Frezno's Comics Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 1 (Kamen Rider)

Wait, what are we doing back here after only two days? What's with that title? What's going on here? This is the first strike back against the gauntlet thrown down to me by one Sean Dillon. It is the beginning of the culmination of a long-running inside joke between us in which they claim that David Lynch's The Straight Story is the best Star Trek movie ever made, and refuse to elaborate further. Unless, that is, I can successfully analyze and critique six comics in addition to the regular comics challenge I've been doing for half the year now. I am down for it. When these words are complete, I'll be a sixth of the way in getting to the explanation at long last. Bring it on, let's go.

The Hyrule fantasy.

I want to start this one with a personal anecdote, far back in the past. The summer of 2001. I discovered a lot of things over that summer, like The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Final Fantasy VI, or seeing Final Fantasy The Spirits Within in a cinema (and LIKING IT, but such a hot take is a story for another time). Another memory I have is of going to a used book store in Gander, Newfoundland called The Book Worm and purchasing something which spoke to my interests. It was an old issue of Nintendo Power, specifically #32 which featured Super Castlevania IV on the cover. I enjoyed the tips and tricks as a teenage ROM fiend, but I am relaying this story because of something else which was in this issue: the first installments of two comic series which would run through 1992 in the pages of the magazine. There was one based on Super Mario World which was quite comedic and fun, but what stood out to me was the second comic which was an adaptation of The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past. I haven't read the book in many years, but parts of its art still stick with me. The way the wizard Aghanim, clad in green in the games, is cloaked in crimson reds for the comic. Or the beauty and grace of this particular styled Princess Zelda. I didn't know it at the time, but the craftsman behind this comic was Shotaro Ishinomori, an absolute legend of manga. That was my first run-in with his style, and here I am two decades later analyzing it again.

Now I get to talk about Kamen Rider, but it's a strange thing. I've been doing that for like a year now. I got to discuss the highs and lows of the Kamen Rider Zero-One series with my pals, and as I write this we've begun a second "season" of coverage on Kamen Rider Build, this time joined by the very person who has inspired me to write about this book, Sean Dillon. It also helps that I recently sat down with the Hideaki Anno film, Shin Kamen Rider. That's a very good film, one which wears its love for vintage 70's tokusatsu on its sleeve and elevates it to a whole other level. Here I am, then, analyzing the very same vintage in the form of Ishinomori's adaptation of the original Kamen Rider series into manga form. Again, it's curious. I was a pretty voracious reader of manga back in the 2000s (to elaborate would lead us down another long tangent), but this is the first time I've had to analyze the stuff. It's all in black and white, so once again the idea of color theory fails me. It's not brimming with hidden transcendental depths like Unflattening was, either: this is the closest thing to a traditional superhero comic as I have had to cover on this thing. What approach shall I take, then?

Let's start with ink. Ishinomori's work with nothing but an ink pen is off the scale here. I can point to pretty much any splash page and ooh and ah over it, but sitting here now there's one that sticks in my mind, just like the red-robed Aghanim or the serene cool blue and white of Princess Zelda's regal dress did and still does from 2001. It's a very simple splash page in description. A monster bursts out from the sea to try and get Kamen Rider Ichigo. But, let's look at it.

I see the irony in me picking a splash page with literal splashing water, but I love everything about this. The streaks and lines and splotches of ink portraying motion in the upper right is one thing, as are the splashing action lines of roaring waves on the bottom of the page. What really gets me is the way that the figure is stark black, and it's in the absence of ink that we see the splashing splotches of what is foamy white seawater contrast against this monster. Kamen Rider is dwarfed by this figure as well, taking a brave stance and being shown mostly in white with some black, to mirror his slightly inhuman nature. Even the shades of grey used to portray the sea wall between him and the creature stand out. This is a damn fine page using nothing but blank white and an ink pen, and there are so many more instances of fine artistry on display over the 4 volumes of manga. I particularly love the literal use of kinematics to show multiple Kamen Riders streaking together into one cohesive fluid motion as he does a Rider Kick on whatever monster or thug is in his way, as if he's moving so fast that the panel to panel mechanics of a manga can't capture him in just a single frame.

Put simply, vintage Kamen Rider goes hard. For all that Anno adds viscera to Shin Kamen Rider, it was always here. There are too many moments to count in this manga where Kamen Rider dismembers one of the monsters, ink spray spurting from their limbs to represent the gushing blood. There's a certain brutality to death here, and not just from the monsters. This is a harsh world, one in which fascist shadow organizations (and they're pretty blatantly Nazi remnants in the show, from what I understand) plot the subjugation and control of Japan and its citizens, working within the very systems of government to show that it's all rotten to the core. Hopes are dashed, good people thrown upon the rocks and sick little boys whose very blood cells turn against them in the end. It's a bleak place, but what else is there to do but fight for what's right? The cruelty of the system is its own downfall: if Shocker hadn't been so fixated on electrocuting Takeshi Hongo to prove a point, and instead just got on with their plan of brainwashing him into another grunt of their fascist regime, they would have won. Instead they had to show off, and in that showing off they created their own nemesis. A hero who strides the line between human and monster, but who remains steadfast in fighting for humanity. Someone who brings a little more kindness and empathy to the world than would have existed otherwise, who resists control and does their very best to make the world better than how they entered it. There's something quite charming about all that. 

Is this manga perfect? God no. There are a handful of moments where one can clearly say "the past was a mistake". Problematic collar tugs aside, it's one hell of a manga. Its heart is in the right place, and the elegant ink strokes of the late Ishinomori leave a lasting impression on me, just as they did in 2001 during a hot summer day. I wouldn't have it any other way, really. Well then, Sean. One down, five to go. Bring it on.