Series Review: Kamen Rider Drive

Kamen Rider Drive [2014-2015]

"OKAY! Start your engine!"

Insert your own "Kamen Driver" joke here. Haha, this Kamen Rider rides a car instead of a motorbike, how is he a Kamen Rider, haha. I mean, after we've gotten an oni Kamen Rider, one whose sidecar turns into a giant robot, Kone that rides a bike attached to a time-travelling train, one whose bike transforms into a vending machine, and Kamen Rider Accel, who just straight-up turns into a bike... is a car that much different? Drive isn't even the first Kamen Rider to use a car, that honour goes to Black RX. Post-Double very few of these Kamen Riders really use their motorbikes anyway.

Kamen Rider Drive is released in 2014, right after Gaim, and... and it's a show that I actually ignored for the longest time. Not that I dislike it or anything, but I just wasn't motivated to watch it. I saw the Drive cast both in the crossover movies for Gaim and Ghost when I went through those two series, and... I just wasn't particularly enthused with it. The show itself, though, was pretty fun when I eventually got to it. Drive was the final 'Neo-Heisi' show that I watched, I believe, either this or OOO. And... and for the most part, I don't have much of an impression either way for Drive. I certainly like it, but not enough to sing praises about it like I do some of my favourites. For the most part, what made Drive work for me are the strength of its secondary characters -- Shijima Go/Mach, Chase, and especially near the end of the show, the three primary Roidmudes Heart, Brain and Medic. Not that the main cast are terrible or unlikable! They're fun, they just... don't really leave much of an impression on me, sorry. 

Kamen Rider Drive's vibe is a fair bit more sci-fi inspired compared to the two series directely preceding it (Gaim and Wizard) as well as the one immediately after it (Ghost), and I do like the amount of world-building in this cop show. Because, yes, Drive's whole gimmick is that it is also supposed to be like a Japanese cop show... something those subtleties and parodies fly over most non-Japanese audience's head. Like me. And I acknowledge that it's a me problem and not the show's problem, but it does make a lot of the police-department scenes feel a lot more bland. 

The show's premise is pretty fun, since it involves one of those "there was a huge event prior to the beginning of the show", something that other series like Agito, Zero-One, Wizard, Kabuto and Build all manage to utilize to a great degree. In Drive's case, it's an incident called the 'Global Freeze', an incident where all time seemed to slow down while mysterious artificial robotic lifeforms called Roidmudes wreaked havoc in the city, only to be stopped by a mysterious figure called a Kamen Rider. And a bunch of sentient toy cars called Shift Cars. Our hero, police officer Tomari Shinnosuke, was investigating a case and the Global Freeze caused him to injure his partner during the whole time-freezing thing. 

And a good chunk of the show's early episodes focuses a bit on this. Shinnosuke's whole deal is that he's lost his motivation and is spending so much of his time just not doing anything. Or, to put it simply, he's "lost his drive" to do anything. As part of the Special Crimes Unit, Shinnosuke and his partner, the more no-nonsense lady Shijima Kiriko, end up being thrust into the return of the monstrous Roidmudes. With no way to fight the 'heavy acceleration' phenomenon caused by the presence of the Roidmudes, Shinnosuke ends up encountering a sentient, talking belt, who contains the digitized brain of the scientist Krim Steinbelt (what an ironic comic book superhero name), or, as we learn to call him, Belt-san. As an atoner who was one of the co-creators of the Roidmudes, Belt-san allows Shinnosuke access to him as a transformation belt, but also to the Shift Cars, as well as the powerful car whose parts can turn into Kamen Rider Drive's weapons, the Tridoron 3000. And thus was born Kamen Rider Drive. It's just a bit of a shame that after the initial "I got my drive back" storyline, he's essentially relegated to the relatable generic hero role. That does make him play off Kiriko, Go, Chase and Heart very well, but it also means that I am really struggling to think of what Shinnosuke is like a person. 

There are a bunch of other supporting characters, but they are mostly one-note and the show focuses primarily on Shinnosuke and Kiriko as they investigate the creation of the Roidmudes, the Global Freeze, and take on the 108 Roidmudes, all of which seek to achieve some 'promised number' to be the dominant species on Earth. The early episodes also have the idea that every single Shift Car is alive and sentient as they fly around the screen on edited-out strings, and you even have two-parters involving little Hot Wheels cars having an angsty police drama while the actors hold and talk to these tiny cars. It's an interesting gimmick, but they dropped it entirely around halfway through, something that I felt was a bit odd. At least in Ghost, they stuck with the idea that each collectible toy is also a character in its own right. The heavy acceleration gimmick, at least, they stuck with for a good chunk of the series, and gives the Drive enemy monsters a neat vibe. 

The series doesn't actually really kickstart until we meet the two secondary riders of the show, though. Shijima Go, Kiriko's loud-mouthed brother and the hilariously over-the-top Kamen Rider Mach (or MAH-ha! as he announces it), and the somber, enigmatic emo "reaper of the roidmudes" called Mashin Chaser or Chase. Both characters progress a lot through the story and I would say that they are the heart and soul of the show moreso than Shinnosuke himself, who feels more like the catalyst behind Chase and Go's development more than the actual main character. Go gets to learn to be mature, but it took a while for him to realize that the Roidmudes are more than just mindless xenophobic killing machines -- something that Shinnosuke and Kiriko learned pretty quickly. Meanwhile, Chase has the exact opposite reaction. Essentially a robot with no emotions, he finds strange human emotions welling up inside him as he begins to befriend Kiriko and later Shinnosuke, eventually leading to easily the best 'evil rider becomes good' story that I don't think any other Rider show before or after has ever done quite as smoothly. 

