Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue (1992)

The original Kamen Rider Shin

What could have been a great deconstruction of the Kamen Rider franchise sadly falters due to its bare-bones plot, wonky writing and unlikable stock character archetypes. It's one of the only Kamen Rider productions to feature direct creative input from the original creator, Shotaro Ishinomori, the film takes a large amount of influence from the original manga run as well as Kamen Rider BLACK's manga.

The film was intended as a treat for more adult fans of Ishinomori's original works by Ishinomori himself but due to his death in 1998, the series planned to continue the story of this prologue never developed leaving Shin in a weird limbo of existence. The problems presented in this film could have easily been ironed out had it been given the chance but the final product is extremely stiff and somewhat bland compared to the likes of ZO which would release the next year.

I'll be honest, I like a lot of this film's production aspects, the music is frankly brilliant and it is that nice transitional period between the synth-heavy 80s and hard rock 90s; the gore and practical effects are simply top-notch with a seriously gnarly transformation sequence almost like it was ripped from a Cronenberg film with a design of the titular character being equally Cronenberg-esque.

Overall, the film is a curious example of when early 90's visceral science fiction met a classic Tokusatsu franchise. Still worth watching but with tempered expectations.

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Mild spoilers ahead:

Everything the movie did well:
-Really great practical effects, especially for its transformations.
-Pretty good acting.
-Pretty great soundtrack.
-The action scenes are really cool.
-Some cool concepts here and there.

Everything the movie did bad:
-Took the Prologue in its title too seriously and barely moved the plot forward.
-There's only 2 fights scenes so the movie isn't able to get much use of its cool effects.
-Not a single character is particularly memorable or engaging.

Reasons for the movie's strengths:
It being an adult film allowed them to realize the more monstrous concept Shotaro Ishinomori wanted to do in one of his original drafts for the first season of Kamen Rider.

Reasons for the movie's problems:
The ideas of Jo Onodera, who was part of the main writer duo, didn't mesh well with the ideas creator Shotaro Ishinomori gave in the first draft according to the cowriter Junichi Miyashita which resulted in the whole project being pretty unorganized. Some people speculate that Junichi Miyashita was brought into the project in the first place by main producer Shirakura to give more polish to writing due to their ideas not meshing well but there's no confirmation.
Also the original idea for the protagonist that Shotaro Ishinomori gave for the project was rejected by producer Shirakura (also said idea was a rejected idea for Black's protagonist), so it's possible that beside Shotaro's and Junichi's ideas were clashing, they were also clashing with Shirakura's, making the project more directionless.
The original plan was for this movie to serve as prologue to a mini-series dubbed Kamen Rider Gaia but it wasn't canceled for unspecified reasons, the only thing known is that producer Shirakura comfirmed that the reason wasn't sales as the movie sold well and that at some point the project shifted into being a crossover movie with previous riders and a new protagonist in spite of Shin originally being planned to be a stand-alone blank state, but the latter project ended up becoming Kamen Rider ZO which was a completely standalone movie. The draft of Kamen Rider Gaia ended up being reworked into a novel that had nothing to do with the film in 2004, called "Kamen Rider Eve -Masked Rider Gaia-"

Overall:
I cannot really recommend this movie, there's barely any plot in the movie and it just feels like setup, and said setup went nowhere since its sequels got canceled. None of the characters are particularly likeable which really make the movie feel like a snorefest. The biggest draw to the film are the fight scenes but they're very few and one can probably find them on the internet either way. Overall, there's really no reason to watch the movie unless you're a Kamen Rider completionist.

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