Ranking EVERY Kamen Rider Show
(...and some other things as well)

If you told my younger self that a Power Rangers-adjacent franchise was going to change my life one day, I would have thought you were crazy and a fool. I didn't really grow up with Power Rangers outside of catching the odd episode or hearing other people talk about it, so I had zero experience with tokusatsu for the first eighteen years of my life. But in 2015, I was a depressed university dropout and one of my closest friends proposed to our Skype group chat that we watch this "Kamen Rider" show together.

Something HAPPENED to me that day.

By 2023 I had watched BASICALLY every Kamen Rider show and this year I've been picking up the scraps I have left. I think even though there are still a couple I haven't finished, I'm pretty much one of the strongest and smartest Kamen Rider fans out there. So here's my objectively correct opinion:

This franchise rocks.

Listen, we can debate "peak" and "mid" and "terrible" all we want, but for me personally? Even my least favourite KR shows make me smile. In terms of the extremely vast and wide world of television: they're all pretty good! Some of them aren't for me, but there IS a Rider show for everyone and that is a THREAT. Watch my hyperfixation franchise. Right now right now right now right now

Anyways, here are the ones I put at the bottom to start discourse:

LAST PLACE: Kamen Rider: The First

So I thought it would be WAY funnier if last place was a somewhat popular show, but after rewatching this movie I can't stay faithful to that bit. Sorry. List cancelled. No jokes allowed ever again.

This movie is not very good. The frequent use of choppy slow motion is really annoying, especially as someone who gets motion sickness from inconsistent framerates. There's an unusual amount of focus on the romance subplots, but at least all the in-suit content is good. I know it was from the manga but I care so little about the kaijin love story that I think the movie would have been better without it. The characters are dropped on you without context so you're left twiddling your thumbs wondering why we're focusing on this. There was definitely a much more succinct way to tell their story that wouldn't have disrupted the movie's pacing.

I don't necessarily "dislike" the way they reimagined our beloved grandpa Riders - other perspectives are fun! - but it is strange and hilarious that they turned Hongo into a withdrawn introvert and Hayato "I don't do women" Ichimonji into a freak-spouting womanizer. My main takeaway from this movie is that we need to stop letting Toshiki Inoue write hetero romances.

Kamen Rider Drive

Drive had just finished when I got into Kamen Rider, so it ended up being the fourth show I tried watching and the second one I ever finished. I vividly remember thinking it was pretty good, but easily my least favourite of the three shows I had spent time with. With each Kamen Rider show I finished, I would go "hmm yeah I think this was better than Drive", "it's not that Drive was bad, it's just that I like this one more!" and I would repeat this over and over until I was fifteen shows deep and realized the sad truth: Drive just... wasn't very good?

As I said earlier, all Rider shows have good parts and can make me smile! But I eventually realized that the things I liked about Drive were things that other shows did better, and the things I disliked that I believed were common of the series were actually just unique to a few shows. I would eventually give this show two rewatches - once on my own and another alongside a friend watching it for the first time - and both times I found that the show did not budge on the rankings despite me coming away with a more positive opinion.

IMO the show's biggest strength is its cast. Everyone is quirky and fun! The Special Investigations Unit squad annoyed me on my first watch, but they grew on me. The show noticably loses its charm when Gou is forced to sit on the sidelines for the plot though, and I can't get over how much the show gasses up how cool cops are. In one of the first episodes there's a kid that hollers about how cool the police are, and then later on when we actually start getting corrupt cop arcs (which is awesome!), the show brushes away any long-lasting repercussions of having main villains at the top of the police force. I get that this is a kids' show and that we must teach forgiveness and move on to the next plot point, but we also have Shinnosuke go through character development to become a really motivated and reliable guy... just for him to shoot at an unarmed thief in the last episode? Why did he do that

Anyways, the part near the end of Gou VS Banno and Gou says "It said I can go now..." is extremely raw so this show is actually pretty good despite everything else.

Kamen Rider Super-1

I watched this show for the first time with a friend, and around halfway through we got so bored that we watched parts 1-5 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure before getting back to Super-1. The suit itself is beautiful and there are also a ton of incredible monster designs in this show - probably the best of Kamen Rider's Showa era IMO. Conceptually I think the show is fun too, combining the traits of "astronaut" and "martial arts" into our protagonist. The show makes use of the latter by throwing Kazuya against enemies that make use of different fighting styles (and these episodes are some of the best in the show) but the astronaut part is pretty much a footnote outside of the first and last episodes.

I'm a pretty big Showa liker, but Super-1 is probably the least memorable of the Showa series. Even though I watched it more recently than every other Showa Rider series, I couldn't tell you who any of the enemy generals are or recite any insane monster-of-the-week plots. But I DO remember the monster designs even if not what they did, so that counts for something. Honestly this and Drive could probably swap spots depending on my mood, but Super-1 doesn't have cop drama and doesn't make me angry. It also has episodes written by Toshiki Inoue's father, and they are all peak.

I'd recommend looking at an episode list and watching the ones with the craziest titles or the funniest monster designs because there are DEFINITELY some fun ones in here that are unlike anything else in the series.

Kamen Rider Stronger

Stronger is a weird one to rank for me because it's probably the only Rider show where I love the villains more than the heroes. Whenever Shigeru Jo was on screen I would be on my phone scrolling through Twitter, but when Titan and General Shadow were having their gay petty little soap opera scenes? My god. I am attentive and alert. I am POPPING OFF. Even when we switch to the Delza Army, this dynamic doesn't change because all the generals are drama queens who want to take over the evil organization. I especially like how at this point, instead of "monster-of-the-week" we get "general-of-the-week", with several of them being introduced ahead of time as they take turn throwing hands with the Riders. I'd also like to once again shout out General Shadow, who is my favourite Kamen Rider villain in the entire franchise.

Yuriko is also a constant delight and deserved much more than what this show gave her, but I am hesitant to give the show flak on that considering the actress' health issues in addition to the fact that the show ended up shorter than they anticipated. I do wish she could have beaten at least ONE monster-of-the-week outside of her final episode though.

The last few episodes of this show are also INCREDIBLE and the most satisfying ending to a Kamen Rider show to date IMO. It would have changed my life to be a kid in the 70s seeing that on live television. For the last time in history, every existing Kamen Rider actor is together in one place. And together, after five long years of fighting, our heroes succeed at taking down Shocker's leader once and for all. (Well, until Skyrider rebooted the series with Neo-Shocker... and then Decade brought them back as Dai-Shocker... oh well.)

Ya so if I could watch a cut of this show that's only the villain scenes plus the ending it would be peak. It's honestly top 10 material bogged down by the main guy acting like a jerk towards his deutreragonist. Shigeru Jo is cringe and Yuriko deserved better. Like, why did Shigeru pretend to be brainwashed that one time and start strangling her? What's wrong with him?? And why does he custom make all his shirts to have a big S on them?!

Shin Kamen Rider Prologue

Of the 90s movie trio, this was the one I watched first. The special effects carry the movie - otherwise I find it pretty unremarkable. It goes on a little too long for my liking which is why it's my least favourite of the 90s movies. Huge shame that the Shin suit is completely unwearable now and that Toei doesn't seem interested in making a new one, because it looked cool and having a more "monsterous" Kamen Rider alongside our normal guys could have introduced some good dynamics. Just imagine all the things they would have to talk about! :)

Also this movie has titties in it. Which is pretty crazy if you ask me.

Kamen Rider Saber

I feel bad about putting this so low, but I cannot erase those feelings I had when Saber was airing. Every week I would watch the new episode and be bored out of my mind. I try to be a "judge something for what it is and not what it could've been" type of person, but as someone who came up with a book-themed OC Rider years before this show dropped and as someone who used to be CRAZY about elemental magicks and also Knights of the Round Table-inspired media... this show just didn't do it for me.

For me, this show's biggest problem stems from the fact that it had to be made during COVID. My favourite parts of Kamen Rider are always when the cast gets to hang out in a room together and be silly, and while I think it might be a bit of a stretch to say that the plot of this show may have been reworked to fit better with COVID restrictions, it would make sense if that were the case. The show is front loaded with extremely long stock footage transformations to reduce filming times. Everything starts off silly and goofy and awesome but after the first major arc, Touma gets branded a traitor and is exiled from the Riders' base. Then for the next fifteen episodes (which would have aired when COVID cases shot up in early 2021), the rest of the Riders spend their time sitting 20 feet apart in a dark room and go after Touma one at a time and never get to interact or have fun outside the whims of the plot. I feel like it's not a coincidence that they started doing fun group scenes again once COVID restrictions lightened up.

...Not to mention in the midst of all this, the main writer just kind of up and vanished for the majority of the show? Not sure what that was about but I got the impression that the other three or four writers didn't entirely know what to do without him and were trying to kill time with these "finally time for these characters to talk it out... oops! one of them ran away while the others were distracted! maybe next time :)" tricks. Am I crazy? Did anyone else feel that way while watching?

I'd like to give a shout out to Saikou/Yuri though for not only having one of my favourite Rider suits (and GOD I wish his shadow form could have stayed CG, it was such a cool effect!) but for also being the only comic relief for that entire middle part I didn't like. He singlehandedly kept me watching. They should have let him keep the skirt just look how much he loved it!! After Yuri loses his relevance, the Ren and Desast subplot became the other reason I kept watching the show. Honestly most of the characters in this show are REALLY fun and Saber might have my favourite Reiwa Rider cast - they just didn't get a lot of chances to flourish thanks to the pandemic.

