Earlier this week, we got the full trailer for Kamen Rider Drive, and it gave us a good look at the show we’re going to be spending the next year with. Let me tell you, I’m pretty damn excited and I want to go over some of the things we saw and what they might mean for Kamen Rider Drive.
We open up with just how wide the scope of the attack by our villain/monster group, the Roimyūdo, is. We see many different people being attacked, and connect this directly to our central protagonist, Tomari Shinnosuke, by seeing him screaming and running toward an attack. We’re then graced with several large explosions among city buildings, and then we cut to a much wider shot over Japan and part of China where we see both countries lit by many simultaneous explosions. Our first look into this world is one that presents just how vast the scale of our enemies are, and just how very dangerous they can be. The tone of our world has been set. This is on the level of the Grongi from Kamen Rider Kuuga or the Undead from Kamen Rider Blade. This is something that can, and will, affect the whole world if it’s not handled. Given that this is a hero show, showing us right away what we need to be protected from is a really effective way of starting the trailer.
We then cut right to Shinnousuke, complete with stern, heroic expression, starting the Tridoron and driving off, cementing him and this vehicle as what will protect us from the several hundred massive explosions we just saw. We’re then given a short glimpse of the back of Drive’s helmet among shots of Shinnosuke, giving us that connection, and then brought immediately into the fact that this is a police drama by seeing Shinnosuke’s badge and him looking at clues before tying him back to Drive with the signature “Henshin!” After that we’re immediately shown Shinnosuke happily washing Tridoron’s windshield, and a little of him goofing off before seeing him back to work. there are a few shots of him straightening his tie, which looks like it will be this year’s “catchphrase” gesture. (Akin to Shoutarou adjusting his hat, Ankh eating ice cream bars, or Gentaro’s little chest pound and then pointing to declare friendship.) I’m not sure how I feel about that, as it feels a little unnatural, but this is a show aimed at younger children and a gesture like that is a good signifier of when to start really paying attention. Cues like that, in a show following a certain pattern, are pretty important. I guess I’ll just have to see how it flows when the show itself airs. If it’s not overdone, it may just come off as a silly quirk of Shinnousuke’s instead of something kind of annoying.
But Shinnousuke himself feels slightly like Agito’s Hikawa Makoto to me. Serious about his job, but still a bit of a goofball of a human being. I think this is a refreshing archetype to turn back to, since of our past five riders, only one of them had a steady job. (Ironically, it was Hidari Shoutarou from Kamen Rider W, which was also head-written by Sanjou Riku.) While a few of them were goofballs, and a few were serious, and all were generally a little of both, I feel like Shinnousuke is going to bring us back to the feel of earlier Heisei lead riders and I’m looking forward to that as they were some of my favorites.
We see Shinjima Kiriko, this year’s leading lady, watching him adjust his tie, and this leads us to transition to her introduction clips. We are graced with being introduced to Kiriko via her running into action and then doing a flip over what has to be an 8ft high fence. Our heroine this year is one that’s ready for action, and she’s not shy about showing it. She handcuffs Shinnousuke several times, but then we’re shown her giving a slow thumbs up and a little smile. Kiriko was given to us with the description “Reliable policewoman”, and that she was a little scary and robotic, and from what we can see of her here she seems to be a woman very serious about her work and what it means, but that little smile says a lot. It brings me back to feelings of Ichijou Kaoru from Kamen Rider Kuuga, and I think as we move into Drive further and further, Kiriko will really open up as a character.
While I’m here, I want to make a special note of how Kiriko’s costume was designed. Specifically her skirt.
Kiriko’s skirt looks to be a minimally pleated circle skirt. I find this to be very notable, and very important, because this is not the style of skirt typical to a policewoman’s uniform in Japan. I’m a big fan of police dramas, and have watched a few other Japanese police dramas and remembered a straighter skirt (thought not quite a pencil skirt), and upon looking up the typical uniform the straight skirt seems to be much more common.
While there are pleats in the skirts of the actual police woman uniform, they’re small, and that is very much a straight skirt instead of Kiriko’s flared circle skirt with much higher pleats that likely go the full way around (two in the front and two in the back). This is notable, and I want to bring it up, because Kiriko’s skirt allows for a much wider range of motion at the hip. She can extend her legs further, which allows for a longer stride and therefore a faster run. It also allows for more freedom of movement while jumping. The only better alternative would have been pants, such as Ozawa in Agito or Rinko in Wizard had, but since Kiriko seems to be on the level of a beat cop, and not an engineer like Ozawa or a detective like Rinko, she may have to wear the skirt. (I am not sure if policewomen in Japan get a choice as to whether they can wear a version of the uniform with pants or not.) If that is the case, where Kiriko doesn’t have a choice, I’m glad that the costume design team on Kamen Rider Drive at least considered the fact that this woman would be in combat and would need to be able to move quickly and freely in order to fight.
