Surely Toei would want to have Kamen Rider get in on that level of success.
One must wonder why Kamen Rider has very little presence in the west when Toei’s sister series Super Sentai would be localized into the massively popular Power Rangers franchise. Sure I’m still a newbie when it comes to this massive franchise, but I want more as seeing men in badass costumes fighting monsters on motorcycles is awesome! But seeing how hard it is to watch more of Kamen Rider, it had me thinking “Why is it so hard to watch Kamen Rider here in the west?” So let’s go through my observations on the obstacles in watching one of the most important Tokusatsu franchises ever. This is especially frustrating as I have seen a few episodes of Kamen Rider Amazons along with the short films Kamen Rider ZO and Kamen Rider J, to which I thoroughly enjoyed. So Toei has no excuse to jump in with a western push for Kamen Rider in this day and age of globalized media. Not to mention the only thing holding Tsuburaya back was them dealing with a massive legal nightmare lasting over a decade. It’s especially insulting when their competitor Tsuburaya Productions has lately been going on a warpath bringing their flagship Toku series Ultraman to westerners with nonstop Blu-Ray releases, an exclusive streaming deal with Shout Factory, and even simulcasting their latest season Ultraman Z on their official YouTube channel with official English subtitles for free. Instead, Toei simply airs it in Japan with little regard for any other markets wanting to see it. Especially when a season of Kamen Rider has over thirty episodes, beggers truly do have to be choosers.īut what really peaked my irritation for the lack of western accessibility to Kamen Rider is this year Toei and Team Rider had a golden opportunity to change that with a brand new season Kamen Rider Saber, which was eagerly awaited by fans and even some of the cast hoping this season was to get international love. A Tokusatsu Fan’s FrustrationĪs I have said before I am not above piracy but the difficulties with Kamen Rider are that many had to fansub (when fans subtitle a work themselves) and not to mention many different opinions on where to start. So legally I only have scraps to work with.
It’s even more insulting that Toei has an official YouTube channel where a lot of their tokusatsu works for can be viewed for free, but very few actually have official English subtitles.
Sadly when it comes to official channels, Toei and its subsidiary Team Rider has been lackadaisical with bringing Kamen Rider to the west with Shout Factory only having the original Kamen Rider and Kamen Rider Kuga available for streaming along with the Amazon Prime exclusive Kamen Rider Amazons. Unfortunately, the two things holding me back are where to start and where to watch.
Why is it so hard to watch Kamen Rider here in the west?Īs someone wanting to dive more and more into the larger Tokusatsu genre, the one franchise that loomed over me was Toei’s decade-spanning Kamen Rider franchise.