The first ever simulcast Kamen Rider show is on… YouTube?
BY: BRINN SMITH
News Editor
Back in 2022, a certain short-form-video platform reintroduced me to the tokusatsu genre that I loved so much as a child through a Japanese show that I hadn’t heard of at the time, Kamen Rider (pronounced similar to “common” rider). The short videos quickly evolved into me finding some of the series that was available on streaming, and that helped expedite my descent into a full-blown, hardcore Kamen Rider fan. While the series that were available on streaming were from anywhere between two years old to 20 years old, this year, 2025, the company that produces Kamen Rider, Toei Entertainment, has decided that people on this side of the world were a worthy enough market to release the new season, Kamen Rider Zeztz (pronounced as “zets”), at the same time as the broadcast of it in Japan.
Admittedly, this choice came packaged in a strange way. Instead of Amazon Video, where the past shows had been put up in full, this show is being streamed live on YouTube, with new episodes played at 9:30 pm CST every Saturday. They are played in a loop, with the lead up to a new episode having the previous few episodes play before it. The episodes are about 22 minutes, so there’s about three viewings of the same episode the hour after it airs.
The method of distribution aside, the first episode of Zeztz is really good, and is a very strong start for the first series being broadcast in the US simultaneously with Japan. The main character, Baku Yorozu, is both presented as suave, calm and experienced, as well as in over his head and naïve in a way that feels natural. The series’ main motif is that of dreams and dreaming, hence the Zeztz suit being very reminiscent of the original Kamen Rider suit from 1971.
Baku’s relation to the dream theme is that he’s a lucid dreamer. He plays his dreams out like the action movies that he loves, as evidenced by the posters and merchandise in his room, and often presents himself in his dreams as a James Bond type of secret agent character. One day, when he’s going to get himself a job, he notices a child about to be kidnapped, and in the process of trying to rescue her he gets hit by a car with no driver.
In the confusion after, the girl is found by her mother and saved, and Baku is sent to the hospital. There, his sister tries to get him to stop doing things like trying to rescue people, because it always ends up getting him hurt, with graphics on screen showing that in the past, Baku has been attacked by a dog, struck by lightning, and hit by a meteor, with the implication that this is a normal occurrence for him.
That night, while he’s asleep in the hospital, Baku is chased and attacked by a monster with a gun for its head. Backed into a corner, Baku realizes that he’s asleep and goes back to being the suave Bond style spy from an earlier scene, and even though this is supposed to be his dream he can’t get rid of the monster. Baku is then brought to a strange room, and given a strange chest strap device, before being brought back face-to-face with the monster, and he transforms for the first time to Kamen Rider Zeztz.
A fight then proceeds to take place, with the monster being destroyed and Baku waking up with the transformation device still strapped to his chest, starting a mystery for the second episode to pick up with.
While the story is pretty basic for a first episode, learning basics about reoccurring characters, introduction of transformation items and tools, and the introduction of a villain faction after the first monster’s introduction, I think that Zeztz has the added bonus of the visual element. The first scene of the show has Baku shooting a room full of kidnappers with rubber bullets, knocking them out and looking extremely badass while doing it.
The first transformation sequence, which is always a hyped moment for the first episodes, is smooth and really amplifies the epic nature of the series itself. While Kamen Rider’s typically have a catchphrase for after they transform, something to either intimidate the monster, or show off in some fashion, Zeztz has a screen of an announcer telling Zeztz his mission in English, tying into the spy theme from earlier as well as the episode being “Cases” (example: episode one is titled Case 1: Start), followed by Zeztz saying “I’m on it” also in English, without a catchphrase after the transformation.
Speaking of the English portions, the first episode, as well as the marketing, include a lot more English than almost any other Kamen Rider, with the few examples being the ones that were made/adapted in America, showing how committed Toei is to broadcasting this in the Western Hemisphere.
If this review/infodump has inspired even one person to watch Zeztz, then my job was a success, and if anyone is interested, check out the official tokuSHOUTsu YouTube channel, where the series is being streamed.