We get a quick glimpse at a person who seems to have turned completely red, which as we see later in the trailer seems to be an effect of being attacked by a Roimyūdo, and then Shinnousuke in a weird helmet followed by the same helmet being worn by this year’s genius scientist, Sawagami Rinna. This is really the first good look we’ve gotten at Rinna, and I’m really thrilled with what I’m seeing. She seems to wear lively pastels (pink and yellow) under her lab coat and to be as lively and bright as those colors. It’s great to see Rider putting a woman back into a position of high intelligence, since the last time we got an active woman of science heading up creating things for Kamen Riders was back in Kamen Rider Hibiki with Takizawa Midori, whim Rinna reminds me of in that they’re both a bit more light hearted than the earlier Heisei women of science. (Though all of those women are also wonderful and I treasure each and every one of them.) Seeing her running around in the strange helmet makes me a little worried that Rinna might come off as a joke sometimes, but I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt for now.
We get very small glimpses of Saijō Kyū, he department’s occult obsessed researcher, and Otta Genpachirō, a lieutenant who is fairly opposed to all of the “occult” things the special unit is related to. Our glimpses of them are fairly brief ad are entirely them making weird faces before we cut to Kataoka Tsurutaro, our Chief of Police, who we also only really see making weird faces and speaking in a funny voice. It’s hard to glean much from these glimpses. Unlike Rinna, who had some very distinct clothing, and was shown as being both excitable and very serious, we only see funny moments of these other three characters. I could see Kyū and Genpachirō being reduced almost entirely to a comedic duo to off-set some of the dramatic tension of the show (though I’d love for there to be more to them than just that), it seems odd that Tsurutaro would suffer the same fate given that he is in such a position of power. We do leave them with a very serious looking line-up, which gives me hope that our four supporting members of the police force will have just as much impact as our two leads, and not suffer the way some of the secondary cast in the Kamen Rider Club (from Kamen Rider Fourze, which Sanjou was a secondary writer on), such as Shun and Tomoko did.
We then jump back to the Roimyūdo, seeing one holding a man by the neck and the man turning red, as we saw earlier in the trailer. We then see Heart and Brain, our villain leaders, and Chaser who seems to be a rival or adversary of Drive working under Heart and Brain. I’m still not completely sold on our villains. Heart is the sassy one, Brain is the cool one, Chaser… was there for a few seconds and had a face, I guess. He existed, and rode a bike. So far they seem a little run of the mill and dull, especially compared to our protagonist cast. The Roimyūdo themselves though look really interesting and like formidable monsters. They’re being designed by Takayuki Takeya, who has a history working on the S.I.C. line of figures, and often collaborates with Keita Amemiya, another very prolific and well known monster designer. Knowing that, and how terrified I am of the S.I.C Kamen Rider OOO figures, I’m really excited to see what sort of monsters Takeya will bring to Kamen Rider Drive.
We then jump back to Shinnousuke and Kiriko, and we get our first good look int he trailer at Kamen Rider Drive himself. Type Speed seems to be the base form, matching Tridoron, and then we get a look at the secondary forms, which all focus on a change in the tier that wraps around Drive’s torso. I’ve heard different comments on this that make me unsure as to whether Shadow, (the purple tire), Spike (the green tire), and Flare (the orange tire), are just weapon exchanges for Type Speed, which means that we could go into entirely different Types later on, or if these are entirely different Types just like this. The former seems more likely, given that it would give Toei more toys to sell. i like that the tire can come off and be used as an attack though. That’s pretty cool, and really what I was hoping for from it, as a giant tire-sash otherwise seems kind of bulky and awkward.
All in all, we were given a good handful of information. Enough to get me really excited about Kamen Rider Drive and what it might bring to the franchise and the overall semi-cohesive universe of Kamen Rider, while still leaving enough a mystery that I’ve got a lot of questions I want answered. I still have my hesitations. Again, our secondary protagonist cast could easily go very wrong if they’re handled entirely as comic relief, I’m not on board with our villains yet, and after a few weeks Gaim changed entirely from what any pre-premiere information gave us. Right now, the Drive ball is still in the air and I’m just waiting for it to come down to see what it looks like up close.
None the less, I can’t help being really excited to catch it.
Brand New Love Song 