All that said, I JUST started rewatching this show and I'm pretty excited about it! Sometimes your opinion of something can change when you go back in knowing what to expect, so I'm honestly pretty optimistic about re-experiencing this one. :) I also have to add that I have a huge soft spot for Touma because not only is he a writer but his actor was also born the same year as me! Just like me for for real...

Kamen Rider Wizard

I'm sorry for being such a normie putting both Saber and Wizard at the bottom of the list. :( Both of these shows are ones I know would have changed my life if I watched them when I was 12 and I honestly feel like that forbidden introspection slightly colours my perception of them.

Anyways: Wizard is one I feel so sad about disliking. The suit, toys, fighting style, powers, and overall themes are just so me-core! So it was a real downer when I found myself bored for most of the show. Being a mostly monster-of-the-week show isn't necessarily a bad thing, cuz usually that format is great for harvesting character arcs! But Wizard didn't take full advantage of that opportunity. One of my favourite episodes is about 40 episodes in when Haruto reunites with someone from his past and you get to find out he was a jock and that he had normal aspirations before becoming Wizard, and when he's asked if he'd ever return to soccer... if he still dreams of being a pro soccer player... the way Haruto phrases the response dodges the question and he affirms that being Wizard is the only dream he can let himself have. Because if he doesn't do it, then who else will? I really wish the show had more episodes like this!

I'm also not a big fan of the main villains, who all (ALL OF THEM) have a fakeout sympathy arc where you think they might have good in them, but it turns out they don't. Nope, not a single one is a good person or has a sympathetic motive. They're all pure evil, haha! Oh but you should feel some sympathy for Wiseman I guess because he's uhhhh trying to do the Wizard Apocalypse to bring back his daughter. Like, fool me once: shame on me, but fool me FOUR TIMES? I think that's just uninspired writing.

Mayu's treatment is also pretty bad. She doesn't even get to win the fight against Medusa (the villain intrinsicly tied to her character arc) but also her transformation sequences are noticably less flashy than the male Riders'. Her first transformation where she does her little spin and the camera remains perfectly still at a non-cinematic distance, making it look super cheap and awkward? Girl you deserved so much better...

Like with Saber, I think I'll enjoy this one a lot more on a rewatch. I've been getting into PreCure lately and I love it a lot, so I think I just wasn't ready for Wizard. Sometimes going back to something and knowing what to expect can give you a new perspective!! :)

Final thoughts: Nitoh is the absolute boy of all time. I will cherish that boy for as long as I live. God he's so stupid I want to kiss him. Wait Who said that. I didn't write that

Fuuto PI

This entry is purely based on the anime and not the manga. Fuuto PI is like... fine? As much as I scowled and narrowed my eyes at there being a new boob lady in every arc, I liked Tokime. Strange romance with Shotaro aside, I think she is a fun addition to the W cast and they eventually have the decency to both give her a better outfit and cut back on the sexualized camera angles, so don't let her initial appearance turn you away. Although maybe I like her because I kept thinking of the cat girl from K Project when I saw her? Anyone remember that anime? Does it still hold up in 2024? Anyone know?

...Anyways! It was nice to see the W gang again. It has some great animation and the overarching plot was decent, though it really just needed more. I know the manga is ongoing, but I feel they chose an unsatisfying twelve episodes to start and end with. But overall, it just made me really want to rewatch W. I wasn't interested in more Fuuto PI, I just wanted to go back to W. Does that mean the show did a good or bad job...?

(Also? HUGE missed opporunity to not officially release W with subs while Fuuto PI was getting Crunchyroll subs. Toei what are you DOING)

Learning that Shotaro has his own apartment and that he, Philip, and Akiko don't fight over the single bed in the Narumi Detective Agency is the most shocking reveal in the entire franchise btw.

Kamen Rider Zero-One

Yuya Takahashi my BELOATHED! Is Zero-One still wildly popular? Am I going to be buried alive for putting it this low? I was really excited when this show started. I forced myself to finally finish Zi-O before starting Zero-One and I remember being in AGONY every time I was watching Zi-O and not the shiny new Kamen Rider show. The beginning was fun and I immediately liked the main cast! A main Rider who is a comedian? Wow! What a silly and fun guy!

Then there was that one episode were they had a POC Humagear and he was the only Humagear at that point to willingly become violent and turn into a monster? That was weird.

Then the end of the show would have been recorded when the BLM protests were still fresh, and there was a big dramatic scene of AIMS (AKA the show's police/military-adjacent group) switching to pacifist tactics against the violent mob of Humagear protestors? That was also weird.

Takahashi in general is the king of making an interesting show with a really obvious (but good and correct!) endgame moral and then being too much of a coward to follow through with it. Zero-One brought up the tired old question of "do robots have souls and do they deserve free rights?" and then boldly answered with "yes but we still treat them like servants and sell them for profit anyways :) also the company that makes them is not the villain :)".

Ok man.

In general I don't like the "should robots have rights?" theme that continues to pop up in most sci-fi media so even if this show was a little more brave I think it was already doomed to never be a favourite of mine. But it sure as hell could have done a few things differently to get higher on the tier list.

Glaring issues aside, I think this show served as a pretty clean introduction to the Reiwa era of Kamen Rider. The Metsuboujinrai gang is fantastic and Horobi would be telling dad jokes and providing snacks for everyone if I was the writer of this show. The show's visuals were consistently cool as hell, and Ark-One is one of the coolest endgames I've ever seen. We need to get Aruto some therapy.

Kamen Rider Amazons

So here's the thing: Season 1 of Amazons is legitimately great. If that was the whole show, Amazons could probably be up to 10 slots higher on this list. It manages to be a fun reference to the original Kamen Rider Amazon (and to Shin Prologue of all things, especially in S2) while also being its own thing! Most notably I think S1 is really good at its setpieces - this is probably the first show on this list that I remember specific locations from. I rewatched S1 before finally sitting down for S2, thinking I had forgotten the whole show, but there's the stinger for I believe episode 3 where the main cast arrives at the apartment complex and discovers it's a hideout for Amazons. Then there's the episode where Mamoru and Nozomi think they are tracking down an Amazon to their hideout in a junkyard, then they arrive it's just an actual human serial killer. Even after a five year gap between watching and rewatching it, these scenes vividly flooded back to me when I got to these parts in the show.

Season 2 is... Something Else. S2 is the reason this show is here and not higher. The more I reflect on it as time passes the more I like it, but it's a rough watch for many reasons. The part that makes me like it is that it's a morbid romantic comedy. Chihiro is the funniest cringefail romance protagonist I've ever seen. Meanwhile Iyu is completely oblivious (on account of being a literal zombie) and relates his romantic gestures to the good memories she has of her father. Just the funniest fail pairing I've ever seen. Meanwhile, Eiji Akaso (Banjou in Build) is trying so hard to be a wingman to these losers and it's so charming to have him around as a normal guy with no connection to anything happening. If you try to watch this as a normal Rider show then you might not like it, but if you observe it as a romantic comedy then it's awesome.

...Well, that seems like I have a good opinion on it, right? Actually, Amazons Season 2's biggest problem is that it is the ONLY Kamen Rider series thus far to hit one of my triggers. There is a implied sexual assault scene where one of the main characters is not in the right state of mind and pins down his partner and forcefully kisses her. She struggles against it for a few seconds before giving in "because she loves him", then the scene cuts away. Spoilers but: because of this encounter they have a son who everyone hates for existing because he's a twisted little little monster boy and the entire cast - including his father - wants him dead. Literally no one is sympathetic for him. Just a revolving door of very icky-to-watch content.

So uhhhh yeah I don't think that was a necessary plot thread for Kamen Rider and it honestly makes me wary to check out future "adult-oriented" Rider projects if they're willing to do stuff like this. Otherwise: a cool show that I can never rewatch in full. I'd actually COMPLETELY recommend it as long as you're not bothered by gore, eye horror, or the stuff I mentioned above.

Kamen Rider G

G is just so funny to me. Legally I cannot put G much higher than this because it is a 15 minute experience, but the list would be incomplete if I leave him out! The random returning Rider actors all make me smile and G's suit just looks so cute and sad. It's such a contrast to the vibe of the video, like the G suit looks like it belongs in the late 2010s. They put a shocking amount of charm in Goro for a special that exists to be a promotional video for a TV studio.

I think G is the separating line between Rider shows I thought were awesome and Rider shows that committed crimes against me personally. While there are definitely a handful of shows I had massive problems with higher on my rankings, it's a testament to how much I enjoyed the rest of it. Or that it was slop targeted for me specifically. What I mean to say is that G is the gatekeeper all Riders should strive to impress.

If Toei ever decided to use him, I see potential in this little guy and I hope he gave someone an unreasonable amount of brainrot. I hope some kid made G toys out of clay after Toei never made any merch for this freak.

Kamen Rider 1979 (Skyrider)

This show is pretty unpopular (and I totally understand why) but here's my counterpoint: Skyrider is the show that made me cave and write Kamen Rider fanfiction. As someone who has been writing fanfiction in various online circles since 2008, THIS - my 33rd Kamen Rider - was the show to inspire me. They put something in this show that rotted my brain and now every day I am rotating Hiroshi Tsukuba in my head.

