On Saturday at the San Diego Comic Con 2021 Special Edition convention there was a panel with Team Kamen Rider of Bluefin Brands/Bandai-Namco and Shout! Factory/Shout! Factory TV/TokuSHOUTsu. The panel concluded with the official North American premiere of Kamen Rider Zero-One: REALxTIME movie. Attendees at the panel also received a swag-bag upon leaving.
We’ve recapped the panel and included some of the question and answers segment towards the end.
David and AJ from Team Kamen Rider, Ari from Shout! Factory on panel.
- A brief overview of the history of Team Kamen Rider
- All Heisei and Reiwa belts on display sent from TOEI
- How can you support if you can’t purchase?
- Share social media posts
- Do surveys
- Stream TokuSHOUTsu (for free)
- New t-shirts on Amazon (soon)
- Kamen Rider Gaim shirt
- Kamen Rider Revice shirt
- Kamen Rider 50th Anniversary shirt (logos)
- Premium Bandai US
- Kamen Rider V-Braclet
- Kamen Rider Tamagotchi 50th Anniversary
- Kamen Rider Manga & Comic Books coming 2022
- Stonebot Comics (from South America)
- Starting with Kuuga Manga (fully translated)
- Then Kamen Rider Zero-One (original creation)
- More details coming soon, approval for announcement only came 30 hours ago
- TokuSHOUTsu
- Kamen Rider Zero-One streaming begins January 1st 2022
- More to come soon, especially outside the Big 3 (Kamen Rider/Sentai/Ultraman)
- Kamen Rider Zero-One BluRay
- Removed interlacing
- Hard Subs
- Original audio masters from Toei, so the sound is incredible
- Some of the Q&A for Team Kamen Rider (TKR) & Shout! Factory (SF)/TokuSHOUTsu
- American adaptation of Kamen Rider possible?
- TKR: “Do you want an adaptation or do you want an original creation?”
- Can we get more series on BluRay?
- SF: “If Zero-One does well we can approach it. We’ve talked about maybe a box set for the original series. But we’re a small company so we need to see the return on what’s already being done.”
- Is there anyway we can ask for specific seasons or series to be brought over?
- SF: “Use our social channels. I can tell you I’ve gotten a ton of requests for Dragon Knight, followed by Metal Heroes. But we talk to our own departments, and Toei, and come up with a plan after that.”
- What about maybe dubbing a series?
- SF: “Yeah I’m sorry I really hate those.” – lol
- What about action figures (not SH Figuarts)?
- TKR: Been working/fighting for those. The same department that does RKF’s does DX Belts, so if the DX Belts do well it opens the door to potentially get the RKF’s out here.
- Any plans to do these Kamen Rider movie releases in theaters via Fathom Events? What about special episodes or movies for already-streaming properties, like Ryuki?
- SF: The plan for Heisei Generations FOREVER was actually to have it in theaters, and then the pandemic happened. As the world gets back to normal it can be revisited. As for the Ryuki special episode(s) or movies, if we were to do a physical release of the series, that is something we would then look to include, but currently no plans to stream it.
- Fans from Mexico want Kamen Rider but don’t have access to watch it. Is there any plans to expand?
- SF: Yes. Been looking in to expanding in to new territories. But we have a lot of properties and we can’t just drop in and go, we have to acquire the rights to those territories and Latin America is one area that I think we would want to move in to as Toei has a strong presence in a lot of those countries. I wouldn’t expect anything in the next year, but definitely in the next few years, I would say there’s a really good chance.
- American adaptation of Kamen Rider possible?