The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider

Tanzaburo Tojima has just turned 40 and is still seriously dreaming of becoming a Kamen Rider. Just as he is about to give up on this dream, he gets caught up in a "false Shocker" robbery.

Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider is based on the Tojima Tanzaburo Wants to be a Masked Rider manga by Yokusaru Shibata. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

Much like The Eminence in Shadow (whose tone and protagonist wouldn't be out of place in this show), this anime is an ode to the power of fiction—how it captures our imaginations and drives us to do things we would have otherwise not been capable of.

While a 70s TV show it may be, Kamen Rider saved the titular Tojima as a boy from his father's abandonment and his mother's long working hours. It likewise saved him in high school, allowing him to push back the pain and save not only himself but also Emily from a gang of teenage thugs. Without Kamen Rider—and Tojima's love for it—who knows what would have happened to him. But even that's only the prelude to the main theme of this episode: the importance of dreams within the human condition.

We all have dreams—ones we gave up on. Maybe we outgrew them. Maybe we failed to achieve them. Maybe we didn't have the needed talent or drive to even get started. Because of this, there is something powerful about a person who refuses to give up on their dream, even if others mock and ridicule them for it—even if pursuing their dream has left them tortured and alone. Take away all the Kamen Rider trappings and humor at Tojima's expense, and that's what you have with this first episode.

Tojima has spent nearly four decades pursuing an impossible dream. He has trained his body to perfection, preparing for the day when he would have his chance. All it cost him was everything else. He lives alone. He spends his free time punching trees (and bears) in the woods and works part-time manual labor to make ends meet at age 40.

So, in the final scene, when he dons the mask, it is so much more than stopping a robbery. Tears run down his face and his voice trembles—not because he is afraid or embarrassed but because this is the moment. It is the pinnacle of his entire life. The moment when he becomes who he was always meant to be. It doesn't matter that the mask is plastic and the Shocker troops are low-level yakuza thugs. For a precious few seconds, he is the hero protecting the innocent. He is Kamen Rider.

Last week, we were introduced to Tojima. We saw a lonely boy, abandoned by his father and rarely seeing his single, working mother, find happiness through the one thing that would never betray him—the fictional world of Kamen Rider. He longed to become Kamen Rider despite knowing he never could—until the very moment he did.

This week, we meet Yuriko. A normal child, her father introduced her to Kamen Rider Stronger and his favorite character, Tackle—for whom Yuriko was named—when she was being bullied at school. Watching the show and doing the characters' poses served not only as a connection to the character but also to her father. Finding out that Tackle was killed off in that series broke her dramatically. And the only way her father could think of to make her feel better was to explain that, through Yuriko, Tackle lived again—and she took that to heart.

Like Tojima, Yuriko has spent her life preparing to be a superhero. However, unlike Tojima, who had all but given up on the dream, she is still in the prime of her full-blown mania. She cares about being Tackle more than anything else—more than her job, her secret identity, or the student confessing to her. She will literally strip down in public to change into her super suit for her dream—and does so.

She sees Tojima with his festival mask as a halfhearted pretender. She has trained not only her body and soul, but has the costume to back up her ambitions. That's why she punches him first. She sees him as the thief of her birthright and a mockery of what she has spent her life preparing for. Of course, the two of them have far more in common than she might suspect, but that's something to discover later down the road.

..And as for the elephant in the room—the fact that shocker minions actually seem to exist? I think that will have to wait till next episode to see what's up with that.

There's something incredibly charming about a show that is so confident in its absurdity that you cannot help but smile. Almost nothing that goes on makes sense, and there's no way this show is trying to present its characters as real people, but you don't care. I want to see this 40-year-old man obsessed with Kamen Rider to beat the hell out of a bear who has their own internal monologue, wondering who the hell this guy is. When the same guy puts on a Kamen Rider mask that is several sizes too small for his muscular face, my body is throbbing the same way that his body is throbbing before he beats the hell out of some goons that ruined the festival.

I wish I loved something in this world the same way that this guy loves Kamen Rider. I'm all for wearing our passions on our sleeves, but this guy took that idea to an extreme that I cannot help but admire. This is a man who has committed himself in such a way that I genuinely believe that if you do not get as pumped up as he is, you do not have a soul. Or maybe you're experiencing your own over-the-top reaction to his actions that match all of the characters in the show. If that is you, then you don't understand the depth of this man's love.

Do you want to know who understands? The staff working on this show does. The amount of production quality that is baked into this one episode has so far put all the other premieres I have watched to shame. I love the bold colors and thick outlines of all of the characters. I like the retro aesthetic that feels more than just a throwback. I love the attention to detail with all the Kamen Rider references and throwbacks, and the music gets my blood pumping! This is enough to make me turn on an episode of Kamen Rider, even though I haven't touched a single piece of the franchise in my thirty-two years of life. But that's just it, now I want to pop my cherry with this franchise after just one episode. I am sold on anything this show wants to sell me.

Now, originally, I thought that Tojima was the only crazy person in this universe. While we do have the convenience store robbers dressing up as the Kamen Rider villains, that felt more eccentric than it felt exaggerated to that point. This episode shows us that no, there are just people so dedicated to Kamen Rider in this universe that they are willing to do absurd things for the sake of protecting justice. It's insane and I absolutely love it. I want every episode to introduce a new person that bases their entire identity around a specific Kamen Rider character.