This show is often not great but also has some of the most insane things I've ever seen in Kamen Rider. Hiroshi is a bland piece of white bread until the seven previous Riders show up and beat him to death halfway through the show and make him drink the juice that gives him V3's personality. Early on there's an episode where Neo Shocker accidentally releases balloons with poison inside them in an amusement park and have to scramble to collect them before kids grab them and blow the whole operation. There's an episode where Jin Keisuke nurses a shirtless Hiroshi back to health with his bare hands in the middle of the forest. I think this is also the show where a girl in a wheelchair violently falls down a flight of stairs? There's another episode where Hiroshi becomes a mother, which means Skyrider is the first MILF Kamen Rider in existence. GanGan G is also in this one and he's super adorable.

They tried a lot of different things in this one to get the kids watching again. It's honestly kind of impressive? In the second half you can also see the inklings of some jokes that I think would be right at home in the Neo-Heisei era Kamen Riders. One of the supporting cast members dresses up like Elvis in an episode? You learn that the mentor's underwear of choice is a loincloth?? Everything in this show is a fever dream and I can't stop dreaming about it.

...I don't remember anything else that happened in this show. Except that the main villain pretends to be Hiroshi's dad, and it turns out the real dad was trapped in a block of ice or something? Maybe? Was that this show? I don't know I don't have time to think about that I need to think about Bongo.

Kamen Rider Black

I was really excited to watch Black after hearing people claim it was "the only Showa series worth watching". I thought it was going to be peak media. While there are certainly a lot of things I enjoyed about it - the bond between Kotaro, Kyoko, and Katsumi and how they help each other cope with the loss of Nobuhiko over the course of the series, not to mention I love that little FREAK Bilgenia - it was a disappointment to discover that the so-called "plot focused" part of the series that everyone talks about is only in the last ten or so episodes. And don't get me wrong, that part is great! But most of the show is still the same monster-of-the-week format that the previous shows had. And frankly: I think Kotaro on his own (because he doesn't have a Tachibana or even a Junior Rider Squad - it's just him!) just can't carry a show.

Don't get me wrong: I LOVE Kotaro. I would die for him. But as Black he has no allies and it's just... lonely. Which is the point, but it makes the monster-of-the-week plots more repetitive and forgettable when there is such a limited cast to play off of. I honestly couldn't tell you what any of them were, except that this show had a super soldier children episode (giving off Junior Rider Squad vibes) and a Taki episode (giving off Taki vibes) and those were both really good and frankly should have been major reoccurring characters.

Additionally, the transformations and finishers all have a flashing effect that force me to look away from the scene whenever they happen. Considering Kotaro does at least two finishers every episode, it ends up being a constant reminder of what would otherwise be a small problem.

Battle Hopper is also the specialest bike in the world and I would die for them.

Kamen Rider Kiva

So here's the thing about Kiva: I don't remember ANY of it. I vaguely remember the characters and some major moments, but this and Ghost are in competition for shows I remember the least about. I know this show is misogynistic as all hell (despite that fact that losers online argue otherwise) and that Wataru is extremely baby, but everything I "know" about this show is stuff I had to relearn secondhand via the wiki or through other people.

What I DO know is that I watched the entire show in a mere three days (tying it with W for the "fastest I've ever gotten through a tokusatsu show" award) and it was sitting just outside of my top 10 for a pretty long time before I realized I had no memories of any of it, so I'm pretty sure I liked something in it. The gothic aesthetic perhaps? Or the split timeline storytelling? Who knows. I will rewatch it one day with fear in my heart and we'll see what happens to my brain afterwards.

Kamen Rider Ghost

Ghost was the show that was airing when I started watching Kamen Rider! Much like Drive, it ended up in that situation where I liked it, but I simply liked everything I watched afterwards a lot more. I don't remember a lot about it to be honest, but I remember being crazy about Alain. I also think Takeru is just a little guy and people should stop being soooo mean to him. While skimming episodes to look for pictures to add, I found myself smiling at the vibes of this show. And frankly, who cares about all the plot stuff I forgot? You can rank a show on vibes alone and not explain yourself further! It's true! Try it out some time if you haven't.

The form changes being based off of historial figures is a really cool idea and I think the suits in general look great. I would buy a Ghost-inspired hoodie and wear it every single day.

Aside: While looking up the Eyecons to ensure they were all real historical figures (note: i gave up on the research after three seconds so i still don't know the answer) and they didn't do a mix of real and fiction, I found out there is a Geronimo Eyecon?? Ghost fixing the racism crime that X committed???? Based????? (I'm going to avoid looking at the rest in case they squander my goodwill.)

I really want to give this show a rewatch someday! But until then: I WILL protect Takeru from the haters.

Kamen Rider Revice

Revice is still pretty fresh so I'm sure anything I could say would be something you've seen before. I don't think it's necessarily as bad as people say it is, but I didn't really get attached to anything that was going on in it. I remember being confused about Hiromi's popularity at the start of the show and didn't even remember who he was, but he DID grow on me as he became one of the most developed characters. Meanwhile I had a pretty good first impression of the Igarashi family members early on, but...

Overall I had been excited for a family-focused KR series, but I guess I just wish it went... harder? On everything? Ikki is talked up as a "busybody", but he's the same amount of that as every past main rider. The entire Weekend subplot/faction just didn't feel satisfying to me and I was constantly waiting for some sort of "twist" that would make the whole thing click into place. Vice spent the first half of the show rambling jokes to himself instead of feeling like the second main character, like they didn't know what to do with him if he wasn't experiencing a character arc. I dunno! I think "unsatisfying" is a pretty apt word for the show as a whole.

If Sakura and Hana were the main characters with their arcs unchanged and Ikki/Vice was the third Rider I honestly think it would have cooked a little better. And yes I DO mean completely unchanged - yeah it would have been awesome if they were lesbians! With the way they were written they probably should have been! But having them love each other as sisters in a show about family bonds is just as valuable, so I don't think what we got was "worse". Toei will give us canon lesbians one day I'm sure of it. please toei

I do think Revice had way too many characters though, which might be why a lot of the arcs felt a little underbaked. Overall however: it was fun enough and I wouldn't mind rewatching some of it! ...if Subaru Kimura wasn't in it. Dude I got "used" to it in Revice but I've been hearing him in two different Yu-Gi-Oh shows lately and I'm SICK of him forever now. We gotta get him out of here.

Also? Revi being a walking trans flag will always be based as hell. I almost put this show waaay higher until I thought about it and realized if Revi had a different design I would feel Nothing for this show. So frankly this show might even be lower on my rankings, but the trans dino saves it. Thank you trans dino.

Kamen Rider Amazon

This was the first Showa series I tried to watch in 2015, though I didn't commit to finishing it until years later. Amazon as a character is such a little creature. I love the fights in this one comprising of the suits biting and clawing each other and ripping each other to shreds. Seeing all the different coloured paints they use for blood is a weird little delight as someone who loves seeing all the funny props they use in these shows. The props in this show in general are very cute - whenever Amazon wrestles with a toku suit, they will sometimes get replaced with a prop resembling the actual animal it's based on that he can roll around with. I wish to take one of these creatures home.

I also love watching Amazon get used to technology, the city, and even learn proper Japanese by the end. Although it is really funny how Toei seemingly forgot that he's not only fluent in Japanese now but he's also a polite and upstanding man, so instead he reverts to broken speech in all his Heisei appearances. My headcanon is that as soon as he got home to the Amazon, he ripped off his suit and had the time of his life being a little jungle boy again. He still understands Japanese but it's like when you haven't used your second language in a long time and you feel like you have to go back to basics with regards to speaking it.

Kamen Rider X

This show would be higher if it weren't for Starfish Hitler and Sasori Geronimo (and Geronimo Jr because racism needs to come in twos I guess??). Because this show... my god. Jin Keisuke. Where do I even start.

I don't think any KR show has as strong as an opening as the first couple episodes of X, where Keisuke's dad dies in episode 1 after turning his son into a sea cyborg, then in episode 2 makes his son blow up the AI recreation of himself that he left behind because Keisuke was so weak and pathetic for coming to him for advice and comfort. Jin Keisuke is just so sopping wet and his tummy hurts soooo much. Apollo Geist is also there and every scene he's in is crazy. He's somehow SO cool and yet he's just as sopping wet as Jin Keisuke is, making them perfect for each other. I personally think Apollo Geist is the first great Kamen Rider villain and I honestly don't think many Showa Rider villains match up outside of Stronger's crew of drama queens and the Black/RX freaks.

Kamen Rider Decade

I watched Zi-O before Decade, and... man. Tsukasa seems SO cool in Zi-O. They make him seem cool every time they bring him back, which is funny as hell when he's actually a big loser in his original show. While I think it would have been awesome if they got more actors back for the tribute episodes, I honestly didn't mind the way they tackled this show. It was a little weird that they took one aspect of each show and exaggerated it to make their tribute plots, but it still managed to be entertaining.

Tsukasa and Kaito's toxic gay relationship is great, but it's a shame future Decade cameos didn't bring back the Tsukasa/Natsumi/Yusuke polycule because I think Tsukasa works a lot better with those two to bounce off of. The two of them reign in his ego and help highlight his good traits. People like to dunk on Yusuke Onedera, but he's such a good boy and I honestly would love to see him come back regularly whenever they want to do Kuuga stuff if Joe Odagiri is never going to return to the role.

