When the anime for Tojima Tanzaburo Wants to Be a Kamen Rider was announced, I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by one of my favorite authors, Shibata Yokusaru. Previously known for works like the martial arts battle series Air Master!! and the bizarrely wonderful shogi title 81 Diver, Shibata is a master of mixing absurd comedy with excitement and tension. So even though I’m not a particularly big tokusatsu head, I had every reason to check out this show. 

The story: Ever since childhood, Tojima Tanzaburo has carried a burning passion for the original Kamen Rider, and he’s dedicated his entire life to becoming as strong as its titular hero. But while he’s built up his strength and martial prowess to an almost superhuman degree, Tojima is profoundly saddened by the fact that he can never use it to fight Shocker—the villainous organization from the TV series. However, when a string of robberies occur by thieves dressed like Shocker’s minions, this might finally be his chance to make his dream home true. Only, he’s not alone, and it turns out there are other Kamen Rider super fans who have decided to emulate their favorite heroes.

One of the beautiful things about Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider is the juxtaposition between fandom as a catalyst for achieving greatness and fandom as a delusion that weighs people down like an anchor. Tojima really is “training to beat Goku,” so to speak, and the result is a guy who manifested the highly choreographed and predictable fighting style of Hongo Takeshi into reality. All he does is throw the same punch over and over, but he is the embodiment of the classic Bruce Lee line, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” 

However, he also encounters Kamen Rider fans who have actually trained in real martial arts, and the difference in technical skill becomes a point of friendly yet intense competition. In other words, Sometimes being the biggest dork is the greatest superpower, and sometimes it just isn’t. The characters are essentially doing the most deadly serious LARP ever—one they’re convinced is as real as their own flesh and blood. Over the course of the series, this belief spreads out to more and more characters, developing in unexpected ways.

There’s one curious thing that immediately stands out with this anime adaptation: The characters and artwork are generally good, and that is totally not what Shibata’s art normally looks like. He has a very off-kilter sense of perspective and human proportions to the point of looking beyond amateurish, and the anime makes a firm decision to mostly hew away from that. I could understand the desire to make this change, but I did worry that it would lose some of the heta-uma magic that I so adore in Shibata’s manga. The solution is that the Shibata style comes out in certain moments, such as in characters’ exaggerated expressions or for the sake of comedy. It’s a decent compromise.

One last note: Tojima Tanzaburo Wants to Be a Kamen Rider makes a brief reference to Air Master. If we get more anime, I’m hoping to see 81 Diver get some love too.