Gen Urobuchi: Kamen Riders Are Monsters

Kamen Rider Gaim writer Gen Urobuchi discussed the show’s design and his approach to writing it in an interview with the quarterly magazine The Kamen Rider.

Urobuchi said the belt gimmick, the fruit-themed Lock Seeds, and the Sengoku-era framing were already decided when he took the job, along with an early plan to design every Rider as a samurai distinguished only by a kanji on the helmet, later expanded to include western and Chinese armor styles for visual variety. Asked whether the show depicted an ordinary Sengoku-style war, he described the Rider Battle as following a lord-and-retainer structure, and explained he had considered having the Riders get along but ultimately chose conflict between them, citing his admiration for Kamen Rider Ryuki and noting that Rider-versus-Rider conflict traces back to the original Kamen Rider, whose hero fought Shocker’s other altered-human agents. He framed the Riders themselves as fundamentally monsters, describing the show’s Rider Battle as, in effect, a monster battle in which the outcome depends on how each user wields their power.

On pacing, Urobuchi said he was directed to keep the show moving quickly given its children’s audience and its role in selling toys, citing his choice to make Kamen Rider Gridon a likable character partly for that reason. He praised the cast at length, singling out Yutaka Kobayashi’s transformation into a markedly different persona for Kaito Kumon and Gaku Sano’s improvised handling of a scene involving Kota playing with his transformation belt, calling both stronger than he had imagined while writing them, and said visiting the set to watch filming had been valuable for him.

Asked about the show’s opening scene, Urobuchi described it as a light preview of heavier material to come later in the series, framed as a potential future rather than a guaranteed outcome, and noted that the scene immediately following it, between Kota and a child, was a deliberate reference to Kamen Rider Kuuga. Asked what he hoped to achieve with the series overall, he said he wanted it to serve as a guideline for children growing up, drawing on his own experience growing up with tokusatsu heroes, and expressed hope that young viewers facing a dilemma would ask themselves what their hero would do.