I also watched Hibiki for the first time shortly before watching Decade, so that tribute arc made me crazy emotional. Easily the best arc in the show. Even though it's not the same canon, the meaning and love is still there. (For reference: I also think Zi-O's Hibiki arc is one of the best arcs in that show too. Something about it stood out over all the other tribute arcs I also had no context for at the time. KR writers love to work with Hibiki's story I guess? If only Toei execs felt the same way when deciding what shows should get anniversary content.)

Honestly, I probably like Zi-O and Decade about the same amount. Also it's not part of the show, but I would like to remind everyone that the Decade musical exists and that it's awesome. That is all.

Kamen Rider Zi-O

I first watched Zi-O as my tenth(ish) Kamen Rider series. As mentioned in the Zero-One section, I wasn't too crazy about it on that first watch. But when I rewatched it after consuming all of Heisei, I liked it a LOT more. Would I have liked it this much had I initially watched it after every other show? Probably not, because I think knowing what to expect helped me just enjoy the show for what it was. Sougo, Geiz, Tsukuyomi, and Woz all bounce off each other really well and I never got bored of the Time Jackers (which: I usually DO get bored of trio villain groups!). Decade was there.

While I think the best part of the show is the "Supplementary Episodes" that ran until episode 16 that just involved the cast members goofing off, but the show itself is still silly and fun. It's unfortunate that some shows got better tribute arcs than others, but that's just how the scheduling worked out I suppose. Sougo actually becoming Ohma Zi-O at the end was a really well-done and chilling sequence. I miss these kids.

Zi-O also indirectly caused me to spiral into the depths of the Kamen Rider obsession thanks to having a very good tribute arc for a certain show. Dude just watch Zi-O first and pick your next Rider show based on which tribute episode you thought was the coolest. Who cares just have fun with it!

Kamen Rider Gaim

First of all: this show does NOT deserve to be this high. This show sucks and I genuinely can't imagine what made Madoka Magica so popular (don't tell me I don't care) if this is how Gen Urobuchi writes women. But I unfortunately can't move it lower because there are so many men to put under a microscope in this show and that's what we LOVE to see here isn't that right folks??

I actually REALLY liked Gaim on my first watch for some reason. I went into it thinking I knew the biggest twist of the show (that Kouta becomes a god) thanks to Toei dropping that nugget of info in every post-season Gaim cameo and found myself constantly blown away by how much stuff they crammed into this show. Should they have crammed that much into one show? Absolutely not! The streetdancing and turf war stuff (the most fun part of the show IMO but also more importantly: the initial point of the show) gets dropped halfway through to focus on all the dark plot twists and biblical allusions. The cast is WAY too big and only a few of them are done justice. ...but as said above, it brings me joy to observe all this nonsense under a microscope.

If this show was 20 episodes shorter I think it would have been better. Just remove the Overlords arc, that's easily the dullest part of the show to me. Also let Mai girlboss gatesweep gutblast her way around with the golden apple. Seriously, why can't she use its powers on her own?? Why does she need to give it to a man????? What if she chose to give it to a woman, huh??? What would happen if a non-binary person got the golden apple? Would they become Super God? Because that's what I would do, personally. It's actually SO easy to do. Watch me.

On the flipside: I do really like Kouta and Kaito. People usually call Kouta boring, but he's probably one of my favourite Rider protagonists of all time. He does NOT belong in this show and frankly has no clue what is going on most of the time, but my god he is doing his best to stay optimistic and save everyone. Him being incredibly normal and relatable stands out when everyone else in the show is an uber serious weirdo. Kaito is just really funny and is my favourite bisexual chaos king - bro literally just hates being told what to do, like that's the only way his flipflop-y actions make sense - but I also think the bond he develops with Mai during the show is really sweet. Until y'know... she becomes a plot device and Kaito starts being really weird about their relationship. Calm down.

I didn't have as much fun with this show on a rewatch. It's just so messy and all over the place! It honestly feels like there's more I dislike about this show than what I like, but I genuinely like the first half of the show (and there are some great scenes in the final stretch) so much and I think Kouta, Kaito, Micchy, and Takatora are just so funny to observe that I can't help but feel fond. And while I'm trying to ignore side content for this list, Gaim giving most of its extra Riders solo focus movies/specials is really cool and I wish more shows would do this for their cast. It has become a more common trend in the Reiwa era, but they were still making new Gaim content in 2020 - six years after the show ended! Can you imagine a world where other Heisei shows - ones not named Den-O - got the same treatment? Just imagine: the Hibiki Cinematic Universe...

In my head I view this series as three people (Kaito, Mai, Micchy) being soooo in love with Kouta but Kouta is ASEXUAL and does not realize a darn thing, so Kaito and Micchy are like "welp. i guess his best friend is the next best thing". So that's why they fight over Mai, who is too busy caring about the end of the world to notice. Then Takatora meets Kouta and also wants to kiss him so bad but realizes he's ace and is cool and normal about it unlike the others.

The moral is that asexuals become gods. The End.

Anyways just watch Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal instead. They are literally the same show, except YGO is gayer than Gaim so it's a thousand times better.

Kamen Rider SD

SD is AWESOME. I want to read the manga soooo bad and I vow to buy it once I get serious about learning Japanese. Maybe I'll use it to help learn? It's for kids so it probably uses a lot of Hiragana, right?

I know people talk up Spirits for giving more character to the Showa Riders, but I can't digest Spirits in a 20 minute animated short film now can I? SD is just so cute. I've probably rewatched this more than any piece of Kamen Rider media at this point just because it's silly and fun. It's a shame that some of the Riders were relegated to cameo roles, but everyone they DO use is written to be quirky and fun. Yeah some of them are NOTHING like their real selves, but the writers clearly wanted character archetype diversity and as someone who has had to write Smash Bros Ultimate fanfiction with all the Fire Emblem characters in a room together... I Get It. I understand sooooo much.

If they ever made another one of these, I would never shut up about it.

Kamen Rider Black Sun

This show is great when I view it as a normal show instead of a Kamen Rider show. It's pretty based and I wish other Kamen Riders could play with the same messages this show does. But it doesn't rank higher because it's just... not what I watch Kamen Rider for? I honestly think that using Black as a base hinders the show - for starters it largely focuses on integrating the proper nouns of Black instead of any of the narrative or character aspects that I liked. The Creation King plotline also takes time away from the other plot threads and makes the pacing feel strange. The show's excessive gore and gross effects slightly muddy the message it wants to send, but I think it finds its footing in showing "meaningful" gore in its second half. The second half of the show is just FANTASTIC in general and genuinely had me captivated despite forcing myself through the first few episodes.

Also it's weird that they did two adult-targeted Kamen Rider series and they both contained cannibalism? I don't think it was neccessary in Black Sun. You'd think they would address it in the same way Amazons did ("it shouldn't be morally wrong to want to eat people") considering Black Sun was all about fighting kaijin discrimination, but they just treat it like an all-purpose healing device instead of something relevant to the show's message.

I wish this show had a bit more colour and didn't look so drab. Amazons used a similar camera filter but balanced it out by having bright suits. It's really difficult to see the details of the suits in this show - ESPECIALLY in Black Sun's initial kaijin form. It being pure black makes it look like a blob every time it's on screen. If they brightened the eyes or added orange to the undersuit (like how Shadow Moon is silver with a black undersuit) I think it would have gone a long way in making it pop. Bilgenia should have been a different colour as well (and should have transformed more...) considering how important he is. The Shadow Moon suit not having the pistons on the feet is also pretty disappointing - that was my favourite part of the original suit.

I do think the Creation King prop is one of the coolest toku props in the entire franchise. God I would love to have that in my home.

Kamen Rider Dragon Knight

Surprise! I'm brave enough to put the English Kamen Riders on my list!! :)

I was honestly really impressed by Dragon Knight! Because I had never watched Power Rangers growing up, I didn't quite know what to expect. I had also seen Ryuki already by this point, so I was bracing myself expecting "Ryuki but worse". If you've been paying attention to what shows haven't made an appearance yet, you can tell I like Ryuki more, but I think Dragon Knight did a fantastic job of weaving its own story. Turning Femme into a major Rider despite having limited footage to work with was sooo smart and I thank the people behind this show for doing what Toei was too scared to do. I ended up being invested in this show's original plot and was looking forward to each time I could sit down and watch more. Even though the acting is pretty campy, a lot of jokes were genuinely funny and captured the spirit and vibes of Kamen Rider PERFECTLY. There's also a ton of great out-of-suit fight choreography - something Toei's Kamen Rider wasn't playing around with too much during the era when this was made.

I wish I got to watch this show growing up - it would have done unbelievable damage to my brain chemistry and my world of OCs.

Kamen Rider V3

Oh Hiroshi Miyauchi we're really in it now. I'll be talking about the 1971 Kamen Rider show and why it was peak later, but to reference it a bit: V3 was the most successful at understanding and recapturing its magic and that's why it ranks higher than every show between X and Black for me. Although I don't think Destron or any of its generals leave as much of an impact as Shocker did, Miyauchi makes up for it in his performance as Kazami Shiro. This cocky little freak must have made Japan go crazy, because nearly every Showa Rider after this would try to emulate Shiro's personality once their ratings started dropping. And then in the last ten episodes they bring in Joji Yuki (Riderman, AKA our first evil/rival Rider that turns good), who stirs up some heated drama between men and looks at Shiro like he's his everything.

