Jordan Allen of Silver Buster fame recently posted something about Kamen Rider Zeztz where he showed basically all the forms. To be fair, I think one is a stage show form, and one or two are alternative forms that don’t really show up, but for the most part, they’re actual forms from the show.
He talked about how he’s deliberately not doing a bunch of form changes with Silver Buster, his own henshin hero. I’ve read two of the books and backed the Kickstarter campaign for the third, so that tells you a little bit about what I think of his work.
Looking at all the Zeztz forms together, I think he has a point.
The forms kind of suck.
Which is weird for me to say, because I think Zeztz is very slick, and I think Zeztz did a pretty good job introducing new forms and new power-ups. As far as modern Kamen Rider is concerned, it wasn’t horrible.
But it also wasn’t great.
Looking at all the suits together, the spread of abilities isn’t as good as I thought it was. There are multiple forms based around each of the main power sets, plus Inazuma and the later upgrades. And when you actually see all of them together, I start wondering what utility there was in having all these different forms in the first place.
Because a lot of these were effectively like Kiva’s Arms Monsters or Fourze’s different weapons. Had Zeztz just kept a regular base form and gotten different weapons or accessories, that would make sense to me.
Especially because pretty early in the show, we see Nox looking at a book with red, purple, green and blue designs, and he talks about these as something like the Four Pillars that existence is based upon. I think those probably map directly onto the Gore Nightmares and Zeztz’s corresponding powers.
Then we get Inazuma in yellow, breaking that pattern.
I like the idea that Baku is able to go beyond what’s normal because that’s the kind of person he is. He’s not just going to accept a situation the way people tell him to accept it. He’s not going to roll over and say, “Okay, I guess I have to let this girl die or save the world.”
He’s the kind of guy who’s going to save the girl and save the world.
I appreciate that potential foreshadowing, and the idea that Baku was able to break the mold and create a totally new power that shouldn’t have existed by virtue of his will, determination and grit, choosing to chase a dream and face his nightmare.
But that doesn’t seem to really matter in the scope of the show, and that makes Inazuma feel a little pointless.
And when I think about the fact that all these different forms often exist just to give him another accessory, tool or weapon, I don’t really see the utility of it.
If it’s about role-play for the kids, they’re not actually role-playing in completely different costumes. They’ve got the different Power Capsules and the different weapons associated with them.
So why not scale it back and give Zeztz a whole arsenal of weapons instead?
Give him one base form, maybe another form or two, and then a super form. Preserve that original silhouette. You could still change his eye color, which was cool. Change the accent colors. Move the color blocking around. Add accessories when necessary. There are so many ways you could visually communicate a power change without creating another complete form.
And I’m not saying don’t do collectible gimmicks. I’d personally like to see Kamen Rider done without them, but if you’re going to have collectible gimmicks, I don’t think having those gimmicks automatically means you need all these different forms.
You can channel that creative energy into developing weapons or accessories for the hero instead.
There’s a storytelling advantage to that, too, because once you give a Rider all these different forms with different abilities, you start asking, “Why isn’t he using this form? Why isn’t he using that form?”
While Zeztz was fighting Oblivion, I thought about Gravity. If he could use Gravity to make a black hole and suck Oblivion into it, wouldn’t that solve the problem? Or could he use Gravity to weigh Oblivion down so he couldn’t attack them or swing his arms around spreading his memory-nullifying dark wave or whatever?
Once you’ve established that these powers exist, I start wondering why he isn’t using them.
So I think form bloat is less a complaint about accessories and gimmicks than it is about revealing that all these different suits aren’t actually necessary to sell the gimmicks, sell the toys, or make the powers cool to us.
I’ve thought about this a lot because I’ve designed a few Kamen Riders and Kamen Rider-like characters myself. I haven’t gotten them published or into book form yet, but when I think about them, I’m also thinking practically. Could this actually be filmed? What constraints and limitations would I have? What’s the cheapest, most effective thing I could build for a production?
And I also think it kind of sucks to have forms that don’t matter.
Because when you violate the original silhouette of the character, you kind of alienate him from himself. You fracture his visual identity.
And if people really like one form or another, that’s less time they get to enjoy that form because we have to move on to the next, and the next, and the next.
That’s the really sad thing about form bloat to me.
I’d rather have a Rider with a strong visual identity and an arsenal of different weapons and abilities than a pile of forms that don’t matter.
MJ Muñoz 