Staite S (2025)
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2025
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Edited Volumes: The Routledge Companion to Superhero Studies
ISBN: 9781040438015
This chapter explores the interlinkages between television, toys, and demographic change in relation to the Japanese superhero franchise Kamen Rider (1971 – ongoing). Kamen Rider’s central text is a toyetic television program for children aged between three and seven, with a “transformation belt” as the key item of merchandise. One of the most popular Kamen Rider television seasons of all time is Kamen Rider Black in 1987, reimagined as Kamen Rider Black Sun in 2022, as part of the franchise’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Black Sun also markets a toy transformation belt, but the television program is a distinctly adult season (it is rated R18+ in Australia). The narrative of Black Sun centers on a critique of the Liberal Democratic Party in general and former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in particular. The child audience who watched Black in 1987 was middle-aged in 2022 and had lived through a radical inversion of Japan’s population pyramid. While these demographic changes have naturally impacted a toyetic franchise like Kamen Rider in many ways, the focus of this chapter is reading the ways both the tie-in-toy belt and the overall story of Black have changed in Black Sun as a reflection of demographic and political change. The chapter argues that the different methods of activating the two belt toys symbolize the changing social role played by the same superhero character in texts 30 years apart.
APA:
Staite, S. (2025). Superhero Toys, Nostalgia, and the Assassination of Abe Shinzo. In Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Carl Wilson (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Superhero Studies. Taylor and Francis.
MLA:
Staite, Sophia. "Superhero Toys, Nostalgia, and the Assassination of Abe Shinzo." The Routledge Companion to Superhero Studies. Ed. Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Carl Wilson, Taylor and Francis, 2025.
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