V3 is a really good example of a show that doesn't exactly have any notable gimmicks and instead remains memorable because it found a formula that worked for 53 episodes. Seeing Miyauchi's character get out of impossible life-or-death situations without explaining how he did it before he delivers his beatdown somehow never got old for me - which is maybe why they made an entire show about his character doing just that but in an even more insane way. (go watch Kaiketsu Zubat btw it's peak!)

I do think it's really funny how many episodes are copied and pasted from the 1971 show though. This isn't a knock against it I genuinely think it's hilarious that they got away with doing that. I wish a writer would copy and paste the Bongo episode from Skyrider into a new show. Just a neat idea for any writers out there who might be reading this.

Kamen Rider ZO

ZO is simply a really solid movie with incredible special effects and fun fight scenes. You could introduce a friend to Kamen Rider with this 40 minute movie if you already know they'd have trouble committing to a full series. If your friend comes away from this movie thinking that it sucked, then you should bury them in the wet earth and leave them there.

Kamen Rider J

What I said about ZO applies to J as well. I like these movies about the same, though I remember being more blown away by J's sets and effects. The fight scene versus the crocodile monster is soooo cool and makes me want more quadruped fight scenes in Kamen Rider. Both of these movies are just super cool! Weren't ZO and J supposed to be Double Riders in a reboot thing? Is that true? IDK I'm just doing this list for fun, no one is paying me so I'm not doing any research. But if that IS true, then I'm sad we never got to see that come to fruition beyond that one theme park short. They both have pretty different backstories, so it would have been neat to see them meet and bond in ways that our original Double Riders didn't get to.

Kamen Rider Ex-Aid

This is yet another Rider show that requires a rewatch from me. However, Ex-Aid is higher than those other shows for having some really memorable FREAKS in its cast and just generally having a really fun aesthetic. I honestly think combining video games and doctors is genius and is probably one of the coolest thematic combinations KR has ever done. I remember when this show was airing, every week I would download the latest episodes of Ex-Aid, Yuri On Ice, and Jojo Part 4 and watch them all in a row on my TV. Kind of a nightmare blunt rotation, but it made it feel like I was watching a live TV block. That's not really relevant to anything, but it does give me fonder memories of this show than I would probably have otherwise.

Although I fell behind on Ex-Aid by the time Build started airing (as you can see above, I finished it about six months later...) I feel like it was the most fun I had with an ongoing Kamen Rider series since I joined this ship with Ghost in 2015. Has the Kuroto Dan market gotten a little oversaturated after his repeated returns post-series? Yeah kind of, but I'm sure when I rewatch Ex-Aid someday I'll smile as big as I did the first time I got to hear his unhinged laughter. ...And hopefully Yuya Takahashi won't hit me with his curse beam.

Unrelated to the ranking: I think it's SO cool they made Gashats based on Namco Bandai properties. I have the Taiko no Tatsujin one! :) They also recognized the king when they gave a Tokimeki Memorial-inspired Gashat to an actual Rider. Any Tokimemo fans reading this??? Hit me up let's chat about Shiori Fujisaki

Kamen Rider Geats

Yuya Takahashi my BELOATHED has struck once again! Geats had a fantastic start. I loved the game show / reality TV / battle royale premise from the first episode. I know that it's supposed to be a plot twist that the Desire Grand Prix is a TV show but it's super obvious if you've eaten literally any media that frames itself like how Geats does. But predicting that twist doesn't take away from the experience at all! It's also great to have a rude protagonist again, and our initial cast gives a really good spread of character archetypes that you can munch and crunch on with your teeth. And in a show with Geats' premise, it's the journey that matters most here so it's great that this show is fun thus far. I mean, we all know that the show is going to end with the characters realizing the DGP's existence is harmful to the world and it needs to be shut down, right? All our heroes are going to put aside their differences and end the DGP together, right?

...Right??

Hey you remember what I said in the Zero-One entry about Yuya Takahashi being too much of a coward to commit to putting meaningful messages in his stories?? I'm pretty sure he avoids these obvious satisfying resolutions specifically so it's easier to make spin-off material. Because y'know, if the DGP was gone, they'd have to jump through hoops to bring it back in the next movie and ooooooo a writer would have to do their job to make it work wahhh that's so hard and scary for them!!! :( Thank god Takahashi was looking out for them when he ended this show.

All that aside, Geats ends up being a really fun show for most of its runtime. I honestly would have been content if the whole show was just new DGPs and we got to see the absolute chaos as they are won by different people - or if Ace kept winning them and made everyone else hate him. A lot of the show is kind of like this anyways, but there's a point where the DGP becomes more of a backdrop than the main focus. I can't really pinpoint exactly where the show falls apart for me, but I guess it's around when Keiwa has his Joker moment upon finding out Ace's mom is the goddess that can recreate the world. That's not necessarily the part that turned me off of the show, but it was somewhere around then where I realized I wasn't liking it as much anymore. When it became Gaim 2 I definitively lost all interest. I'm sorry I just do NOT care about these melancholic "guy becomes a God and is sad about it" plots. Yeah it is actually sad but boohoo whatever, I'm here for silly guys. Put the silly back in the guy please.

Despite all that, this show would have ranked higher if it wasn't for how Neon's character arc ended. The set-up was so PAINFULLY OBVIOUS that the "love" she was searching for was not romantic love but platonic love from her new friends, but instead it was... the love from her abusive parents??? What! Overlooking the fact that "if you keep loving and forgiving your abusive parents long enough they will eventually stop hurting you" is a TERRIBLE message to put in a kids show, other Kamen Rider shows have KILLED dads for less than what Neon's father did. If Neon was a man, Ace and the others would have banded together to beat up her dad. Yeah, it's her choice to forgive him in this show for children, but it was also Takahashi's choice to write a bad resolution for his plotline. And I'm not even going to get into how underused Sara was after the show built her up for so long.

It genuinely leaves a bad taste in my mouth to think about how much I want to like this show. I hope Yuya Takahashi gets locked in Ride Kamens hell for the next decade so I don't have to see him write women ever again.

Kamen Rider: The Next

You would think my opinions on The First & The Next would be pretty similar. I thought they would be too when I sat down to watch these two movies. And I don't know if it's because The First was just sooo dull, but The Next... was kind of sick???? The first half of this movie frames itself like a horror movie. The romance subplot is gone. Hayato Ichimonji is degrading at a rapid pace. This movie just does whatever it wants instead of necessarily trying to be at all faithful to Kamen Rider and I think it thrives for that. You can rotate this one in your head a little bit. Try it out!

Kamen Rider Gotchard

Gotchard's cast endeared themselves to me very quickly and I ADORE the silly casual monster-of-the-week content. I honestly think it's the best part of the show and wish it had more! Someone got mad at me on Twitter for saying this and said "well it needs to have a plot EVENTUALLY" which is like... uh, yeah? Obviously? Lol. Lmao even. Do you have no whimsy in your life? Do you feel nothing when you see the Hopper1 toy wiggle around on someone's shoulder? Were you one of those people who went "finally the show is good!" when Dread happened? Grow up.

Gotchard's plot is just "fine". Adding the Legend arc felt a little annoying because there's already enough going on without him and I feel like we could have used those few episodes to pace out the plot better. The Abyssalis Sisters deserved to win more fights and it would have been poggers as hell if Geryon was a woman so we could have the classic "Kamen Riders band together to beat up someone's dad" but with a toxic mom instead. Because I'm pretty sure a lot of us popped off when pre-release trailers revealed we had an all-female villain trio this time, and it was just SO disappointing (but very expected) that their bosses were mostly men.

(Important to note that the CHARACTER arcs are incredible. Spanner's are good, and Sabimaru getting to fight Dread might be one of the coolest things I've seen in Kamen Rider. Every Kajiki episode is a blast. Rinne's treatment is... a little hit or miss when you compare it to the drama that Spanner gets to go through - not to mention she is the only character who regularly can't transform because she's "out of magic". The Sisters have pretty good arcs and I love how they each fit with a particular Rider, though Lachesis and Clotho got robbed of a satisfying ending. The characters are the highlight of the show! And gripes about the main plotline aside: the vibes of the final episode was EXACTLY what I wanted to see. So it ended on a high note for me!)

I think this is a good entry to bring up one of my big problems with modern (especially Reiwa) Kamen Rider. It feels like every time the protagonist has to face a new enemy that is way out of their league, the problem is solved by immediately giving them a new toy. The Sisters made Dread, then an episode later Hotaro straps a UFO to his back. Hotaro wins easily, and we move on because Dread is no longer a threat anymore. I know these shows are about selling toys and we need to make the toys look cool so they need to WIN FIGHTS, but it damages the reputation of main villains when THEY are the ones getting beat down by every new toy. Saber, Revice, and Gotchard (and also certain parts of Geats once Beroba and Kekera get heavily involved) fall into this pattern A LOT, and it's especially noticable since they all start with a trio of villains in their first half that are constantly getting beaten up by all the toys that the main Riders get to juggle in the early episodes. In older shows, the Riders would actually have to coordinate with each other or even (gasp) actually train to get stronger to stand a chance at beating the new guys.

