Kamen Rider 50th Anniversary

This article is about an anniversary event in the Kamen Rider Series.

Anniversary logo featuring a golden wreath comprised of all the 37 lead Riders' visors, with Kamen Rider Saber's being in the foreground and center of the wreath. The logo was originally revealed in black when Saber first premiered in 2020.

The Kamen Rider 50th Anniversary (仮面ライダー誕生50周年, Kamen Raidā Tanjō Gojū Shūnen) will be commemorated in 2021. It sees the broadcast of both Kamen Rider Saber and Kamen Rider Revice, which run concurrent with the Super Sentai 45th Anniversary series Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger.

The anniversary was celebrated heavily on social media, in which numerous actors and crew across the franchise, including Hiroshi Fujioka (the original Kamen Rider actor), commemorated on.

Shows and Movies

Toei Tokusatsu Fan Club released several web series that featured several alumni reprisals:

• Rider Time: Kamen Rider Zi-O VS Decade & Rider Time: Kamen Rider Decade VS Zi-O (February 2021)
• Kamen Rider Genms -The Presidents- (April 2021)
• Kamen Rider Saber × Ghost (May 2021)
• Kamen Rider Specter × Blades (June 2021)

On April 3, 2021, Toei revealed three projects to be produced and released within the next few years:

• Anime adaptation of Fuuto PI (9:00 AM) - Summer 2022
• Kamen Rider Black Sun (11:00 AM) - Spring 2022
• Shin Kamen Rider (8:00 PM) - Spring 2023

According to Shinichiro Shirakura at the press release, these three Riders: Double, Black and Ichigo, were chosen because they tie into the origins of Kamen Rider being created from manga.

Episode 29 of Saber aired on April 4, 2021, one day after April 3, the 50th anniversary broadcast of episode 1 of the original Kamen Rider series.

Kamen Rider Saber ＋ Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Superhero Senki is an upcoming crossover film between Zenkaiger and Kamen Rider Saber celebrating both the 50th anniversary of the Kamen Rider series and the 45th anniversary of the Super Sentai series. The film features Kamen Rider 1 in his original costume from the first 13 episodes of the 1971 TV show teaming up with Akarenger. The suit was remade to commemorate the anniversary crossover.

An untitled Kamen Rider 50th Anniversary film has been confirmed and will release sometime in Winter 2021.

Other Events

TOEI TOKUSATSU WORLD OFFICIAL, Toei's official English channel for tokusatsu, started to post Kamen Rider Series episodes. The channel already had posted before the trailers for KAMEN RIDER: memory of heroez, the movie Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue, the highlights of Kamen Rider Zero-One: Final Stage and its talk show, as well as a compilation video of all 20 Heisei Series opening theme sequences sans the opening credits.

For three days consecutively, Team Kamen Rider premiered three films on the channel at 5:00pm PST, each celebrating a specific era of the franchise. Each film was made available to stream for 24 hours after the end of each original live premiere.

• April 5th - Showa: All Together! Seven Kamen Riders!!
• April 6th - Heisei: Kamen Rider W Forever: A to Z/The Gaia Memories of Fate
• April 7th - Reiwa: Kamen Rider: Reiwa The First Generation

The mobile RPG game Monster Strike held a collaboration with the Kamen Rider franchise in March of 2021.

Toei Channel released a compilation of 13 Showa films remastered in 4k on April 3, 2021.

Products

Bandai had also announced a slate of new toys to release in celebration of the 50th Anniversary.

Every month since January, Tamashii Nations announced a new S.H.Figuarts:

• January: Ohma Zi-O
• February: Kamen Rider Rampage Vulcan
• March: Satan Saber
• April: Kamen Rider Eden
• May: Kamen Rider Calibur Jaou Dragon
• June: Kamen Rider Kuuga & Zero-One 50th Anniversary ver.
• July: Kamen Rider Metsuboujinrai
• August: TBA
• September: TBA
• October: TBA
• November: TBA
• December: TBA

Notes

• It is the first anniversary milestone during the Reiwa Era.
• The anniversary year also just so happened to be the year of Hiroshi Fujioka’s 75th birthday.
• Despite reaching its golden anniversary, Kamen Rider was partially hindered by real world events during 2021, specifically the global COVID-19 pandemic which continued from the previous year, governing officials of Japan put several prefectures on state of emergency status including Tokyo. This postponed several planned media events on and off throughout the year.
• Kamen Rider was put on hold for a few weeks so the Summer Olympics in Tokyo could be televised. The games were postponed during the height of the pandemic in 2020 and moved to the following year.