The villains of the show are also pretty fun, although they admittedly do take some time before they become truly characters of their own. The three main long-running Roidmudes Brain, Heart and Medic show up pretty early on, but for the most part they settle into pretty basic toku-villain tropes. Heart is the handsome one with spiky hair and a clear 'main villain' vibe. Brain is the smart one, but also kind of immature. Medic is the girl, all ufufufu. Oh, and Medic and Brain continually fight over Drive's affections as his main right-hand Roidmude, and this does provide with some entertainment mostly due to how hammy Brain's actor Matsushima Shota can be, particularly regarding that handkerchief. While they were pretty disappointing early on and (spoiler alert) their role gets jacked by an even bigger threat in the final ten episodes or so, they end up growing so likable and fun that when these three bickering assholes start actually working with the good guys and jumping in the way of bullets to save their friends, you really feel for Brain and Medic's respective major dramatic scenes near the end of the show. For a trio that I initially felt were a weaker ripoff of villain ensembles done better in other shows (they give me strong Greeed vibes initially) they really do come to their own and become pretty likable characters. 

Whether intentionally or not, Drive as a show does take things pretty slowly in its first half, focusing mostly on standalone two-parters and slowly building up the huge Chase redemption moment. But in a surprising twist on how most Kamen Rider shows go, it actually hits on the accelerator and gets a huge boost in tightening up its storytelling, stakes and character work in the second half of the show. A lot of the revelations about the true main villain, Gold Drive/Banno Tenjuro (Belt-san's old comrade and the father of Go and Kiriko) are delivered and paced surprisingly well -- some other Rider shows do admittedly have the weakness of making exposition about their plot uninteresting or rushed. 

Unfortunately, it's just that... Gold Drive is a supremely hateable dick of a villain, but he's just not that interesting. His plan makes some sense, and I do like his rivalry with his son Go, and I adore his final moments, but... Gold Drive (and his creation Sigma) feels more like a way to get the three good Kamen Riders and the three Roidmudes the audience is attached to to fight against a common enemy. The ending of the show is pretty solid from a narrative standpoint, and there's no part of it that felt rushed or cheated (unnecessary Kamen Rider Ghost cameo notwithstanding), but the fact that I spent the final episode going "man I wish Heart had more time to shine as the main villain". Characters die left and right near the final stretch of the episodes, and just like its predecessor Gaim, the show manages to make each loss and death feel impactful and make you realize just how much they've imprinted themselves in your hearts. 

And let's talk about more weaknesses of the show, because I have been praising it a lot. Shinnosuke being slightly flat is a bit of a problem, but I feel like his interactions with other main leads Go, Chase and Heart does work well with Shinnosuke being relatively mature and level-headed. It's just that his primary character arc -- finding his 'drive' in the world -- gets resolved very quickly in the show, and up until the final couple of episodes he ends up being pretty much stable as the more mature protagonist in contrast to the other main riders and antagonists... which also has the unfortunate side effect of him feeling somewhat more static in the middle portion of the show. He's still likable, but I do wish that he'd gotten a bit more. (On the other hand, one would argue that this is the reason why Mach and Drive are so strongly realized, so it's kind of a balancing act)

A bigger problem, however, is Kiriko. She doesn't quite fall into the "utterly incompetent damsel in distress female cop" that plagues poor Rinko from Wizard, and Kiriko gets to be a badass a lot, but after the first ten or twenty episodes her role is significantly diminished. There's no real reason why she doesn't get a rider form despite the show teasing us many times, and ultimately there's not even any huge drama between her and her father, the main villain of the show. A lot of Go and Chase's character development revolves around protecting her, but Kiriko herself regrettably remains utterly flat throughout the show. She's still likable, for sure, but I really do wish that they did more with her. After his backstory parts are over, Krim Steinbelt also basically gets reduced to getting an obligatory line or two every episode, which I felt could've been done better. 

I've also talked a bit about the comedy, but... a lot of it just doesn't work. It's not a huge part of the show, and later on we go into more traditional stuff like Brain and Medic's antics or Chase's lack of understanding of human emotions and society, but the police comedy stuff... yeah, it's not for me. 

The suits in this show is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I really, really like some of them. Drive base form, Drive Tridoron form, Mach, Mashin Chaser, Brain and Medic are all very good, but a lot of the tire power-ups and the middle alternate forms just feel awkward and clunky (I particularly don't care for Type Technic and Type Formula), and as much as I adore the character, I can't help but feel that Kamen Rider Chaser is a huge step-down from the badassery of Mashin Chaser. Also, as fun as the tire power-ups are, Drive is going to be the start of one-off minor-change alternate forms that are heavily advertised early on in the show, and almost never used later on -- the same problem that I argue also plagues Ghost, Ex-Aid, Build, Zi-O and Zero-One. 

I'm actually surprised at the amount of spin-offs that Drive has (one of them even offers a conclusion to Kamen Rider Faiz of all things), but a lot of them are neat little explorations of the original Global Freeze, the backstories of some characters, and the sequel trilogy movies (the Chaser/Heart/Mach trilogy special) is an interesting way to cap off a lot of the dangling side characters.

Ultimately, Kamen Rider Drive is very solid. There's nothing for me to really complain about ultimately that ruins my enjoyment of the show. It's just that Drive doesn't really do anything particularly spectacularly. Great characterization, great action, great drama. Still, a solid, fun Rider show that I will definitely recommend.