It gets you in the ribs, because the joke is a 40-year-old man who never let go of the henshin pose, and then the show refuses to laugh at him. Tanzaburo Tojima has wanted to be a Kamen Rider since he was a kid, and the premise's cruel gift is that reality finally hands him a Shocker to punch, a knockoff one, run by copycat criminals who also love the show too much. This is Shibata Yokusaru, the Air Master guy, so faces contort into rubber-mask grotesques one beat before a kick lands with real weight. The comedy comes from grown adults treating cosplay as a calling. The ache comes from how completely they mean it. If you have ever practiced a transformation in a mirror at an age where you absolutely should know better, this is aimed directly at you.

Tanzaburo Tojima has spent his entire life chasing one dream: becoming a real Kamen Rider. Now 40, he is close to giving up on that childhood fantasy. That changes when a crime wave by the Fake Shocker gang, modeled on the infamous Shocker, sweeps him up. His make-believe heroics soon turn into something real and far more dangerous. Mixing action and comedy with a dose of ecchi, the story centers on adults whose love of Kamen Rider runs a little too deep, until their game of pretend stops being pretend.