Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.
Kamen Rider follows a young man whose life is violently redirected by a shadowy organisation that remakes him as a cyborg weapon — then watches him turn that same power against them. It's a story about identity surviving transformation, about the body becoming a battleground between the self and those who would use it. The taste it signals: action rooted in personal cost rather than spectacle, antagonists with institutional reach, and heroes defined by what they refuse to become.
Kamen Rider is a Japanese tokusatsu superhero television series and weekly science fiction manga created by manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori. The original airing consisted of a total of 98 episodes and were broadcast from April 3, 1971, to February 10, 1973, on Mainichi Broadcasting System and NET. The manga adaptation was also featured in Shōnen Magazine around the same period. The series has evolved into a franchise with many subsequent annual iterations.
From the Wikipedia article Kamen_Rider_(1971_TV_series), available under CC BY-SA.
Film
Kamen Rider #1
The same Shocker-origin story, revisited after forty-five years of a man protecting humanity as a cyborg.
Film
Kamen Rider: THE FIRST
Hongo's transformation is again forced and unwilling, his future erased by the same evil secret society.
Film
Shin Kamen Rider
A SHOCKER augmentation wrestles with what justice means when power was stripped from you against your will.
Film
Go Go Kamen Rider
Shocker targets civilian infrastructure, abducting and converting people into inhuman weapons to serve its schemes.
Film
Kamen Rider vs. Ambassador Hell
Hongo and an FBI ally go undercover inside Shocker headquarters, the enemy organisation working from within.
Film
Kamen Rider Build The Movie: Be The One
An extraterrestrial faction disguised as post-war peacekeepers manipulates a fragmented nation toward hidden control.
Game
Steel Rats
Biker outcasts defend their city against an invading mechanical army, mixing motorcycle culture with heroic resistance.
Game
Kara no Shoujo
An ex-cop turned private eye joins the investigation into a series of bizarre murders shaking 1956 Tokyo.
Game
Higurashi When They Cry Hou - Ch.1 Onikakushi
Strange murders in a small community hide a conspiracy whose true nature only gradually becomes visible.
Game
Katawa Shoujo
An ordinary student's life is derailed by an encounter that redirects his future in ways he never chose.
Game
Shinobido: Way of the Ninja
An amnesiac warrior with no clan operates alone against three factions, identity and loyalty both stripped away.
Game
Sakura Agent
An agent for a secretive organisation battles strange creatures from another dimension invading his world.
Book
Boruto
A new generation inherits the burden of protecting a world their predecessor already bled to secure.
Book
愛蔵版 フルーツバスケット 1
A teenager displaced by tragedy finds herself inside a household whose secrets reshape everything she thought normal.
Book
フルーツバスケット 1
An orphan stumbles into a family's hidden curse, their secret transforming how they must live and connect.
Book
My Hero Academia, Vol. 16
Heroes rally to free a captive child from a crime boss weaponising her very existence against others.
Book
Akira, Vol. 2
Unstable power in one person's body threatens an entire city, while factions scramble to contain or exploit it.
Book
Wild ones
A man raised in a criminal world is forced to confront buried emotions when his absent father suddenly reappears.
Series
Kamen Rider V3
A tragedy at the hands of an evil organisation drives an ordinary person to become a transformed protector.
Series
Kamen Rider X
A scientist's son is surgically altered after a terror campaign, his new body weaponised against the perpetrators.
Series
Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider
A forty-year-old's lifelong dream of becoming a Kamen Rider collides with real Shocker-inspired criminal activity.
Series
Kamen Rider Hibiki
A teenager discovers his mentor is a secret fighter against monsters, blending coming-of-age with hidden heroism.
Series
Kamen Rider Build
A divided Japan, a Skywall-creating artefact from Mars, and a hero caught in the chaos of a three-way civil conflict.
Series
Kamen Rider OOO
A wandering man with no home inherits power from an enemy faction and must decide what to do with it.
The franchise continues directly with Kamen Rider V3, where a new hero rises after Destron murders his family, and Kamen Rider OOO, a later entry with a wandering hero battling desire-feeding creatures — both carry the same cyborg-hero spirit.
Shin Kamen Rider (2023) is a striking modern reimagining exploring what justice means for a man stripped of his humanity, while Kamen Rider: THE FIRST (2005) offers a darker, grounded retelling of the original origin story.
Akira, Vol. 2 and My Hero Academia, Vol. 16 both feature characters with extraordinary, body-altering abilities caught up in powerful organisations and moral conflicts — strong picks for Kamen Rider fans who enjoy tokusatsu-adjacent manga.