Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight was literally the best show that I have ever watched in a long, long time.. and it aired on the unlikeliest of places because it was supposedly "aimed" at boys 7-12, or something like that. So the reason for this blog post is to the lament and sad and painful death of a truly wonderful show. Unfortuately for fans everywhere (I'm sure that there are some somewhere), Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight was officially cancelled due to low ratings- 2 episodes before the series finale. Yes, that's right.. they taped 40 episodes altogether, but they didn't air the last two. Two whole episodes. Redefines cliffhanger, doesn't it? Anyways, there's no use talking about it now.. I feel kind of powerless, like when I used to watch Pokemon back when I was little, and I didn't know anything really about the world. I would just be happy in my little bubble of what I knew and not care about anything else. So I guess I better start talking about why I <3 Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight. Well, first off, from the picture, you would probably think that the show was like Power Rangers. The truth is, that is not even the littlest part true. Apparently in Japan, they have a whole genre of TV shows devoted to shows like Power Rangers and Kamen Rider- so no, it's not a Power Rangers rip-off. The fact is that Kamen Rider was intended for more mature audience. Sure, Power Rangers might have adult fans, but the storylines are obviously intended for children. With Kamen Rider, the storylines could be complicated, characters could be complicated (instead of just good or evil), everything just seemed more mature.
I guess I can compare it a little to Digimon or the first Pokemon movie. Back then, I think that there was less control over what children saw (with parents' groups and stuff, but that's a whole other topic). Digimon had very very dark and scary moments, and thinking back, I wonder if they would let kids watch it nowadays. The first Pokemon movie (if anyone remembers it?) also had the main character basically die- although he gets revived in the end. My point is that because Kamen Rider was not written entirely for children, young adults (like me) and people of all ages and genders could love it too. The plots were great, the characters were believable.. it was also unintentionally funny sometimes. With one word, I would describe the humor as "campy"- which I define as being a movie or TV show being unintentionally funny due to a low budget or other reasons. I loved tuning episodes of Kamen Rider & wondering if little 1/2 my age were watching the same show.
Overall, I guess this is good-bye to Kamen Rider.. with the show cancelled, even a DVD box-set would take some time to be released. I really hope that it does come out though- so that fans can finally see how the storyline gets resolved. Kamen Rider brought much joy into my life- especially since it was so different than all of the other shows. I'm sad that it's cancelled, but what can you do? Shows like this rarely popular anyway.. thank you, readers, for following along on my rant. If you want to check out Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight (and I recommend that you do), just search for it on Youtube on something. Let's ride!!
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