Am I saying Rider needs training arcs? No. ...Well, maybe. That episode of V3 where Shiro gets Tachibana to hit him with a wrecking ball over and over is hysterical. I just want to see some more thoughtful solutions every now and then! PreCure and Sentai can strike that balance, so it's frustrating that Rider is stuck endlessly churning out new toys instead of being a bit more creative or impactful with its fights. It's honestly shocking that the bubble hasn't burst and that they aren't producing more than what people are willing to buy...

Don't get me wrong: I LOVE how many suits Gotchard got. Gotchard's suits are COOL AS HELL and I'm glad Rainbow Gotchard can summon them so they got more use. But I am so hungry for a villain that's actually threatening for more than a couple episodes. The Abyssalis Sisters wer soooo cool and I adored seeing how they interact with the rest of the cast but... I just wanted to see those girls win some fights... please

Anyways it probably seems weird that this show ranks this high for its monster-of-the-week content when I put Wizard and similar shows so low. Those shows simply don't have Hopper1 or WrestlerG. That's all.

Kamen Rider (1971)

Even if you're not a Showa toku liker, I think all Kamen Rider fans should watch the original show. You'll probably think you're safe assuming that because it is the first one it's probably outdated or outclassed by everything that came afterwards... but you would be wrong!! Watching this show makes everything that came after make SO MUCH SENSE. For the record, this was my 34th Kamen Rider series. I had finished all of Heisei+Reiwa and I was caught up on Revice. I had seen most of the other Showa-era shows at this point because I coincidentally ended up watching them backwards. I only had Stronger, Super-1, Black, RX, and this left. Meeting Hongo and Hayato recontextualized the entire franchise for me. Why does Heisei Kamen Rider have so many silly little weirdos for their protagonists? Why did they make Yusuke Godai of all people their protagonist for Kuuga when the series had been off the air for a decade? Oh! It's because Hayato Ichimonji, the guy who was Mr. Kamen Rider when the series took off, was the silliest little weirdo of them all!

You might think that this show gets old when it's over 90 episodes long. And yeah, there are some bits that drag. But it feels more like watching three different shows (first the experiemental era, then Hayato establishing the status quo, then finally when Hongo comes back and the show is massively popular) so it doesn't actually feel like you're watching 90 episodes of the same show. There's a reason most of the Showa era KR shows tried to replicate this one - Kamen Rider got it RIGHT the first time. They even let the women fight sometimes or throw cards like they're daggers in this one, which is something later Showa Rider series neglected to add. Taki is there and he falls in love with cowboy Hayato Ichimonji. This is all real. I would never lie to you.

Watching this show will also let you know that Kamen Rider LITERALLY punches Nazis, which is a fun fact that some people in this fanbase desperately deny for some reason? Can't imagine why they would be so hostile about that.

Kamen Rider 555

Yet another show that I desperately want to rewatch. I started this show back in the day because it was my friend's favourite and I honestly came away feeling a little neutral on it, but my heart has grown very fond of it over time. The theme of miscommunication being the backbone of a Rider series that uses cellphones as transformation devices... Toshiki Inoue, you're so crazy for this one. The absolute Drama of this show. I think the Delta users are the only characters I didn't feel invested in - everyone else is crazy though. Takumi is an all-timer Rider protagonist that makes me feel SO MANY THINGS both in the show and in post-show content. Meanwhile Kusaka is an all-timer rival/antagonist who makes me feel SO MANY THINGS but in an opposite way. You truly cannot make a show like this anymore.

I love how every major character in this show not only has their own storyline, but it is intertwined with the other characters' storylines. Any show that compels me to construct a relationship chart to keep track of what's going on is a great show IMO. I guess that's Inoue's bread-and-butter considering how this, Agito, and most recently Donbrothers are structured. Keep it up, big man.

I wish I had more to say about this one (because MAN is there a lot to say about it), but... it has been eight years since I've seen it. Inoue put so much to talk about in this show that I feel like if I tried to say anything specific I would just end up summarizing what happens, which is what cowards do when they make lists like this. I'd rather say nothing than be a coward.

Kamen Rider Kabuto

Kabuto is one of the most unhinged pieces of media I've ever seen. I'm in a Discord server that had to make a Kabuto quarantine channel because it rotted so many people's brains. Tendou put chemicals in his food and handed it to me and told me to "drink up" and I went mmmmm thank you Tendou for this delicious food. Then I wake up from being passed out on the hardwood floor 32 hours later.

This show is at its best when it's performing its weekly circus act. Tendou runs into one of the local unwell Kamen Riders who is trying to gas themselves up for their situation-of-the-week. Tendou outperforms them on every level. A Worm is somewhere. Somewhere in the mid-30s the show introduces the "Natives" (weird name and concept to make your villains btw!) AKA the main plot of the show and frankly I think that part of the show is the weakest part. This show is at its strongest when nothing of significance is happening. Did you know that Toshiki Inoue did all the episodes about Daisuke and Tsurugi? I feel like that explains a lot.

I honestly don't know how to describe my feelings for Kabuto. Literally every episode makes me feel insane in ways that no other Kamen Rider could - except for maybe the odd Skyrider episode. This show is made for freaks. You don't look at this show under a microscope, instead you are the one trapped in the glass with all the bacteria while Souji Tendou pours water on you. My cat loves this show. She hates looking at screens but I caught her watching Kabuto when I put it on. She also likes Black Sun so I'm not sure what that means for me and my cat.

Geats' Ace is likely the closest we'll ever get to a protagonist like Tendou again and I think that's a good thing.

Kamen Rider Black RX

THIS is what I wanted to see when people hyped up the original Black. RX actually holds on-going plotlines and arcs across the entire show instead of putting it in a nice little isolated box at the end like Black did. A lot of people say this one is significantly worse than Black, but I disagree! It's easily my favourite Showa Kamen Rider series!! Seeing Kotaro making something of his life and being in a place where he's happy and loved is so heartwarming after the terrors he went through in Black. He gets a girlfriend AND a boyfriend. Love wins. Heisei Rider owes its entire soul to this show.

My only complaint is that there's pretty much no reference to Kyoko in this show. Kotaro grew up with her and they were raised as siblings, so it felt really weird to me that they seemed to intentionally avoid mentioning her even though they revived Shadow Moon for an arc. Did they ever meet again after the events of Black? I hope so. :(

Saban's Masked Rider

Were you wondering where this one was when I included Dragon Knight on the list? Did you think I was going to pretend it doesn't exist? I am this show's number one defender. If Saban's Masked Rider has zero fans then I am DEAD.

For the record: I am being completely serious about my placement of this show. This is not a joke or out of irony. I LOVE this show.

Saban's Masked Rider isn't a show for Kamen Rider fans. It's a Kamen Rider show for six year olds. Once you understand that, you will begin to see the beauty of this show. On my journey to watch every Kamen Rider show, this entry seemed like a looming threat over my head. I assumed it was going to be embarrassingly bad. Would it even be funny bad? Or would it just be boring? I didn't know. I had never encountered someone who liked this show. I had only seen memes and disdain.

I watched this one with a friend and we started by watching the Power Rangers crossover episodes. Those episodes filled us with SO much dread. They were AWFUL. Is all of Mighty Morphin' like that?? Y'all grew up with that?? We thought Masked Rider was going to be 40 episodes of THAT. And I don't know if it was because our standards or so low... or maybe it was because we would often watch Masked Rider well past midnight where we were sleepy and let our guards down... but we were blown away by how wrong that first impression was.

There are moments of this show that made me laugh so hard that I thought I was going to throw up. There are some genuinely funny jokes in this show that I think would do numbers with Tumblr's absurdist humour culture. They turned one of the RX generals into a little rhyming goblin. The "love interest" in this show is a girl who is the "rude popular girl at school" archetype but she's so silly and cringefail to the point where in one episode she dresses up in a bug costume to impress the protagonist. Ferbus is there and you can meet him in real life. This show has everything. This show's biggest fault was that it was made too soon because I just KNOW that if it aired 10-20 years later it would have been considered a classic.

I need to put you in the mindset of where I was when I watched this show. We had just finished Super-1 which, as I mentioned far above, we had paused to watch about 100 episodes of Jojo. We also yearned to watch Stone Ocean but were committed to going back to Rider, so we set up a nightmare revolving door situation where we alternated between the shows each episode. Every time we switched to the other show we would say "oh god", filled with anticipation for some unhinged episode plot we could never prepare ourselves for. I don't know which one scared us more, but I genuinely think both of us started looking forward to Masked Rider more and more. We were obsessed with this show. We were obsessed with Ferbus.

...Unhinged deilirum aside: this show is about an alien who gets adopted into a multiracial family and has to adapt to normal suburban Earth life. When it's not being the funniest show of all time, it's actually very sweet to watch Dex become a real part of both his new family and the community. I desperately hope this show gets unearthed from Saban's archives and put on Bluray, because I would pay ANY amount of money for a high quality release of this show. Don't listen to the haters who make fun of the parts where they use ZO/J footage or the scene where they accidentally mixed up the names of the other Riders in editing. Look at the vision that this show had. Get some friends and put this on when they aren't looking. Don't be afraid of Ferbus.

