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Kamen Rider 45th Anniversary File: Dragon Knight

(Dive into the Mirror by defspiral, the original song opening created for the Japanese dub of a 2009 American adaptation to a 2002 Japanese show. Surreal just sayin’ that ain’t it?)

2009 in the USA

The Great Recession was “ending”....but its effects would linger on for several years.

Power Rangers was off the air at the end of RPM and a minor actor on the Mighty Morphin’ season was put on death row for murdering a couple with his wife as an accomplice.

Way back in 2006, producer Aki Komine was given permission by Toei to license a Kamen Rider Series for international distribution. Aki then chose SFX costume designer and filmmaker Steve Wang of live action Guyver movie duology fame, his brother Micheal Wang and a film crew to create a TV pilot of an adaptation to Kamen Rider Ryuki. This was later leaked online for KR fans around the world to see before being taken down in 2008. The general idea Aki, the Wang brothers and later a company called Adness Entertainment had was that Kamen Rider had potential to work in the US market as an action show.

Adness, unlike Saban, knew what Kamen Rider was and did not try to cheapen it to ride the coat tails of something that was a success in its own right or talk down to its audience. Kamen Rider just needed a minor bit of tweaking to account for the differences in cultures, but not so much that would make the source material unrecognizable or diminish its entertainment value. The target demographic after all was, like its Japan original, for pre-teens and teens but with enough of an entertainment factor for an adult audience to appreciate.

One thing was made clear by Aki to Toei: Don’t call it Masked Rider for international release, just call it Kamen Rider. This was done as Aki thought Masked Rider sounded “weird” and Toei wanting to distance themselves from Saban’s attempt to cash in on the beloved series.

Yes, Masked Rider is so awful to the fans of KR that even Japan, the land that created Kamen Rider, wants nothing to be associated with it. (Also, Masked Rider as a super hero name is/was trademarked by Marvel in the US).

The studio shopped around for networks and eventually got 4Kids to pick it up in late 2008. But, since the company was run by people who had an issue with anything that had what they deemed to be excessive violence in it, the Network later did whatever it could to sabotage the show’s airing schedule and tried to interfere with the production. This ultimately backfired on them in a karmic way after Dragon Knight ended, but more on that later.

Dragon Knight is notable for being the first and only Kamen Rider show to ever  receive an Emmy award. The Daytime Emmy Award was for Outstanding Stunt Coordination, a relatively new category for the Emmys at the time. The award was given to the show’s coordinator Dorenda Moore, who aside from this series would later go on to work on Thor as the stunt double for Natalie Portman. 

The award was well deserved, as the fight scenes are fantastic and truly reflect what the action of tokusatsu should be with stylized kung-fu martial arts. Helping this was the choice of 5 time martial arts champ Matt Mullins being chosen to play the secondary Rider Wing Knight.

The series also gets praise by the fandom for doing what no Kamen Rider show had ever dared to do at this point: Let a Female Rider actually...*gasp*.. LIVE?! And not only that, we got a female supporting cast character donning the persona of a Rider when the first is defeated and put in the Shadow Realm-y Place of Non-Deadness. While some call it a cop out, this is the one time the ineptness of 4Kids on the subject of death worked in its favor by the USA having 1 LIVING female Kamen Rider in the form of two heroines taking turns donning a single Rider belt trounce Toei Japan’s then count of 0 living female Riders. (Natsumi Hikari as Kiva-la wasn’t created yet). I refuse to see it in any other way than a blessing and in typical egotistic patriot fashion my countrymen are often stereotyped with, we more or less showed Japan female Riders can be in a show and kick butt. USA USA USA USA!

When Heisei Kamen Rider celebrated its 10 Riders anniversary, the show was brought over to Japan for broadcast and dubbed by many actors who were members of the cast of the Heisei part of the franchise. (Including Kenji Matsuda who played Wing Knight’s Japanese counterpart Kamen Rider Knight basically playing himself as an American XD). The show proved to be popular enough in Japan that the series got a sequel novel.

