Kamen Rider (Seasons 1–37)

Kamen Rider (1971) is the Japanese tokusatsu series you can watch online on iFILM, born from Shotaro Ishinomori's manga. Takeshi Hongo, a college student and motorcycle racer, gets abducted by the secret army Shocker and rebuilt into a cyborg. He breaks free before the brainwashing takes hold.

Now masked behind a grasshopper's compound eyes, Hongo straddles his bike and declares war on Shocker. The group breeds monstrous kaijin across the globe in its push for world domination, and at first a single Masked Rider stands against them. When Hongo later leaves Japan, Hayato Ichimonji steps up as Kamen Rider 2. Most episodes follow the same shape: a fresh cyborg foe, a quarry-lot showdown, the trademark Rider Kick.

This is the show that launched Toei's franchise, still running decades later and roughly as central to Japan as superhero comics are to the West. The role made a star of Hiroshi Fujioka, who performed his own stunts. By today's standards it is gaudy and earnest, yet without it there would be no Super Sentai and no Power Rangers. Great for retro tokusatsu fans curious about where the whole genre began. Stream Kamen Rider (1971) online on iFILM.