Kamen Rider My-Th 01

Watch Analysis

The video and audio above contain the full unfiltered analysis. What follows is the razor focused version of the strongest point(s) I had to make.

Kamen Rider My-Th 01 Was a Miss for Me

I honestly found Kamen Rider My-Th 01 to be a letdown. I really enjoyed Kamen Rider Zeztz, and My-Th is just okay so far.

A lot of my problem comes down to the execution. There are interesting ideas here. I like some of the action. I like some of the character dynamics. I think the story has potential. But My-Th 01 feels bulky. It feels like there’s a lot going on, and instead of immediately hooking me, a lot of it just left me wondering what any of this stuff is and why I should care yet.

Kamen Rider My-Th Looks Strangely Old

Visually, My-Th 01 kind of looks cheap to me, especially compared to Zeztz. I thought Zeztz was very cinematic. The lighting was good, and the show generally had a solid visual quality. My-Th looks more like old TV.

It specifically reminds me of Kamen Rider Kabuto. Part of that is Sora Otosumi himself. He’s this incredibly capable guy who’s a master at a lot of things and is effortlessly cool, while Yuna Mizuki feels somewhat like the younger sister he’s coaching, teaching, and guiding through the world. That reminds me of Tendou and Juka.

But My-Th also literally looks like Kabuto to me. It has this somewhat desaturated, almost washed-out look that reminds me of some earlier Heisei Rider shows. I’m not somebody who particularly cares about graphical fidelity or crystal-clear HD quality, and I didn’t have a problem with the shot composition. It was just distracting to me that a brand-new Kamen Rider series could look like an early-2000s television show, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

The Inexplicable Actually Looks Inexplicable

That doesn’t mean I disliked everything visually. The Inexplicable (Fukashigi) My-Th fights is freaky, creepy, and very inhuman. I could barely tell what the thing was, which I actually mean as a compliment.

I wondered if it was supposed to be some kind of cicada because of the long reddish wings and strange head, but whatever it is, it looks almost eldritch. For something called an Inexplicable, it certainly looks inexplicable.

My-Th’s Mouse Powers Make the Action Better

I thought the action was good overall. Some of the effects just didn’t sell the ideas as well as I wanted them to.

One thing I really liked was My-Th using his mouse characteristics tactically. He points out that the Inexplicable’s large wings are a disadvantage in a confined space, whereas being a mouse gives him an advantage maneuvering through tight spaces. That’s cool. His mouse motif isn’t just decorating the suit. His mouseness actually affects how he fights.

The choreography and ideas around the fight were good, too. My problem was that some of the effects looked sloppy. When My-Th is moving along the frame inside the building and uses it to attack the Inexplicable, the idea is cool, but the effect itself didn’t look great.

I’d rather tokusatsu cut away, show me enough pieces of the action to communicate what is happening, and let the editing and my imagination do some of the work than show me an ambitious effects shot that isn’t up to standard.

This is tokusatsu. You’re supposed to use your imagination a little bit.

I appreciate creative editing being used to sell something that can’t literally be done. I liked the attitude behind the action. Some of the execution was off for me.

The Kamen Rider My-Th Transformation Does Too Much

That problem becomes much worse with the transformation.

There is just too much fiddling involved with the Ride X-Egg before My-Th actually transforms. Do this, then do this, then do this, then crack the Egg.

Just crack the Egg. It’s not a big deal.

I actually like Sora tapping the Egg on his thigh before putting it into the My-Th Driver. That’s cool enough. You could even have him tap it against the Driver and then insert it.

Henshin. Boom. Done. Simple.

Don’t gild the lily.

The same thing happens with the finishing kick. Having a mouse wheel appear is an interesting idea, but I don’t like the execution because everything is already so effects-heavy. The suit is already crazy. You’re already using special effects to demonstrate the power of the Riders and Inexplicables, with people flying around and smashing through things.

That’s enough. You don’t need another visual layer on top of everything else.

