Movie Review: Kamen Rider ZO

Kamen Rider ZO [1993]

So in the nebulous period between the Showa and Heisei eras we've got a bunch of one-off movies that were meant to revitalize Kamen Rider, although obviously now we know that none of these managed to really take off and it's not until 2000's Kuuga that the franchise was catapulted back into mainstream media. But between 1989's Black RX and 2000, there are a bunch of projects that tried to revitalize the project, and I haven't actually seen most of these one-off movies until recently.

It's actually quite impressive just how many cameos ZO (pronounced Zed-Oh, although the title is never spoken once in his movie) has gotten after only really appearing in a single 48-minute movie, basically counted as a 'main rider' and showing up in basically any sort of movie with an 'all riders return' motif. For most of the fandom, though, ZO is sort of just "J, but he can't grow big and just does kicks in the background". So I decided to watch the movie to see what the dude is all about. 

And... it's a relatively solid, if forgettable movie. After Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue failed to live up to expectations, they attempted to reboot the series with ZO, following a lot of the same concepts that the original Takeshi Hongo Kamen Rider was based on. Unfortunately... that's all there is to the movie. Nothing the movie does really damns it, but it feels like it's a story we've seen before. Our main character, Masaru Aso, doesn't really have any sort of personality trait beyond being a stoic heroic man, and he's driven by a voice in his head to protect a young boy called Hiroshi Mochizuki. He fights monsters, and around halfway through he finds out that Hiroshi's father is the scientist who experiments on him and fuses him with a grasshopper, turning him into the mutant Kamen Rider. And after this discovery, he hunts down the monsters that kidnapped Hiroshi, finding out that another creation of the doctor, Neo Lifeform (or "Neonoid"), has basically grown out of control, having taken a creepy humanoid-merged-onto-a-wall form and attempts to become the perfect being, absorbing ZO himself until Hiroshi's power of child earnestness (tm) calls him and he breaks free, beating up the villain. 

That's the entire plotline of the movie, and... and it's very, very simple and seems to be pretty dang derivative from the typical Kamen Rider mythos. Regrettably, this means that other than having a fancy new suit, ZO doesn't really have much of an identity in terms of any sort of unique powers, character quirk or characterization. He's just some cyborg dude with a leather jacket, y'know? Those are a dime a dozen among the people who bear the name Kamen Rider. 

Also, I'm not entirely sure what's up with that one random giant grasshopper buddy that's never really explained. Not the biggest fan of the rather random song segment, other than 'we need an insert song, let's cut to a shot of trees and fields'. 

What is impressive, however, are the monster suits. I have to admit that I'm pretty indifferent about ZO, but looking at the monster suits? The primary monster we get to see, "Doras" (none of the names are given in the movie itself), is a very, very cool grasshopper-based monster that looks like it's created in the same sort of design headspace that gave us designs like Shin Kamen Rider or Another Agito, looking absolutely grisly and pretty damn cool. The Koumori Man ("Bat Man") is kinda whatever other than the brief eyes-on-the-palm Pan's Labyritnh gimmick, but the Kumo Woman ("Spider Woman") is a surprising treat! I admittedly haven't really seen too much stop-motion monsters in tokusatsu, but the Kumo Woman segment with this monstrous Drider-esque monster is easily the visual highlight of this movie. 

Still, as cool as the monsters are... the movie itself is just solid, and a lot of this just feels 'serviceable'. I suppose it's a reason why a lot of the actual shows that ended up being picked up into full 50-episode-plus television shows end up trying to distinguish themselves with a unique concept and gimmick. Otherwise, this movie ends up feeling pretty bland and derivative, despite there being a large amount of cool stuff in it. Bit of a shame, but for any Kamen Rider fan, I do certainly recommend checking this movie out just because of how cool the monster suits are. It's just that everything else has a significant 'seen that, done this' kind of feel to it.