Behind The Mask: The History of Kamen Rider Sigma

When I first came up with the concept for Kamen Rider Sigma back in 2001, one thing I wanted to try and do was to approach
the story in a way that was as close to how the professionals do the actual TV series as was humanly possible. This mainly means
in how the story would be set up, both structurally (individual, complete episodes that all form a larger overarching story) and
thematically (your basic Rider formula: Good guy fights bad guys, saves people, eventually has to fight big bad guy in control of
other bad guys.) Sounds simple enough, right? Well, if the last few years have been any indication, it wasn't!

The earliest ideas for what would ultimately become
Kamen Rider Sigma go waaay back, but 2000~2001 is
about the point where the ideas actually developed into a
cohesive story based on the Kamen Rider franchise.
Originally, the idea was to simply do something pretty
close to what Kamen Rider Spirits turned out to be: all
the old guys back together for one last adventure.
Somewhere along the line, I decided to add a new Rider
of my own design, and not long after that, I introduced the
then-novel concept of the main character being female.
And then the story really became all about her.

To this date, there's yet to be a starring female Rider in any of the TV series, and of the few that actually exist, they are either
limited to the movies (Femme, Larc), one or two episodes (Shuki), or not even acknowledged as Riders (poor, poor Tackle.)
There's also a stage show-only one, as seen in the above pic on the right (next to Tackle and the lovely, wacky Kirishima
Miho/Kamen Rider Femme.) As an amusing aside, I'm almost certain one of the Kamen Rider Faiz-themed shows featured an
evil, male Rider named Sigma (along with Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc.) but, being stage show-only, he doesn't count!

The grand twist of all this is that Toei had, at one
point, considered doing a series starring a female
Rider, in the late 90's/early 2000's, before Kamen
Rider Kuuga went into production. The Art of
Kuuga book, which had been released as part of
the Kuuga Collection Box and had recently come
into my hands, features hundreds of unused designs
that came about in the period just prior to
Ishinomori's death and before the current Heisei
Riders began to hit the airwaves. Among the
earliest (we're talking the first page) are the two
seen to the right, featuring "Kamen Rider Lady"
(working title, I imagine.) Drawing a bit on Tackle,
but even more on the whole "Magical Girl" image,
it's a rather interesting design, and I'd go as far as
to say Kamen Rider Femme might have taken
some initial inspiration from these, what with the
sword and cape.

Of course, we all know how things turned out, but needless to say I was inspired by these unused designs, as well as comments
from fans online that a female Rider series "would be pretty cool", when deciding to try the idea out in my story. From the get-go,
I had wanted to do a story that allowed for the actual Riders to also appear, but having a compelling storyline for this new female
Rider would certainly make things more interesting.

In the earliest stages, I had considered doing something of a retro story, set between Kamen Rider V3 & Kamen Rider X. This
presented two major problems though. First, doing a story set in the past and still tying into continuity meant that everything had to
end up exactly as how it had been when it started– in other words, the new Rider (who in that version of the story, was a young
protégé of Ichimonji’s) would have to disappear, die, lose her powers or somehow "go away" at the end of the story since she
never shows up again after that on TV. And second, it really started to turn into a story about how Riderman survived his whole
rocket ordeal and returned to Japan, which was all fine and dandy except it really took away from the new main heroine by
reducing her to a background player. In the ultimate indignity (that I’m glad to this day I didn’t pursue) I almost had her even get
turned to evil by the bad guys, only to be defeated by the "real" four Riders. That would explain why she’s gone at the end of the
story and is never mentioned again, but let’s face it, that also sucks big time. So I dumped this idea in favor of something far more
rich in possibilities: a contemporary setting.

What’s so great about that, you ask? Well, for one thing, it meant I could now use later Riders- favorites like X-Rider, Amazon,
Skyrider, Gills, whoever– and give them a chance to shine. It also meant I could play around with what it would be like to have
the heroes of yesterday in the world of today, which is usually a pretty interesting concept if pulled off right (no, I never planned on
making V3 succumb to alcoholism or turn Stronger into a drug addict, if you’re wondering.) Additionally, the new Rider wouldn’t
be restricted by not being able to affect anything since she was a "Rider that never was". On the contrary, she could affect
everything; this was really her story now.

Of course, what was she going to be like exactly? The retro idea pretty much
placed her as being a female version of Rider 1 or Rider 2, but with several
decades' more worth of Riders at my disposal, I could be a little bit more
imaginative. Some of the early concepts include:

-The female Rider 1/Rider 2 design, updated with a bit more 21st century flair.

-The vaguely Agito-inspired Rider seen to the right. Kamen Rider Agito was
still fresh and new about the time I came up with this, and the three-form
concept he had going on was pretty neat. I took that, and a little BLACK RX
influence, and came up with the idea of a Rider who's form changes altered her
body greatly, almost looking like 3 separate heroines. If you're curious, they
were a default, Rider Kick-using form (the biggest one); a tough, armored
form (whose swords were named "Typhoon" and "Tsunami", hahaha); and a
speedy, lightweight form which, yes, was basically "She-Biorider".

-A wild, cat-themed (!) Rider similar to Amazon and Gills. This one had some
unique back stories, including going through the whole "Tarzan" thingy, or
being a normal person, but from a different time period, who had fallen through
a dimensional vortex and— well, let's just be glad I didn't use that one.

-A Rider that was little bit of the first idea, but with more new-age influence in
the costume, namely from Kuuga and Agito, and a design that hearkened back
to the old Riders without actually looking like any specific one. This is of
course, the one that I eventually picked, and it all pretty much falls into place
from there. But for kicks, check out the pic to the right, which is my rendition
(at least, to the best of my memory) of how the Sigma of 2001 looks
compared to the Sigma of today. As you can see, she was originally a lot more
angular (and the costume was supposed to be more like armor than a
bodysuit, hence the square, uh, chest.) A favorite detail of mine is the boots,
which were originally a lot more like platforms boots. While they would have
done some cool things during the Rider Kicks, let's face it, they're not exactly
the greatest thing for a fight (well, I still had to give her some kind of heel– if
Femme can do it, why not Sigma?)

So there you basically have it, the real origin of Kamen Rider Sigma. Of
course, there's still a lot more to the story that I'll tell another time, including the
really big question: "Why does she have that crazy hair!?"

~Igadevil