I prefer restraint.

This Is a Kids’ Show, but It Can Still Be Cool

And, yes, it’s partly because it makes it embarrassing to be an adult watching this kids’ show.

But being a kids’ show doesn’t mean something can’t still be cool. It can be all-ages. Ultraman generally feels classy to me in a way that this didn’t.

That’s really what I’m asking for here. I don’t need Kamen Rider to stop being a kids’ show. I don’t need the effects to be photorealistic. I don’t even need everything I’m seeing to be literally convincing.

I just want a little more restraint.

The Zodiac Alliance Makes an Already Busy Premiere Busier

The story gave me a similar feeling of there simply being too much at once.

We already have a pretty big cast with the Zodiac Alliance (Zyunishi Doumei) showing up. We have the conflict between the mouse and Kamen Rider Maou, the cat guy. We have the Inexplicables. We have the Ride X-Eggs. We have all these different Rider powers.

Then there’s something about human evolution at the center of the ideological conflict. The mouse wants humanity to evolve and the cat guy doesn’t. The mouse guy in the past had his Driver on his waist, while Sora now has it across his chest. Is that itself somehow a sign of the evolution of humanity or whatever?

I don’t know.

The Driver even says “Eggvolution.”

There are interesting things here. I just don’t know what most of them mean yet.

Where did these powers come from? What exactly are the Eggs? How did there end up being a cat power when the cat isn’t part of the Chinese zodiac? What does this conflict over human evolution actually mean?

I don’t know.

That isn’t inherently a problem in a first episode. A premiere should leave questions unanswered. My problem is that I’m not immediately hooked by the questions. Instead, the premise feels complicated and bulky.

There’s Still Plenty I Like About Kamen Rider My-Th

There are still things I genuinely enjoyed.

Tatsuomi Asao, the new guy, infiltrating Yuna’s life by posing as her tutor after discovering she needs help with school is a fun setup, especially because he’s secretly working for the Zodiac Alliance.

I also like the dynamic between Sora and Yuna. She even seems able to sense certain things involving him, which could become interesting depending on what is actually happening there.

So I don’t think My-Th is without potential. There are good ideas here. There are characters and story elements I want to see develop, and I’m obviously going to keep watching.

But Kamen Rider My-Th 01 was a miss for me.

I like the attitude. I like some of the ideas. I even like quite a bit of what the episode is attempting.

Some of the execution is off, and right now, My-Th feels like it needs to do less with what it already has.

Inspector’s Notes

Why Kamen Rider My-Th’s Name Makes Sense… Almost

Kamen Rider My-Th’s name is an elaborate piece of multilingual wordplay that I understand better now, although understanding it has not made me like it more.

The Rider’s Japanese name is 仮面ライダーマイス, Kamen Rider Maisu, while the official English styling is Kamen Rider MY-TH. The MY-TH spelling is derived from the English word “myth,” with a hyphen inserted. That part makes sense in a series drawing upon mythology and folklore, particularly the Chinese zodiac and the story explaining the mouse and cat’s relationship to it.

The pronunciation, however, appears to be doing additional work.

Sora is described as Yuna Mizuki’s personal “Meister,” or マイスター (maisutā). Meister is originally a German word meaning a master or highly skilled practitioner of a craft or profession. Japanese borrowed the German term as マイスター, where it is genuinely used outside of Kamen Rider. It can designate highly skilled specialists or craftspeople, including through formal programs such as Japan’s Monozukuri Meister system. It is therefore not simply a fictional term invented for My-Th, although the series may be giving “Meister” its own more specific meaning that has not yet been fully explained.

Linguistically, this creates a very straightforward relationship:

マイスター — maisutā — Meister

マイス — maisu — My-Th

The Rider’s name can effectively be produced by removing the final ター (-tā) from マイスター. Since Sora is himself a Meister, this is a fairly elegant piece of naming.

