this is funny, because having read Franken Fran without actually knowing much of anything about kamen rider, the part about Second Sentinel sounded absurd and funny to me

to explain:

in the franken fran series (wherein the titular Fran is a mad scientist who does horrific experiments on people, usually at their request, to Twilight Zone style ends but with much more gore and body horror) there's the Sentinels

these are not-even-thinly-veiled kamen rider expies

a guy wants to be stronger so she makes him into a superhero pretty much, and the author notes at the end that after watching a certain show they realized the character could kick or punch through walls so they'd probably make a human head explode - and this is exactly what Shin Kamen Rider does in the first five fucking minutes

also, the chapter about the second Sentinel, who takes up the mantle to continue fighting for justice, finds said character fighting against a shadowy organization bent on global destruction. their plan? Make the world a better place to live, donate to charities, reduce deaths, etc, just like, literally benevolent shit

their logic being that if they make the world a better place the population will inflate so humans will just destroy each other faster

and sentinel swears to defeat them after some ethical confusion - the last few pages have him attacking a charity bringing water to an african country in need. now, the reason i find this funny is

shin kamen rider's shocker's stated mission is basically to bring happiness to humanity

I was not aware that part of the body horror comedy manga was actually being kind of accurate i thought it was just like that for absurdity's sake

anyway it's been fun re-reading it, though it's also annoying finding typos or errors in an official translation, and the way they stretch out some of fran's words feeeeeels arbitrary, though i can't say if it's accurate or not

Yeah man Showa Kamen Rider was also a little bit more cartoonishly gorey at times, though it was more Amazon's thing

Also Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue, the 92 film that was also full of body horror and gore

yeah i can definitely see why franken fran's author was a fan

Also Kamen Rider The First and The Next came out when Franken Fran was in it's first years so lmao

just a big pile up of edge

so where does Vengeance 3 and his literal vengeance boner fit into things?

I think that's a parody with Kamen Rider's obsession with Justice even though that's an extremely overblown thing for the sake of satirical shit to the point I don't even think it's that funny.

yeah it's definitely the weakest one (that i remember, i'm going through volume 7 now

ALSO ALSO he's V3 from Kamen Rider The Next

Who like was originally a corrupt individual who was altered by a nanobot experiment by Shocker so he started as an antagonist and then became good when he realized he was a shitty brother for neglecting his sister enough for her to be corrupted into like a...Idol Mutant Ghost

The Next is fucking weird, nobody liked it.

that sounds like... choices were made, yeah.

like The First is an edgy retelling that's slightly more manga accurate of original Kamen Rider

The Next is framed like a fucking Ghost Mystery story that happens to have Kamen Rider shit around it cause it's core plot is about a "dead" Idol's CD causing people to die or some shit.

like it clearly was another movie idea they happened to make into Kamen Rider cause they needed a sequel and already had suit designs for the Shocker Riders and V3