Kamen Rider Amazon (1974)

Kamen Rider Amazon is surprisingly one of the least talked about Rider seasons despite being one of the more experimental and short lived tokusatsu shows from the early Showa era. It currently exists as the shortest Kamen Rider show due to its early cancellation due to an over-amount of gore/violence for the time it was aired. With the Kamen Rider Amazons (2016) reboot bringing back attention the the once forgotten rider, lets take a look at his show and how its quality stands so many years later.

The story revolves around Amazon (Yes this is his actual name) surviving a plane crash as a young child and being adopted by an Incan tribe. After living his early years as a wild child in the woods, his tribe is massacred by the newly resurrected Gorgos, the "Ten Faced Demon". Amazon becomes in possesion of the "Gigi Armlet" which is one of two powerful artifacts wielding a secret power, the other being owned by Gorgos. He flees to Japan to escape Gorgos but is followed and begins to get attacked by various minions of the Ten Faced Demon. He meets Tachibana (The mentor of all Showa Era Kamen Riders) as well as a Brother and Sister who he becomes close friends with. The cast are all pretty lovable and Amazon's friendship with the Brother becomes important later on as its this friendship that allows Amazon to start learning Japanese. Every episode follows the standard Showa era formula for tokusatsu: Enemy appears to steal/mess with children, Amazon shows up and saves the day after facing a small hardship. The amount of gore present surprised even me in the current day, wondering how this was allowed on a kids show from the early 70's. As for the soundtrack, its nothing amazing or memorable. At the same time it does its job well and doesn't have any noticeably bad tracks. Though the shows episode count was cut from 48 to 24 during production, the story's quality doesn't take too much of a hit from it. The only noticeable setback this caused was the final episode had noticeable pacing issues and the ending left a lot of things feeling rushed. Overall it was a pretty entertaining watch despise the obvious tropes, cliches, and low budget feel of the era this show was from. I would heartily recommend this show to anyone looking for some early 70's cheesy action with Karate Bugmen.

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