Maisu also sounds approximately like the English word “mice,” which obviously connects to Sora being the mouse of the zodiac. This creates three overlapping associations: Meister through Sora’s role, myth through the official MY-TH spelling, and mice through his animal motif.

My problem is that the last association does not actually make semantic sense in English. “Mice” is the plural of “mouse.” Sora is one mouse Rider, not multiple mice. I have not found an official explanation establishing why a singular mouse character should be associated specifically with the plural English word “mice,” so I do not think the plural should be rationalized away without evidence.

This leaves me in the strange position of understanding the construction of the name while still finding the result unsatisfying. MY-TH visually invokes “myth.” Maisu is naturally extracted from maisutā, “Meister.” Maisu can also evoke “mice,” connecting Sora to the mouse. Each component is intelligible, but the final combination prioritizes the accumulation of wordplay over precise meaning.

The irony is particularly noticeable because My-Th 01 already contains multiple cat-associated Riders. The singular mouse gets a name evocative of the plural “mice,” while the cat side is where plurality actually exists.

So I would not say that Kamen Rider My-Th’s name is meaningless. Quite the opposite: it may be trying to mean too many things simultaneously. It is a carefully constructed multilingual pun involving MYTH, Meister, and potentially MICE. My discomfort is that making all three associations fit requires accepting a basic semantic mismatch: there is only one mouse.

Loose Thread

The Mouse and the Motorcycle

I failed to talk about how cool I think the suit is for My-Th. I actually really like it.

I love the little details, like the kind of wire-frame exterior thing going on with him that gives him his mouse-ear shapes. His crusher, instead of having teeth or whatever on it, is a little mouse muzzle with little whiskers, which is adorable and fun. It makes it clear that that’s his mouth area.

He also has these little blue accents that make up his antennae, like a Kamen Rider should have, and they’re echoed by the other blue lines in his suit. He’s got the blue eyes, the blue whiskers, little blue lines running over his shoulders and down the rest of his body. I think that’s a lot of fun.

I think it’s very cool how they were able to squeeze the classic Rider antennae into his design. Besides that, the suit itself is neat. I enjoy the overall look of it. It looks very slick. It looks very fast and agile, and he’s obviously able to move around in it.

Something else I didn’t realize until I was reviewing things to talk about is that if you look at the Kamen Rider My-Th from the 100-years-ago section at the beginning of the episode, he actually looks different from modern My-Th.

It’s the same base suit and the same basic design, but with different coloration and different finishing touches. The older My-Th is darker, sharper, and more angular, while modern My-Th takes a lot of those same shapes and smooths them out into these clean silver loops.

Interestingly, that makes the older My-Th look even more like the other Riders of the Zodiac Alliance.

In a show that’s already talking about evolution and literally saying “Eggvolution,” of course that’s intentional. My-Th himself has visually evolved over the last 100 years. I hadn’t noticed that until I started looking at the suit more closely to talk about this, and that’s pretty cool.

I think there’s a lot of good in this suit design. I like how it’s doing work on its own within the story and also how it’s just acting as a Kamen Rider suit. I like it a lot.

I also think it’s kind of fun and interesting that these Riders have tails on them. If you’re going to have a tail and you’re going to have it be functional, that’s really cool.

During the warehouse fight, My-Th gets his gun knocked out of his hand, grabs it with his tail, and his tail hands it back to him.

Originally, I thought they had just used a really basic tokusatsu effect for this. I thought they had somebody moving a rigid tail thing offscreen with a string or wire or something.

Then I went back and looked at it.

Nope. CGI tail.

I’m a little disappointed by that. I wish they had done it practically, but they didn’t. But at least the visual effect looked really good, so that’s impressive.

Honestly, because of how smoothly the prop gun moves into his hand from being on the floor, I wonder if they actually did have somebody hand him the gun through some kind of practical effect and then painted over or replaced whatever they used. Maybe it’s just a quick composite when he grabs it. I don’t know. But the handle just moves right into his hand, and it looks really good.

