Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider. Is His Story Every Otaku’s Dream Midlife Crisis?

Is your glass half full? Half empty? Or are you the one topping it up with hard graft? Tojima is living his best life as the hero of his boyhood dreams. Why? Because Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider.

Tojima Wants To Be A Kamen Rider Original Kamen Rider

Tojima Wants To Be A Kamen Rider Young Tojima

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Kamen Rider Rides Again

The Kamen Rider franchise has been running in various iterations since 1971. The latest series, Kamen Rider ZEZTZ, premiered in September of this year. The monster-of-the-week show follows various Kamen Riders (literally “masked riders”) as they fight monsters and evil organizations. It’s a one-man Power Rangers that sells belts instead of whatever red, green, yellow, blue, or black merchandise you bought in the ’90s.

Tanzaburo Tojima (voiced by Katsuyuki Konishi) enjoys Kamen Rider. He’s been a fan of the show since he was in yochien. However, Tojima expressed his adoration for the masked vigilante with more than a massive collection of Kamen Rider merch. He lived his training montage and, in his own mind, became a Kamen Rider. The lack of a Rider belt and mask won’t hold Tojima back.

Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider, So We Can Be a Kamen Rider

I absolutely love that Tojima is a forty-year-old geek. Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider taps into the soul of every man and woman who, as a kid, fixated on their TV heroes. Mine were He-Man, Lion-O, “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock, and Raphael. The turtle, not the Renaissance artist. Who were yours?

Yes, we grew up. But, like Tojima, our first love never died. The brilliance of Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider is that it tells the story with Tojima’s passion. This isn’t a midlife crisis story. It’s a hero story. The story dares to say that those heroes who inspired us as kids can still inspire us as adults.

Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider Is the Inspiring Anime Middle-Aged Anime Fans Need

Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider pokes fun at our hero worship, but it never pulls the mat out from under Tojima. The dude kicks butt! Even if the animators didn’t portray his strength as well as they did, Tojima would still be a hero. A hero in a toy mask, sure, but the mask diminishes nothing!

Liden Films respects our love for heroes. It’s weird and laughable, our infatuation with fake heroes, but we need them. Heroes are a part of what it means to be human. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Gallegher (Gallegher, and Other Stories, 1891), the plucky newspaper boy who solved more crimes than he sold papers. I’d forgotten all about the character until my mom found a book I’d written about him when I was eight. Gallegher obviously made an impression on little me, because I grew up writing and righting wrongs (because that’s what editors do, yo).

Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider takes the narrative “over the hill” and gives us hope. We can be our best selves in the glowing afterimage of the imaginary heroes we adore.

Heroes in Ahegao T-Shirts

One of the best parts of my job at J-List has been getting to know fans on the J-List (Official) Discord. We come from all walks of life, and some fans work vital jobs such as rescue and hospital work. They’re real heroes.

Still, anybody who shows up every day, no matter how tough things get, at work and in life, is a hero. There’s nothing glorious about the nine-to-five slog cubicle grind. Nobody posts socials about taking out the trash or doing dishes. But it takes real grit to stick with the humdrum. We stick with the tedium for our families, for ourselves, and for something bigger. It gets hard. We’re bound to fail. But we pick ourselves up and keep going because that’s what our heroes did. They had twenty minutes and tight-fitting hero pants. We have a clock that turns too fast and waifu t-shirts (or Dragon Ball boxers).

Tojima Wants To Be A Kamen Rider Henshin 0

Tojima Wants To Be A Kamen Rider Henshin 1

Mask Up

Ultimately, Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider is refreshingly uplifting. Not in a “let’s hold hands and cry about life” sort of way, but in an honest and fun way, like buddies laughing about male-pattern baldness while sharing boob jokes.

Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider streams on Crunchyroll. Even if you’re still in your thirties, you’ll appreciate Tojima’s story. Tojima and Okada (voiced by Ai Kayano) deliver the emotional punches (and the regular punches) to earn Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider the hallowed Five Chibi Megumis.

Which heroes have inspired you? Come on, we’d love to know. Tell us in the comments.

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