With Eyes East

Kamen Rider Eins, Yakuza

“Cool! Where’s the girl version?” has been my reflex with pop culture for as long as I can remember, and surely for longer than I was able to admit. I was into a lot of things – genres, subject matter, etc. – which were not, in turn, interested in women. Funny how that came to a head during my own coming-of-age, with #GamerGate and Star Wars and everything. Not “funny” ha-ha, mind. Anyway, Kamen Rider was one of those examples of pop culture, and same with Ultraman. Godzilla less so, because I’d heard that the one in Godzilla Raids Again was female, and that was good enough for me, parthenogenesis or not. I like Kamen Rider, but my ideal version – ‘90s, Keita Amemiya – never made it past a pilot or two. And truthfully, my ideal version is “girl Kamen Rider,” so I was heartbroken to discover that, out of the one-thousand-and-one Kamen Riders to ever don the motorcycle, none have been women. And even when they sort of were, they wouldn’t wear the helmet! That’s, like, a totally different thing, man. So, imagine my surprise – and confusion – when this popped up in my algorithm:

Courtesy the channel “Kao Beauty Brands,” this is certainly an advertisement, despite its slick production values and generous eight-minute runtime. In it, Nayuta Mikazuki, played in adult form by Amane Tensho, appears to have a flashback while undergoing the cyborg surgery which starts almost every iteration of Kamen Rider. When will these Shocker guys ever learn? In the flashback, a moody Nayuta hones her fighting skills and runs away from her home in Germany – but not without her Kate Tokyo lipstick! This lipstick turns out to be key to her transformation into Kamen Rider Eins, after it takes the form of a Langolier. I wish I could say it makes more sense in the video above, but there’s enough of a logic here to piece everything together. In the end, she squares off against an enemy who could be a “Spider Man,” taking us into a big, bold title card: “Henshin the First.” Neat! Now, what the hell was it?

I think my wee little hands were shaking as I was googling furiously, and thankfully, it wasn’t long before I had answers. The character Nayuta Mikazuki isn’t original to this advert, having debuted in May of last year in Kamen Rider Majade with Girls Remix. Neat! And again, what is that? What are you doing? WHAT IS THAT?! The Kamen Rider Fandom Wiki informs us that this is part of the Girls Remix subseries, which is a crossover of female Riders. At this point, I’m struggling to keep up, but I sort of understand. And how nice that there are female Kamen Riders! Whether or not they look like Kamen Rider, or pretty young actresses, that’s harder to say because Girls Remix, in all its iterations, is a streaming exclusive on Toei Tokusatsu Fan Club. So, even if I managed to infiltrate this site/app/platform as a “Japanese person,” like Scarlett Johansson’s Ghost in the Shell in reverse, what are the odds on English subtitles? And no, Girls Remix episodes are not on the Toei YouTube channel, which was my last hope.

Girls Remix is additionally exciting because it features With Eyes East favorite Miyahara Kanon in at least two roles. This is a Koichi Sakamoto joint after all.

Ol’ Crazy Eyes Kanon

And throughout such titles as “Girls Remix in Halloween Party,” we follow Nayuta from plucky college student to kidnapping victim to friend of Girls Remix to – dun, dun, dun – Kamen Rider Eins. This is what she looks like in the full getup:

Rider kick, lowercase

Nice! I really like the colors, too. You can see glimpses of her in action with this YouTube video, which is like a Girls Remix clip show.

Being that Girls Remix ends with the origin story of a new Kamen Rider, one would think that perhaps we might one day italicize the term “Kamen Rider Eins.” In fact, there’s a popular post on the Kamen Rider subreddit demanding, “Give Kamen Rider Eins her own series!!!” Nothing official has been announced in that direction as yet, but there’s reason to hope: the actress, Amane Tensho, is the daughter of Hiroshi Fujioka, the original Takeshi Hongo, or “Kamen Rider 1.” In the meta-lore, Fujioka dropped out of the show after thirteen episodes due to restrictive entertainment contracts, and was replaced by a different character, Hayato Ichimoji. This instance of the real world disrupting the fictional one was canonized in Hideaki Anno’s Shin Kamen Rider, and may have been what turned the character into a mantle rather than a single figure. And now, a hundred years later, that mantle (or red scarf) is passed onto Eins. Maybe?

I mean, if that ends up being the case, then surely the road to get there has been unusual. A bunch of supplementary material and a sponsorship deal? It’s no stranger than Resident Evil X Porsche, but what if “Henshin the First” is the finale rather than a teaser? We’re in uncharted waters here!

For a parallel or maybe even inverse example, we coincidentally have Yakuza Powered by Nihon Toitsu, which is hardly the most convoluted title in the long-running Like a Dragon video game series. According to this helpful Reddit post, Nihon Toitsu is a series of V-Cinema – low-budget, schlocky direct-to-video material – yakuza movies, starting in 2013. This post actually provides crucial context for Motomiya Yasukaze, who kept popping up in various Kensuke Sonomura movies, from Bad City to Baby Assassins. For westerners, he’s probably best known for playing Kosei Shishido in the 2023 Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. See what I mean about the titles? Well, the Nihon Toitsu star is moving up in the world, now playing the Dragon of Dojima himself in a microseries promoting this year’s Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties, which apparently needs all the help it can get.

Like a Dragon fans, burned at least twice over now, first by a Takashi Miike film in 2007 (which somehow had Gong Yoo in it?!) and then by 2024 Amazon show Like a Dragon: Yakuza. Both were criticized for their deviations from the source material, and if you’re unfamiliar, Like a Dragon has absolutely worthy source material. For something we called “Yakuza” for twenty years, it’s not exactly the quintessential gangster story, but fun and goofy in surprising ways. So while Yakuza Powered by Nihon Toitsu, free and subtitled on YouTube via IGN, is as low-budget as a marketing budget would allow, it’s faithful to the source material to the point of being the source material. Some of the exterior shots are taken from the games, which have never been known for their graphical realism.

Going over to pleasantly surprised raves with the fans, it’s both tie-in product and a complete experience, unlike what we’ve seen so far with Kamen Rider Eins. I’m a desperate man; I’d happily behold Eins in even a small-scale production made with heart like Yakuza Powered – Jesus Christ, I can’t keep typing that out. So, we’ll see. As I find again and again, the talent is there, and willing, but damn if there’s no money in these things. Kanon could tell you all about that.