Kamen Rider Build

Yeah yeah yeah, Build's on everyone's top Kamen Rider shows lists, right? A few of these top entries are going to be predictable. Sorry. If it makes you scream and stomp your feet in anger, make your own list and send it to me. okay? promise? I'm looking forward to it! :)

When I started keeping up with the ongoing Kamen Rider shows, there was one show that I accidentally missed completely. I'm not sure how that happened - I guess I fell off of Kamen Rider for a year? I genuinely have no idea what I could have possibly been into from 2017-2018 that would have prevented me from watching this show. I actually found record of me finishing Ex-Aid after Build started, then saying "okay I'll start Build tomorrow!" and I just... didn't? I didn't end up starting it until a few episodes before the finale was supposed to drop. Whoops!

Anyways, this is the part where I reveal that I am a huge sucker for the "found family" trope in media. I imagine this explains a lot about what you've seen on this list thus far and what you are about to see. Build is ALL about found family. Even though I don't really like the Nanba Children subplot, and even though Grease's attraction to Misora makes me scowl and shake my head, I just can't erase how warm the cast dynamic in this show makes me feel. This is a show where none of the main characters have anywhere else to go... but they have each other. And that's enough.

I also have to talk about Evolt, because... he's Evolt. If you're talking about Build then you HAVE to talk about this guy. I complained in the Gotchard section that modern Rider villains aren't very threatening anymore, and I would say that Evolt is the last one who WAS. Not only did he get regular upgrades like the rest of the cast (allowing him to keep going toe-to-toe with everyone instead of getting walloped every other episode), but he was also personally responsible for letting Sento and the others get stronger. He WANTED them to get stronger, because it meant he himself could get stronger. You don't get this type of dynamic between the heroes and villains in Kamen Rider very often, and it does wonders for making the villain actually feel like a threat. It also helps that Evolt never gets upstaged by someone else nor does he have any big final boss he's working under. Huge kudos to his suit actor for selling the character's personality so well and contributing to the absolute PRESENCE that he has whenever he's on screen.

Even though I think most of the fanbase can agree that this is a pretty safe "beginner" Rider show, I believe what still makes it a great watch even after watching 40 other Kamen Riders is that it has just about everything that's hyped up about Kamen Rider all tied up in a neat little package. Do other shows do those individual aspects better? In many cases: yeah probably! But it's got a consistency that many other shows struggle to maintain for the full runtime and I appreciate it.

Also: there's heated drama between men. How could you go wrong with that?

Kamen Rider Kuuga

I think Kuuga is the gayest you can let Kamen Rider be on national television before Toei shuts you down. I cannot believe there are people out there who say Kamen Rider is mostly straight after watching this show. In every single episode, Ichijo is just vibing and someone comes up to him and says "hey you've been smiling a lot more lately. did you get a girlfriend?" and frankly I don't know how you can get more overt than that without him and Godai making out on screen. If this was a joke they made once then sure, I would see how people could maintain the illusion that it's straight. But this bit happens CONSTANTLY. It happens CONSTANTLY and it's NEVER played off like a mere joke. It's INTENTIONAL. They wanted you to know that Ichijo is in love.

Anyways Kuuga is also about the horrors of succumbing to violence even if it's to save lives and my god everything about this show hits so hard. This is just a normal show that happens to have Kamen Rider in it. And while I made it clear in the Drive section that I don't like cop dramas, this and Agito are the exceptions because the police start out antagonistic towards the hero. Ichijo constantly has to go out of his way to help Kuuga, going as far as disobeying orders from his superiors (he gives him a SECRET CUSTOM MADE BIKE and his VERY OWN GUN!!!) and it takes quite awhile for him to convince the overall police force that Kuuga is on their side. Is it realistic to how real cops would behave towards a Kamen Rider? Probably not! But it's a portrayal that doesn't paint the police force as "cool" for having guns and occasionally solving crime. Ichijo would NOT get along with the likes of Shinnosuke or Ryu Terui beyond a surface-level acquaintanceship.

I also think the Grongi are the best monsters in all of Kamen Rider. They're simple but every single one looks cool as hell. Having extended scenes of them talking in an unknown language where (if you don't have the subtitles) you have to piece together what their motives are based on common words and their actions is soooo cool.

Also also the way the show handles Kuuga's "upgrades" is so cool and I wish more Rider shows would do it like this. He has four base forms and each one gets an upgrade so they all stay relevant? And he doesn't get a final form until the second last episode? There are entire episodes where Godai doesn't transform and they just let the characters and drama carry the viewer retention?! Modern Rider could NEVER.

Kamen Rider Agito

This and Kuuga are honestly suuuuuuper close for me. They each have their things that they do better than the other, but I think what edgest Agito out in front is that it has more characters that I'm invested in. While I love Kuuga's extended cast, Agito's cast fit together like puzzle pieces as they individually contribute to the plot and each other's arcs in their own irreplaceable ways. It makes the relationship web in this show so fun to watch develop. The Riders don't find out each other's identites for over half of the show, which is a dynamic I would love to see again. There's one episode where the main character gets in the G3 suit for a fight, and that's another dynamic I would love to see for a whole arc in a season. There's just a lot of stuff like that in this show, where I go "man. I wish a new Rider show would do something like this". No one does it like Toshiki Inoue (for better or for worse).

There are a lot of moving parts to the mystery in this show and sometimes it feels like Inoue forgot about his plot threads, but it's really satisfying to see the truth get unraveled anyway. Mana is the real main character in this show with how she's so intrinsicly involved in the three main Riders' stories, being the one who brings the whole thing together. Hikawa is one of the sweetest secondary Riders in history and I have to protect this funny fail boy. This is a show I don't think I could ever get tired of no matter how many times I rewatch it.

Shin Kamen Rider

Hey have you watched Shin Kamen Rider yet? You should. If you're reading this you probably know how good that movie is. If this was a list ranking every Kamen Rider movie, this would probably be in the top three if not number one.

I want you to know that the day after I finished Robot Detective K (great show about a cute robot guy who is accepted by 99% of society without conflict btw, go watch it), they released the trailer that revealed he was in this movie and I got so excited that I started crying. Listen: this movie is really cool and fun. The combat is so snappy and impactful and the way they reimagined the original Kamen Rider is so cool. But they put K in this movie????? And they basically incorporated the ending of that show into the story of this movie????? HELLO??? Hideaki Anno your brain is huge and I am shaking your hand. He wanted to make Shin Robot Detective soooo bad. I know he pretty much did it in this one but he should formally do it as his next movie as well.

Anyways this movie is great. Show your friends and family what a special boy K is.

Kamen Rider Hibiki

I've seen Hibiki described as a show for "mothers and troubled teens" and I couldn't agree more. Hibiki is a show about finding a new dad to look up to because your old one probably sucked. It's not a show about Kamen Rider, it's a show about young people struggling to realize what they want to do with their lives. Hibiki and the other Oni are not the main characters - they are merely there to be mentors and supporting figures.

I can't put into words how unbelievably happy this show made me when I first watched it. I knew about the staff change midway through so I was nervous to start it at first, but I fell in love with it very quickly. It's not a show for everyone... but it's definitely a show for me. Even putting aside its themes, there's so much world building that we only get to see glimspes of that make the world feel richer than other Riders' stories. There are over a dozen seldom seen Oni hanging out in Japan that are also fighting big monsters, and it just makes the world of Hibiki feel so much bigger than the single city that most Kamen Riders stay delegated to.

There's so much I could say about this show. I want to gush about it forever. Even after the staff change happens and the unique vibes are lost, the show manages to reclaim some of its base themes and carry them to the end. Many people don't like how this show ended - and I totally get why. Maybe it really would have been better if Asamu became an Oni like the show was building up to. But I think there's value in him choosing not to. There's value in seeing how even a year later when he thought he was pursuing what he wanted to do, he's clearly still unsure if he picked the "right" path. It goes to show that life will always be full of fear and doubts no matter where you end up. It's an ending that hits very close to home for me.

This is a very unique show that's not for everyone. But if Hibiki IS a show for you... it really hits in a way that no other Kamen Rider does. It's so special and I'm very glad that it exists.

Kamen Rider W

Mystery media was my jam back in the day so I was instantly interested in W when I was deciding my first (group watches excluded) Kamen Rider series. Akiko, Philip, and Shotaro play off each other so well and the show is endlessly funny. Over the years I was worried I wouldn't like it as much on a rewatch, but it still held up even after I had the rest of the franchise under my belt. I'm also a sucker for the mix-and-match gimmick that the suit has. It's a gimmick that would be used again in later shows, but having only seven total Gaia Memories to make combinations with keeps it distinct compared to the billions of combinations that the likes of OOO, Build, and Gotchard use.

My only complaint with this one is that I wish Accel would calm the hell down. He cut a random civilian's car in half and punched out an innocent bus driver and no one really tells him off for any of it... haha ok. big cop moment dude. At the very least, the show overlooks the fact that he has a job once he starts hanging out at the detective agency regularly and thus he never gets chances to commit more cop crimes (excluding his solo movie), so I'm willing to forgive and forget. Becoming a dad seems to have fixed him in all his modern cameos. Thanks Akiko! :)

Kamen Rider Ryuki

This show is everything to me. While it starts a little slow, once it gets going it never stops. It's honestly so fascinating how serious this show starts, but then around halfway through it becomes one of the funniest Kamen Rider shows of all time while still maintaining its tone. Shinji, Ren, Kitaoka, and Asakura make for one hell of a group of reoccurring Riders and-- can we talk about Asakura? god we'll never get a guy like him ever again. I spoke about villains having "presence" when I was talking about Evolt earlier, and Asakura is one of the few villains that has that "presence" as well. My man gets to rack up a kill count and even gets power boosts from it when he takes others' Contract Monsters for himself, serving as a constant reminder of what he's capable of. He also gets to like, eat mud and lie on the floor with his jacket open. Isn't that crazy Haha :)

While Ryuki has a plethora of fun characters, I think it's worth focusing this write-up on Shinji and Ren for the effect they had on primary/secondaries going forward. While Riderman is the progenitor of the rival Rider concept, most rival secondaries can be directly traced to Ren and often mirror his personality pretty closely. Shinji on the other hand is the first time some random unsuspecting loser got their hands on a belt without being turned into a superhuman for it, which would also become a common occurrance for Rider protagonists after this show. A lot of people will talk about how great Ren is (and rightfully so!) but I feel like Shinji gets ignored in favour of the rest of Ryuki's cast. We owe so much to Shinji. Please protect him he's just a little guy.

