The Kamen Rider series is celebrating its 50th anniversary online by announcing that a collection of its episodes will be coming to YouTube with no charge.
Announced by Toei Tokusatsu World Official, the company thanked fans for the support they had given online. Following the launch of the YouTube channel in April 2020, over 143,000 accounts have subscribed. To celebrate the surge in interest, Toei decided that select episodes of all the Kamen Rider series will be uploaded to the YouTube channel. This will include the original 1971 series, which continued to run until 1973 before spawning various continuations of the still ongoing show.
The series may be known by fans outside of Japan by the name Masked Rider due to its 1995 adaptation. Much like another ongoing series, Super Sentai, adapted in the West as Power Rangers, the show has undergone many iterations sharing the same motif. Both are superhero stories set in Japan that fall under the genre of "Tokusatsu."
Kamen Rider stars motorcycle-riding heroes that wear insect-themed suits to fight supervillains. Created by Shotaro Ishinomori, the series has gone on to produce various continuations, movies and a manga adaptation. As for its connections to Super Sentai, they have shared various references to each other as well as on-screen crossovers. Both series also received their Western adaptations by Saban Entertainment.
The YouTube channel plans to release one or two episodes to the channel for each series. They will be released in the original Japanese dub, but English subtitles will be available. The plan is to release them "every Saturday and/or Sunday," although an official schedule has yet to be revealed. Of note is the limited availability of the uploads; the shows in question may not always be available depending on the viewer’s area. In particular, the channel is not available for Japanese audiences, despite the show's origins in Japan.
A range of other Tokusatsu shows are also collected on the channel, including the likes of Space Cop Sharivan (1983) and The Kagestar (1976). Tokusatsu as a Japanese genre can be characterized by its use of special effects, often incorporating elaborate costumes and miniatures. The channel uploads daily to share this genre of television internationally. While an element of nostalgia is involved, some of the content is being made available to the West for the first time, providing a glimpse at the shows of the past that still inspire modern entertainment.
Source: Toei Tokusatsu World Official