It’s Been 30 Years Since ‘Masked Rider’ Tried to Give ‘Kamen Rider’ Its ‘Power Rangers’ Moment

When audiences were in the grip of Power Rangers mania in the early ’90s, Saban Entertainment sought more ways it could leverage its relationship with Japanese studio Toei to turn even more Tokusatsu series into U.S. hits. Thirty years ago today, Saban debuted its take on one of the medium’s most legendary entries, Kamen Rider, hoping the next Power Rangers was in its hands.

Instead, audiences got Masked Rider, and Kamen Rider‘s own journey to the U.S. would take the long way round over the next three decades.

Like Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and VR Troopers before it, Masked Rider—a literal translation of the Japanese title—which began airing 30 years ago today on Fox, utilized costume design and action sequences from a Japanese TV series, re-editing them and blending them in with newly filmed footage to create an entirely different premise. Masked Rider used footage from the 1988 Japanese series Kamen Rider Black RX, itself a direct sequel to the previous series in the franchise, Kamen Rider Black, and followed protagonist Kotaro Minami as he gained new powers to combat an alien invasion of Earth by the Crisis Empire.

Masked Rider itself, however, was much more different and originally featured more explicit connections to the worldbuilding Saban created for Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers in its adaptation of the Super Sentai series Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger. Spinning out of a three-part crossover story that kicked off Mighty Morphin‘s third season in the weeks running up to Masked Rider‘s own debut, the series follows Prince Dex, alien royalty from the planet Edenoi, the homeworld of the Power Rangers’ robot ally Alpha 5.

Fleeing his homeworld after his grandfather, King Lexian, is deposed by the villainous forces of Count Dregon, Dex is granted the mysterious powers of the Masked Rider and heads to Earth, Dregon’s next target for invasion. Taken into the care of a human family, the Stewarts, in the town of Leawood, Dex lives a dual life as the ordinary teenager Dex Stewart while defending Leawood from Dregon’s Insectivore forces as the bug-like hero Masked Rider.

Like Power Rangers before it, Masked Rider diverged significantly from the narrative of its source material, but unlike Power Rangers, the series also leaned into a much more comedic tone, both in comparison to Black RX and even Mighty Morphin‘ itself. That’s also not where its divergences ended, either: although Masked Rider got its introduction via Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, Saban almost immediately cut the latter series’ ties from the former, as Power Rangers‘ own popularity was beginning to decline from the heights of its debut, with no mention of the Rangers or the events they took part in before Dex’s arrival on Earth outside of the initial crossover.

That tone, combined with the declining appeal of Power Rangers, ultimately sealed Masked Rider‘s fate. The series was seen as a flop, unable to support strong toy sales in comparison to Power Rangers at its height. Just over a year and 40 episodes later, Masked Rider came to an end.

© Saban

Ironically, Power Rangers would live on in spite of the decline from its original stratospheric height, rejuvenating itself as Power Rangers Zeo in 1996 after the conclusion of Mighty Morphin and the Alien Rangers miniseries. And although Saban would try again to bring more Tokusatsu series outside of Super Sentai to American TV in Big Bad Beetleborgs the same year, Masked Rider seemingly sealed the fate of Kamen Rider in the U.S., either in its original form or the adapted format, for the foreseeable future.

Masked Rider wouldn’t be the last time that Kamen Rider attempted to reinvent itself for an American audience. After the franchise largely stayed off Japanese TV during the ’90s before being revitalized for the 21st century in 2000’s Kamen Rider Kuuga, it would take over a decade after Masked Rider for someone to try again in the form of 2009’s Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight, a CW-produced adaptation of the 2002 series Kamen Rider Ryuki. But just like Masked Rider before it, Dragon Knight failed to find an audience, being cancelled before its final two episodes could air.

It’s perhaps fitting, then, that Masked Rider‘s 30th anniversary comes at a time when Kamen Rider is making another concerted effort to find a U.S. audience—this time on its own terms. Over the past half-decade Kamen Rider has slowly but surely made its way over to U.S. audiences in its original form, with the first official streaming of older series in the franchise, as well as the arrivals of spinoffs like Kamen Rider Black Sun (a modern, gritty reimagining of the original Kamen Rider Black and Black RX) or the Hideaki Anno movie reboot Shin Kamen Rider.

© Toei

But earlier this month, Kamen Rider took its biggest step stateside yet. The beginning of the latest entry in the franchise, Kamen Rider Zeztz, marked the very first time a Kamen Rider series would air simultaneously in both Japan and the U.S., as Toei finally began to acknowledge the potential for American audiences to officially support the franchise directly alongside Japanese ones, outside of fansubbing efforts and waiting years for legal streams or physical media releases of older series.

Time will tell if Zeztz means the third time’s the charm for Kamen Rider getting its own Power Rangers moment decades after the fact, as the latter series prepares to chart a new era of its own. But there is something fitting that its beginning comes alongside a reminder of when the superhero franchise first tried to kick its way into American hearts and minds with Masked Rider 30 years ago.

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