ORE Journal is also my favourite group of civilians that aren't relevant to the plot. Like, what's wrong with them? Why are they like that? It's genuinely fun to see them gradually get closer to the truth behind the Kamen Riders and the Mirror World. We seldom get to see the world of Kamen Rider from people outside of the inner circles, so it makes for a fun subplot!

And finally, while I've been trying to avoid mentioning too many plot spoilers across the shows, I HAVE to talk about the end of Ryuki because I genuinely think about it all the time. The second last episode ending with Shinji suddenly being fatally wounded before he can even transform. He fights until his dying breath despite that, and Ren mourns as the life leaves this idiot that he's reluctantly grown so fond of... dude. Not many primary protagonist deaths are treated very poignantly in this series (Kuuga is the only other hard-hitting one that comes to mind) but Ryuki is built different. The imagery of Shinji's blood smeared on the car behind him? The way there's no sound or music for Shinji's final moments except for their conversation until he's finally gone? Then Ren gets up to see Kanzaki watching him, and learns he's the last Rider left? They really do NOT make them like this anymore. God this show makes me crazy.

Kamen Rider Blade

Blade is probably one of the franchise's biggest meme generators and I feel like as a result, people don't often talk about how good it is. I like Blade for a lot of the same reasons I like Ryuki, although Blade ends up feeling a bit more comedic than Ryuki for... usually unintentional reasons. Is that the reason I like it more? We simply do not know.

Do people still debate about whether Garren or Chalice is the secondary Rider? I feel like I haven't seen that discussion in awhile, but one thing that tickles me about the series is that if it wasn't called "Kamen Rider Blade" I think we would be having this discussion about who the MAIN Rider is. Kenzaki is an extremely passive character for the first half of this show and while some might think that makes him bland, I find it to be really effective in telling everyone else's story. His purpose early on is to just serve as a foil to both Tachibana and Hajime while they are having their own plot meltdowns, and I don't think his lack of a personal character arc makes the show feel worse. Kamen Rider often struggles with giving their casts something to do and it can make some shows drag, but I think the way Kenzaki is handled is to the show's benefit. Blade starts as if you're being thrown in at episode 12 of an ongoing Rider show and you basically have to put the pieces together and figure out what's going on yourself, and Kenzaki being a clueless little guy with nothing major going on helps the audience get through it.

...Then of course in the second half of the show we have Kenzaki give up everything in his life - including his own humanity - for the sake of Hajime's happiness. His whole character is to live and fight for others - to give them the opportunity to be better people experience life to its fullest. I think that's beautiful.

Kamen Rider OOO

This is it. The show that introduced me to Kamen Rider. In 2015 I saw the sequence of the Greeed blowing things up while the Happy Birthday song played in the foreground and my life changed forever.

Good or bad, there's something irreplaceable about your first Rider show. I can't imagine continuing with the franchise if you weren't obsessed with the first one you saw. Even after watching over 40 other Kamen Riders, there's something about the vibes and set-up of OOO that keep it near the top for me. I love narratives where the villain has to team up with the hero, and OOO is literally built on the basis of that relationship. Every character in the show feels like they have "purpose" or some sort of agency in their own lives and you get the sense there's always something cooking behind the scenes. I also adore the mix-and-max concept of the OOO suit, plus each full combo having its own unique abilities means Eiji isn't just getting "direct upgrades" that make past forms obsolete. It's similar to Kuuga in that way! (It's similar to Kuuga in a LOT of ways, actually...) This might also be one of the only Rider shows where the protagonist regularly LOSES their toys, which means Rider's usual problem of forgetting old powerups isn't a real issue here. He can't use them anymore because he literally doesn't have them!

Also: TaJaDor might be one of my favourite Rider suits of all time? LOVE that gay bird.

...I haven't finished this show so I don't know if it has something that would move it down my rankings. Despite everything, I've sworn I will only finish this show with the friend group I started it with. We restarted after not watching it for six years and as of three years later have only made it halfway through, so please contact me in another nine years for my final opinions when I have seen the ending. (...and for the record: I DO know most of what happens in this show anyways. avoiding OOO spoilers is like trying to avoid learning that Gaim becomes blond. it's simply not possible.)

Kamen Rider Den-O

When I finished Zi-O, I was looking for a new show to watch during my breaks at work. A few of the tribute arcs in Zi-O interested me - especially Den-O's. In hindsight, of course the show that always gets the most loving tribute in every tribute series and crossover movie is going to seem like the coolest one. Either way, Zi-O did not steer me wrong because ever since watching Den-O I've been in tokusatsu hell forevermore.

Even if you haven't seen Den-O, you probably know how wildly popular it is. Every two years or so Toei somehow manages to get back not only all the Imagin VAs but also most of the main cast and throw them in a movie. Unless you're EXTREMELY strict on only watching Rider crossover content after you've seen every appearing character's respective show (or maybe you've been watching the franchise in order and haven't gotten to Den-O yet), you've probably seen these clowns at least once in your journey. This show changed the way Kamen Rider was written for the rest of the Heisei era and you can still see its effects on the shows of the Reiwa era as well. Kamen Rider owes all its modern day success to Yasuko Kobayashi.

I honestly don't even know how to talk about this show... It's easy to pin it as the silly train show, but in the first episode the cast travels back in time to help a boy who has been struggling with the loss of his mother. And a lot of the show - especially Zeronos' plotline - has similar moments of sadness and heartwarming-ness. Every major character in the cast is extremely memorable to the point where it's just not the same if you're only bringing back the Imagin. Momotaros is our poster boy here and I certainly wouldn't have it any other way because he is simply perfect. He's a rowdy hothead with a heart of gold. He's your fun older brother that's ride or die when it comes to you and your happiness. All of the Imagin have this in them, but there's just something about Momotaros when he's the one to sit down next to Ryotaro and have a serious heart-to-heart with him...

As I said earlier: you can rank a show based on vibes and no one can stop you. The vibes of this show resonate with me SO strongly. This show is like coming home to a loving family. I think if I could be a regular on the Denliner - even if I was just in the traincar next to the Den-O freaks and had to overhear their screaming and shouting for a 5 hour train ride - my depression would be cured. They could fix me.

FIRST PLACE: Kamen Rider Fourze

Something I appreciated Kamen Rider for is that a lot of the protagonists were adults. And even when there WERE younger Riders, their school life would often be completely overlooked. In recent years I've enjoyed seeing people in my own age group as main characters in media, whether they are sharing my struggles or living a successful life.

So I was NOT prepared for how much I'd fall in love with Fourze.

If you're not familiar with Fourze, it's a show that takes all the cliches and tropes of a western (yes, SPECIFICALLY western and not Japanese!) high school story but throws Kamen Rider and Gentaro Kisaragi (our protagonist) into the mix. Think Mean Girls except the main character befriends everyone in the entire school and successfully ends the local teenage social hierarchy with the power of friendship. I'm pretty sure this show singlehandedly revived my love for the "power of friendship" trope, because ever since watching Fourze I haven't been able to get enough of it. You'd have to be cold as hell to watch this show and NOT think it's cute!

I think this show would have been wildly successful if it aired in the west. If they snuck a dub of this show on Disney channel - somewhere smack dab in the middle of the likes of Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place - I think it would have been one of the most popular shows on the network. You DEFINITELY could have tricked a ton of tweens into watching tokusatsu with very little editing.

Yes it's in first place... but not because it's a "perfect" show. It gets a little repetitive in the middle and the back half starts to feel rushed with how they start treating major Zodiarts like monsters-of-the-week. But it makes me feel warm whenever I remember it. I'd do anything for those kids. Gentaro would be my friend in real life and no amount of self-esteem issues could make me believe otherwise! Meteor is also my favourite Rider of all time and he would NOT be my friend but I would let him get away with telling lies because he's a silly guy. :)

Yeah so in conclusion I legitimately thought about Fourze EVERY SINGLE DAY for over a year after I watched it. Honestly I still think about it pretty regularly! And if you aren't thinking about your favourite show everyday, then is it really your favourite?

That's right, this is the DEFINITIVE ranking for all the Kamen Riders. If you don't have the same opinions as me then that means you are wrong. (Unless you like Saber, Wizard, and/or Ghost. Then your KR opinions are 1000000% more correct than mine and you're the only person I respect in this community.)

Come back in nine years when I remake this list after I've finished OOO and I'll also add Shinobi, Spirits, and Ride Kamens.

Find me @Yoshichao on social medias and tell me what YOUR favourite Rider shows are and why you like them so much! :)