume department. The Riders all look absolutely slick (I would 100% buy toys of the cast), with Kabuto, TheBee and Sasword in particular looking pretty damn amazing. Each rider comes with both an armored form that they start out the battle with, where after activating the "Cast Off", they, well, cast off their armour and activate their true form. While mostly it's kind of gimmicky, it does give Kabuto a pretty unique little gimmick, and that's before we get into the pretty cool "Clock Up" fight sequences. I did note that the clock up stuff does get phased out after the 20's, sort of like some other cool gimmicks in other Rider shows, but it's definitely one of the things that just gives Kabuto and company a unique style that always makes Kabuto's speedy fight scenes in any multi-rider crossover movies (usually paired up with Faiz) to be pretty distinctive and awesome. 


Kabuto doesn't really feature a whole ton of power-ups, probably because each rider has two forms already, and characters are more likely to swap Zecters than actually power-up. The only one to do so, of course, is Tendou, who accesses the Hyper Zecter, basically transforming into a bulkier and more Kamen Rider Stronger inspired form of his regular look -- as far as final forms go, Kabuto's actually pretty subtle, and I appreciate this. It only gets to look super duper grandiose when Hyper Kabuto is about to actually attack, at which point some fancy rainbow bug-wings of energy burst out of Kabuto's back. 

Plus, y'know, the Riders are all bug-themed, which is definitely a huge plus for me. All the Worms are named after Latin family/genus names of arthropods and molluscs, which is actually a neat little genius bonus there. The monster designs in this one is all right. Pretty basic stuff, although the one that really does stand out the most is ironically the most basic worm, the Salis/coccoon form. 

The Zecters themselves, while not quite as sentient as some other gimmicks (Belt-san and Kivat this ain't), does act as one of the few transformation devices in the Heisei era to be at least partially sentient, with them flying around and apparently having the ability to 'choose' who to bond to. It was a huge plot point that Arata's pluckiness was what made the Gatack Zecter bond to him, it was a huge plot point that the Kabuto Zecter rejected everyone else, it was a plot point that TheBee Zecter basically abandons everyone it doesn't deem worthy, and it was a plot point that Tendou is so super awesome that all the secondary riders' Zecters swarm to him. Sadly, like so many other things in Kamen Rider Kabuto, the real nature of the Zecters isn't really explained beyond a vague "yeah, the Natives and ZECT sort of cooperated, mumblemumble". 


The weapons and bike in this one are... they're pretty neat, but not super memorable. Hyper Kabuto's ultimate sword is hilarious, though, in that it basically summons all the other Zecters (bar Gatack and the Hoppers), wherever they are, sometimes interrupting the transformations of the other Riders. 

Movies & Specials:

• Kamen Rider Kabuto: God Speed Love: Like most pre-Double movies, this one is more of some alternate-continuity stuff that features a bunch of movie-exclusive baddies, but also kinda-sorta ties in with the main continuity by being responsible for the Shibuya meteorite? The concept of a prequel stemming from an alternate timeline conflict bringing forth the meteorite to the 'prime' Kabuto timeline is interesting, but God Speed Love is simultaneously so slow-paced and also tries to do way too much with Neo-ZECT, a post-apocalyptic future without water, the Arata/Hiyori romance, three new riders (the main antagonist, Caucasus, is extremely bland), the Ladder to Heaven project and honestly it's really hard for me to care for the new status quo when all the characters both new and old just bite the dust pretty quickly and in quick succession.
• Kamen Rider Kabuto: Hyper Battle DVD: Birth, Hyper Gatack Form! Basically an excuse to show off Hyper Gatack in its only appearance, as with all older Hyper Battle DVD's, it's basically kind of nonsensical wacky stuff. Arata's funny, though, as he tries to emulate Tendou.