Retro Overview: Kamen Rider Blade (2004-2005)

Hi there folks, and welcome to a new feature of DTF, our Retro Overviews, in which we take a look at previous series as a whole, and then proceed to take them apart to make ourselves feel better. In this edition, we’ll be taking a look at Kamen Rider Blade, one of the earlier Heisei shows with a Multi-Rider flair to it. I should warn all of you right now, this pic up here is the only one you’re going to see for this essay, so those of you who do not like long walls of text separated by paragraphs will probably not get too much out of this. So with that out of the way, let’s get to it!

The one thing that really struck me about this series to begin with from other Kamen Rider shows is that it carries a pretty consistent and heroic tone throughout, and while there are dashes of comedy spread here and there, including a 2-part episode arc in the middle of the series, things are kept pretty dramatic. What drives most of the drama, besides the constant battles with the Undead, is the constant conflicts between the four Riders central to the story, with only Kazuma Kenzaki trying to be the show’s central compass, well, when he’s not fighting it up with Hajime Aikawa in the beginning (this gets taken care of for the most part early on though as Hajime begins to feel Kenzaki’s bromance). There is a lot of Bromance on this show, so much that I wonder at time if the staff of Kamen Rider OOO were taking notes on how to structure the Eiji/Ankh and Date/Gotou relationships. When he’s not going around sealing Undead, Kenzaki spends a LOT of time trying to win over the other Riders who usually get involved with really stupid schemes and obsessions. You will probably end up frustrated with Sakuya Tachibana the most in this aspect, as he is consistently the most antagonistic of the riders throughout the series, even besting Kamen Rider Leangle to a great degree. The constant infighting did annoy me a great deal, but when you have 4 overpowered riders in a series, there’s not much you can do but have them constantly screw with each other, it does give the Undead some breathing room to a degree to scheme about.

About the Undead, I will say this much, they did do a good job of pacing the main sets of Undead (the Jacks, Queens, and Kings) leading up to the Joker. Each primary Undead carried a bit of weight and served to help further the main storyline, plus it was nice to see many of them stick around for longer than two episodes, as most of them are able to last at least twice as long. I wasn’t too hot on the whole “Trial” arc of the story, nor the “Kerboros” arc. It kinda stunk of the usual antics Toei pulls where they have one set of baddies around most of the series, then whip out another set just to screw with your mind (and coincidentally provide the Ultimate Battle that proves the strength of that Kamen Rider(s)).

Kenzaki himself was actually developed quite nicely as a character and as a Rider in his Blade form. It’s nice to see a Rider who’s a greenhorn at the beginning of the series getting his ass kicked by the lower-level Undead gradually make his way up the power totem pole from the early season power-up in Jack Form to his ultimate ability in King Form. Another aspect I liked about Blade was the nature of the King Form itself and why it could only be used sparingly, this shows that there are actual consequences on the character physically and psychologically. The character’s origins were also a nice touch, as it allows the viewer to form a positive vibe for the character, especially in the last 2 episodes.

Hajime’s overall development was also pretty nice, as he was a character who had to learn the aspects of what it is to be human. I also liked his character’s power-up in Wild Form and what it did to help strengthen his character’s humanity. The only real issues I had with the stories related to him were the arc where he spent time with the musician (of which I feel the ending of that was to setup a quick and no-fussy return to Amane which seemed to contradict his character’s initial nature as a wanderer), and the whole “Prince and the Pauper” comedy arc for Mid-Series, which threw off the more serious nature of the show for some quick gags (although some may regard this as a welcome sight and relief from all of the constant tension that had been ratcheting up at this point).

Tachibana at times was one of the most frustrating characters to deal with in the show, often because he was set up to be the “Judas” factor, in which for many hair-brained reasons he would betray the group, do a bunch of selfish crap only to be brought to his senses by either a tragedy or a terse situation. His initial betrayal/redemption was probably the worst offender in this case, as it set up what I felt was a pretty pointless death for the sake of killing off a main character just for the sake of doing so when they could have come up with a more creative solution for the issue he was having at the beginning of the series. His constantly evolving hairdo was not doing him any favors either. I felt at times watching him was similar to watching Jorge Rivero in “Werewolf” with how many different hairstyles he sported, and at times I almost thought he was just going to find a security guard, turn him into a werewolf, and just follow the hell out of him as werewolf-guard drove home (yes that really was a plot point in the flick).

You may have noticed I haven’t really talked about Mutsuki Kamijō. Well, this is mainly because he spends most of the series as the Token Young Guy who is easily manipulated and spends most of the time whining about being in the darkness. At times when watching stories involving his character, I felt like this video:

As far as the technical aspects of the show goes, you can’t get better than this in the Pre-HD era of Kamen Rider. The team made good use of their budget, from the designs of the Undead to the Suit designs. I was also a big fan of the smaller-yet-sleeker Bikes, these are vehicles that you know could work in both street and road conditions and are built more for blistering speed rather than lackadaisical coasting of the latter-era.  The OST was another plus as well, I think the orchestral vibe of the series helped to convey it’s mood and setup the heroics of Blade a great deal, especially the track “Isoge! Kenzaki”, so much kudos to Kazunori Miyake as it actually makes me want to seek out more of his work.

Overall, I would recommend giving this series a try, it will flow very quickly and you’ll be able to finish it off in no problem, plus it contains a very strong ending that wraps up everything nicely. I would beware however of the constant Rider infighting as it can get very old after a while. Henshin!