#monster theme

I am a total sucker (no pun intended) for vampires and bats.  

I love that entire concept and look.  Heck, I run another blog here on tumblr that’s more than half vampire content, I like the idea so much.  I just love the idea of the undead who must feed on the living to survive and turn into bats.  Bats are amazing, I love the way their wings look and the way they zip about in the dark. 

So, after the Mantis motif, I would go with Bats and Vampires.  There are several in the history of both Kamen Rider and Super Sentai including:

The original Bat Kaijin from the second episode of 1971′s Kamen Rider:

He can bite people and turn them into artificial vampires.  The only cure is in the claw on his wing.  Kamen Rider ends up ripping off his wing to take the claw and then kicking the one-winged Bat Kaijin off a skyscraper to a bloody end.  

It was even worse for him in the manga!

Over on the Super Sentai side of things, we had Evolved Bat from 1983′s Kagaku Sentai Dynaman:

Dracula Monster from Battle Fever J:

And even the real Dracula himself in Shuriken Sentai Ninninger!

Back over on the Kamen Rider side of things we had the Vampire Bat Beastman from Kamen Rider Amazon (1974): 

The totally creepy Bat Kaijin from 1993′s Kamen Rider ZO:

And an entire episode of Kamen Rider Black RX where an alien vampire created a plague of undead roaming the streets of Tokyo!

But my all time favorite vampire villain(s) in the history of tokusatsu are Nai and Mea/Vancuria from Mahou Sentai Magiranger.

Two gothic lolita vampire girls who are actually the split form of the queen of the vampires, Vancuria:

She grew bored with being alone for centuries on end so she split herself into two beings to always have companionship.  Her two selves have similar personalities though Nai is the more dominant with Mea constantly repeating the last word or two her other half says or even finishing her sentences for her.

At one point they even form a rock band called Bloody Friday Nightmare to lure mortals in and then turn them into vampires with the intent of eventually making them all walk out into the sun to die.

Evil can come in many shapes and sizes, some of them adorable!

Oh man, of course!  It seems almost a tradition at this point for the first two enemies a Kamen Rider faces are a spider followed by a Bat.  It’s such a trope by this point that deviating from it comes off as somewhat jarring (at least to me). This began, as all things did in the franchise, with 1971′s Kamen Rider. The very first enemy Takeshi Hongo fights after escaping from Shocker is the evil Spider Kaijin!

He is one of the most famous villains in the history of the franchise, even getting a revamped version in a recent movie:

And there were a ton more including the first enemy fought by Kamen Rider Amazon:

The first enemy Kamen Rider Black had to face:

One of the monsters fought by Kamen Rider ZO (the other being a bat):

Of course, there were some weirder ones like Kamen Rider X’s Spider Napoleon:

And the weirdo from 2008′s Kamen Rider Kiva, the Spider Fangire:

Who, in his human guise, had a creepy fascination with hand puppets:

Though not as traditional or iconic as their Kamen Rider analogues, there are several Spider Monsters in Super Sentai as well.  Such as:

Iron Spider Mask from 1975′s Himitsu Sentai Goranger

Devil Spider from 1977′s J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai

Kumorugin from 1990′s Chikyu Sentai Fiveman

and Tsuchigumo from 2015′s Shuriken Sentai Ninninger

Spiders just make great villains.  They are creepy, lots of people are scared of them and they are venomous things that trap their helpless prey in webs.  How can you not think of them as just the perfect villains?

I love praying mantis monsters.  They are my favorite insect and seeing them done as monsters makes me smile. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by Monster Movies and I used to check out a series of books from the library from a company called Crestwood House.  They were little orange spined volumes with black and white pictures on the front about famous monsters and monster movies.

One of those books was for a movie called The Deadly Mantis.

That was the book from that series I checked out second most of all (the first place slot there goes to the Godzilla one). I didn’t get to see the movie for years after but that image of a huge mantis with those wicked forelimbs stuck with me.  I thought it was just so cool when I was in grade school and I still do.

So, when I see a mantis monsters in tokusatsu, it makes me smile.

Some great examples are:

The Kamakiri Yummy from the first episode of Kamen Rider OOOs

Mantis Mozoo from Dai Sentai Goggle-V

Mantis Mutant from Kamen Rider Black

Evolved Mantis

And for a bonus, Green Mantis from Android Kikaider!

POV: You want to be the very best, like no one ever was. 🧢⚡

Inktober day 11: Insect.