Something that is practical, though, is the backpack.

Instead of having some sort of Egg pack on his back or an Egg holster, Sora just has these different Eggs in his backpack, and I appreciate that.

He takes the backpack off before he transforms, and then it’s there for him when he needs to pull Eggs out. I kind of hope they stick with that throughout the show, because I think that would be better than having some sort of ridiculous Egg holder.

Unless they went really ridiculous and gave him a crocheted Egg holder, because then that would be hilarious and I would appreciate it.

I heard about somebody who has a bunch of chickens and has something almost like a grenade-holding belt, except the little pockets have been crocheted so you can stick eggs in there. So I guess a tactical Egg pouch is an option.

But out of this very practical, simple backpack, Sora pulls out the Ridewatter X-Egg, which turns into his motorcycle.

I personally thought the whole thing looked really chintzy and cheesy, and at first I was trying to figure out: What does water have to do with a motorcycle? What does water have to do with a mouse?

That’s not what it is at all.

It sure feels like the pun is watta, as in splitting or cracking the Egg. You crack the Ridewatter X-Egg, it splits open, and the two halves of the eggshell become the front and back of his bike. You can see that in the design of the bike.

I don’t know that I actually appreciate the pun, but I’m glad there’s an explanation for it.

But also, if these Eggs are supposed to have different things in them, then it was weird that earlier Sora cracked an Egg into Yuna’s food. He cracked one of the Eggs, something came out of it and went into her food, and she’s like, “Oh, this food is so yummy. I love it so much.”

So what did he crack into her food? What do these Eggs actually hold? If they can hold seasoning or whatever that was, why not hold the bike?

Kamen Rider and their bikes have always been weird, and it’s honestly something that’s bothered me.

I don’t mean the fact that they have motorcycles. I mean the fact that Takeshi Hongo’s normal civilian motorcycle, for example, transforms into the Cyclone. I like the Cyclone. I think it’s a super cool bike. But it’s odd that his normal civilian motorcycle transforms with him.

Different Kamen Riders handle this differently. Kuuga has his bike transform. Kamen Rider Black is weird because Kotaro has his own motorcycle, and then he calls Battle Hopper. So the bikes are separated out like that.

Then in Faiz, Takumi just rides Auto Vajin around, and that’s his bike except for when it’s a robot man. That’s kind of cool. He doesn’t typically have a motorcycle and then suddenly get a different Kamen Rider motorcycle. His bike is already his Kamen Rider motorcycle, and it also turns into a robot man.

Then there’s something like OOO with the Ride Vendor, which is very silly and very funny. It created at least one gag where Eiji just sat on top of it while it was in its vending-machine form, which was funny.

With My-Th, Sora has a regular motorcycle, and then he has a special motorcycle that he uses when he turns into Kamen Rider My-Th.

Why not, instead of that, have him use the Ridewatter X-Egg on his motorcycle?

He could crack the Egg onto his motorcycle and then his motorcycle transforms. That gives us a reason for his civilian motorcycle to transform into his Kamen Rider bike.

Or maybe you combine that with the other idea. He has some sort of Ride Egg that stores his motorcycle, so he cracks it on his motorcycle and his motorcycle disappears into it. He can stick it in his pocket, and then when he needs it, he pulls it out and boom, it’s transformed.

I think that would be kind of interesting.

I’d even be okay with somebody being a Kamen Rider who doesn’t typically have a motorcycle, but then when they turn into Kamen Rider, they have a motorcycle that comes from somewhere within their powerset or whatever.

It’s not going to ruin the show for me, and it’s not going to make me quit watching or anything like that. It’s just an odd thing that I think Kamen Rider has a problem with, and I think they had unique options to deal with it in this show and chose not to.

So, yeah. The backpack, the bike, and the body.

I may not have loved Kamen Rider My-Th 01, but at least it gave me some things to think about and talk about out loud for a little bit. So there you go.