This week introducs us to a young high school teacher named Yuriko who is obsessed with Tackle. She is forced into action because she is upset that someone else beat her to the punch when it came to taking down what I guess she sees as real life Kamen Rider villains. It's really funny that the episode kind of subverts the working together trope because unlike the things that they are dedicated to, everyone is just sort of selfishly trying to live out their fantasies. It looks like the main boss who is pushing for the robberies to occur is also really starting to get into his role now and I hope we expand upon that next week.

The subplot about the student having a crush on his teacher was weird because I feel like Yuriko is leading him or stringing him along. She asked him if he could keep a secret, but I'm pretty sure somebody had to have recorded her changing in the middle of the stream before she started beating everyone up. I'm curious if that's gonna be a plot point. I really hope the show doesn't go down the route of this student being her apprentice or something like that because that would be absurd for all of the wrong reasons. But outside of that, I'm just eating up all of this cheese with a spoon. This is crazy but heartfelt in the perfect way and I will definitely be watching it consistently for the rest of the season.

At thirty-*mumbles* years old, sometimes I look around my apartment—the vast manga collection, the Lego flowers, the smattering of figures, the Homestuck poster signed by Andrew Hussie—and wonder what it's all for. Will these things make me happy in my old age? Will there be anyone to treasure them when I'm gone, or will they just be bits of paper and plastic to be shipped off to the landfill? But then I remember that I am here and alive, and they are allowed to occupy space in my home as long as they bring me joy.

So, I have a bit of sympathy for Tojima when he decides to sell off the collection of Kamen Rider merchandise at the cusp of turning 40. Some people's midlife crises involve them buying a bunch of unnecessary, expensive crap, but I suppose Tojima went in the opposite direction. Hey buddy, you've got a lot of years left to sit in that empty apartment!

At the same time, though, Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider is a combination of things that don't interest me. I recognize tokusatsu's influence and importance to anime and manga as a medium, but I'm not really interested in a show that focuses on it unless the writing is sufficiently clever and the boys are sufficiently hot. (Call me, Masayoshi!) I'm also not particularly drawn to series about a man going through a midlife crisis, unless, I reiterate, the writing is sufficiently clever or the man is sufficiently hot. (Call me, Kotetsu!) And I'm definitely not interested in stories where the middle-aged man's backstory is informed by a girl who exists solely to be sexually threatened and then rescued, like half the episode here.

It is also, tragically, ugly as sin. LIDEN FILMS has, once again, taken on three series in a single season, a move that we all know is practically begging for the production to collapse as soon as it's begun. It wants to be One Punch Man, but the action is blocky, barely animated, and stiff. While the vocal performances were solid, I'll never be unhappy to hear Katsuyuki Konishi. (Call me, Kamina!), the two insert songs were unpleasant buttrock.

I didn't enjoy it personally, but I can see what they're trying to do. It's a celebration of the inner child, not just in Tojima's enduring love of Kamen Rider but the way his eyes shine as he walks among matsuri booths, or the ways his cheeks turn pink when he pops a piping hot takoyaki into his mouth. I just deeply, deeply do not care for Yokusaru Shibata's storytelling or humor.

I am at a loss. I've been writing reviews of the first 1-3 episodes of anime for years now, both at Anime News Network and a certain other website with a particular political bent—and none of them have left me as conflicted as episode 2 of Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider. It's a genuinely feminist message, but it's so tightly wrapped up in a determination to provide straight men with boners that I don't know what to say.

We shift focus to Yuriko Okada, who was teased at the end of the first episode. Much like Tojima, Yuriko took strength and inspiration from Kamen Rider as a child. Her source was Electro-Wave Humanoid Tackle, the first female secondary Rider from Kamen Rider Stronger, which her father named her after and showed her as a child. Now in her 20's, Yuriko spends her time working out while dressed as Tackle in hopes of one day emulating her hero. When she comes across Tojima in his mask fighting the petty criminals of real-world Shocker, she resents him for taking her place in the sun.

Here's the thing: there is genuine reverence for Tackle written into the show's script. Little girls who love tokusatsu need heroes that inspire them too, and it seems like Tackle was genuinely revolutionary for the time. Seeing a strong female hero on-screen was a revelation. They even took clips of Kamen Rider Stronger and rotoscoped them in a clever bit of animation. Yuriko, herself named for Tackle, has put a lot of hard work into developing her strength. I want to applaud the show for recognizing that little girls who want to kick ass can grow up to be women who want to kick ass.

But it's also unbearably horny about it. For some reason, Yuriko has modified Tackle's costume, which had a high neckline and long sleeves, into a Wonder Woman-esque bustier. Every time she moves, her boobs wibble and wobble about like they're filled with gelatin, but are also unaffected by gravity. This includes lying down and doing bench presses. I can kinda-sorta buy her modifying the costume to fit her aesthetic preferences, but girl, you have to sew some kind of support into your cups or you're going to fall out. She even strips down to her strapless bra and underwear in the middle of the street, including in front of her student, in order to change into her costume. I know from experience that teachers are specifically instructed to be careful about how they act in places where students or their parents might see them...

Thematically, I'm totally on board, but the presentation is simply too horny.