Before streaming, before easy access, and before you could just search for clips online, discovering Japanese shows in the United States felt like finding something hidden. That is how a bootleg VHS Kamen Rider tape first found me.

It was not clean. It was not official. It did not have subtitles. I had no idea what anyone was saying. But somehow, that made it feel even cooler.

A Local Collectible Shop Opened The Door

Back in the mid 90s, there was a local collectible shop I used to visit on weekends. Looking back now, I think the owners may have originally been from Japan because the store had a lot of stuff you simply did not see in normal retail shops around here.

There was Dragon Ball. There was Gundam. There were anime tapes, Japanese toys, and all kinds of things that felt completely different from what I was seeing on regular American television.

That place was one of my first real windows into Japanese pop culture.

It was also where I started seeing bootleg VHS tapes.

This Was The Bootleg VHS Era

When I say bootleg VHS tapes, I do not mean that in the clean modern collector way where somebody is buying an old tape online.

I mean actual recordings from Japanese television.

Some of them still had commercials on them. Some had no subtitles. Some were just episodes copied from broadcasts and passed around because that was the only way fans could see this stuff.

That was how I got my hands on Dragon Ball GT years before it officially aired in the United States.

And that was also how I first experienced Kamen Rider.

My First Kamen Rider Tape Was Black RX

I remember getting a VHS tape of Kamen Rider Black RX. I do not remember the exact number anymore, but I want to say it had around four episodes on it.

No subtitles.

No English dub.

Nothing there to help me understand the story.

It was just Japanese television recorded to tape.

And I loved it.

I had no idea what anyone was saying, but I understood enough to know that it felt different. The suit looked cool. The action had a different rhythm. The tone felt different from Power Rangers, VR Troopers, or anything else I had seen on American TV.

That was part of the magic.

Not Understanding It Made It More Interesting

When you are watching something with no translation, your brain starts filling in the blanks.

You are not following every plot detail. You are reacting to the energy of it. The visuals. The music. The transformation. The fight scenes.

Kamen Rider Black RX had that energy.

Even without knowing exactly what was happening, I could tell there was something there. It felt strange, but not in a bad way. It felt like I had found something from another world.

I could not understand Kamen Rider Black RX, but I knew I wanted to see more.

Then Masked Rider Came To America

So when Masked Rider later showed up in the United States through Power Rangers, I was excited.

I already knew what it was connected to, or at least I knew enough to recognize that this was related to the Japanese show I had seen on tape.

At first, I thought Kamen Rider was finally getting its chance over here.

Then I watched it.

And man, that excitement faded fast.

I do not remember if I even watched the entire series. What I do remember is realizing pretty quickly that whatever I had liked about Black RX was not really what Masked Rider was giving me.

That was disappointing because I wanted it to work.

I wanted American audiences to get a version of Kamen Rider that felt as cool as what I had seen on those tapes. Instead, it felt like another attempt to chase the Power Rangers formula without fully understanding why the original worked.

That Shop Was More Than A Store

Looking back now, that collectible shop was more important to me than I probably realized at the time.

It was not just a place to buy tapes or figures.

It was a doorway.

That shop introduced me to a version of fandom that existed outside of cable television and toy aisles. It showed me that there were whole worlds of shows, toys, and stories that never made it to the United States in the same form.

That idea stuck with me.

Years later, when I started watching fansubs online, it felt like the next step from those VHS tapes. The technology had changed, but the feeling was similar.

You were still hunting for something.

You were still looking for shows that felt like they were just outside the mainstream.

Final Thoughts

Kamen Rider eventually became a much bigger part of my fandom life, especially once I got into shows like Kiva, Den-O, Decade, and beyond.

But the seed was planted way earlier.

It started with a local shop.

It started with imported tapes.

It started with a version of Kamen Rider I could not even understand.

And somehow, that made it even cooler.

That is why I still think about that era differently. It was harder to find things. It was messier. It was not convenient at all.

But when you did find something, it felt special.

Kamen Rider did not start for me with a streaming service or an official release.

It started with a bootleg VHS tape, a local collectible shop, and a copy of Black RX that had no subtitles at all.