But sadly, America did not share the love, as changes in time slots and eventual removal of the show meant some fans didn’t get to witness it at all or only up to a certain point as the final episode only aired in Mexico and on 4Kids subpar online service, which went offline two years later and then died completely under the Saban Vortexx brand in 2014 along with the block.

To top it all off, this series is one of those “Never on DVD/Blu-Ray ever” shows in the USA, meaning torrents and streams or a cheap foreign legit or bootleg DVD copy are a fan’s only options. Which is ironic considering releasing the show consistently here would have prevented such a thing.

But KR fans and people who disliked 4Kids poor treatment of their favorite shows got the last laugh. The CW4Kids block died in 2009 and 4Kids went nearly kaput in 2012 as it filed for bankruptcy after a lawsuit and then went bankrupt again in 2016. The company’s main branch is struggling to stay afloat and only has a cash flow of $3.33 million which is in the negative based on reports a few years ago and only 16 employees are currently working there. (SO for 3.3 Million you could buy 4Licencing!) So, yeah, quite the fall form grace by the studio that once licensed and dubbed the Pokemon anime. (though given the One Piece rap and Dragon Knight’s treatment, I’d say it was well deserved karma.)

But enough talk, let’s Dive into the Mirror of Adaptation!

(Mr. Taylor Circa 2009)

Real Name: Kit Taylor (No relation to Jack Taylor, a person known for great parties. *MST3K joke*)

Kit Taylor is an orphaned teen who was framed a lot for being a thief and lived in a foster home. He went searching for his father after he turned 18 and came upon a strange looking card deck on a table in the old apartment he spent his earlier years in with his dad. The deck attracts a giant red dragon (wow, deja vu), who tries to attack him. He then witnesses a monster from a reflection try to eat someone and a strange man comes to her rescue who dons a suit of armor to fight the beast. Kit learns the man’s name is Len, who demands Kit hand over his “Advent Deck” and to not form a contract with the dragon he just saw. Kit gets visions of his father telling him to form a contract with the dragon and he does becoming Kamen Rider Dragon Knight!.

The Kamen Riders are warriors of the dimension of Ventara, a reflective mirror world like ours. An evil named General Xaviax has stolen some of the Advent Decks of the heroes of Ventara after defeating them and is seen giving them to evil or easily manipulated humans to kill Len and manipulate Kit into serving him.

After some duels with other Kamen Riders, resolving misunderstandings to forge new alliances and a stock plot about evil twins, the heroic 13 riders defeat Xaviax and both worlds are saved. Kit continues to use his powers as a superhero to help others alongside Len and a female Rider while the other human riders have their memories erased.

Powers and Gear:

Same as Ryuki’s but he also has an energy shield during transformation and a cool unnamed Rider Machine bike.

Enemies: 

Xaviax and the Mirror Monsters

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Xaviax

Xaviax is a scheming conqueror who has placed Ventara under his rule and now seeks to abduct all humans on the Earth as his slaves to rebuild his homeworld of Karsh.

Mirror Monsters function the same as their Ryuki counterparts, only this time they are artificially made soldiers for Xaviax’s army who kidnap humans to mass collect DNA to prefect a long range teleporter to Karsh to abduct all 7 billion humans on Earth and enslave them.

Afterward

Adness tried to make a movie out of Dragon Knight and adapt another Kamen Rider series...but the company could not do it and have gone uncharacteristically quiet, leading some to believe that Adness went bankrupt during the recession. The company did still exist in 2016 (sort of), trying to cash in on Gangam Style by investing in K-Pop....apparently that didn’t work as the official site has gone eerily quiet and the Japan office site has not been updated in 2 years. So either the company is laying dormant or is totally dead. It is as far as we know, a Schrodinger media corporation.

Due to the FCC regulations, angry parents and the rise of internet streaming and cable TV networks not being strict on censorship opening new avenues for creators, Saturday morning kids TV no longer exists as of 2014. But given the modern tech we have, fans can create their own Saturday morning lineups, so if you feel nostalgic for some henshin action by way of adaptation, seek out Dragon Knight.

Matt Mullins and Stephen Lunsford say: “HENSHIN!” at Power Morphicon in 2010.