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Mooks / Kamen Rider

In Kamen Rider, every evil organization in the Showa era had its own Mooks, which were usually just people wearing themed luchador-style costumes, to the point where the term for such characters (Sentoin, literally "Combatant") has become a catch-all term for Tokusatsu Mooks of all stripes. They're less common in the Heisei era, to the point where some shows had one-shot Monsters of the Week "demoted" to Mooks for the purpose of crossovers.


Showa Era
  • The Shocker Combatmen seen in the original Kamen Rider series are the Trope Codifiers for Mooks in the Kamen Rider series and the Toku genre as a whole. Clad in lucha-esque masks and with their iconic skeletal markings and Battle Cry of "yee", they've inspired many a Mook.
  • The Mooks from Kamen Rider BLACK RX, known as the Chaps, carried over to the Western adaptation Masked Rider, where they were renamed the Commandoids; also featured were American-made insectoid Mooks called Maggots.

Heisei Era

  • The Lords in Kamen Rider Agito, the second series of the Heisei Era, doesn't have designated mooks in the series itself, but the movie Kamen Rider Agito: Project G4 has Formica Pedes, a colony of ant-themed Lords that even serve an ant queen.
  • Kamen Rider Ryuki had three low-level Mirror Monsters — Raydragoons, Sheerghosts, and Gelnewts — which were essentially just the wild animals of Mirror World; they weren't contracted to anyone and weren't party of anyone's plots, they just wanted to eat. Thus, a horde of them is less an organized fighting force and more a school of piranha looking for a meal.
    • Kamen Rider Dragon Knight did as mentioned above and mass-produced Ryuki's Gelnewt to serve as a Mook. A Kamen Rider Den-O movie made afterwards actually ended up using Gelnewts as Mooks specifically because there were so many costumes left over from Dragon Knight.
  • Kamen Rider 555 put a unique spin on this trope by having its Mooks be pseudo-Kamen Riders; in this case, the Riotroopers used a mass-produced and scaled-back version of Faiz's own gear. They mainly appeared in an Alternate Continuity spinoff movie; some did appear late in the actual show but there was explicitly only one squad of six Riotroopers and one of the six was a regular cast member (excluding him from being a genuine mook), plus the squad only appeared in two fights. "Mook Riders" would go on to a semi-recurring idea in later series.
  • Kamen Rider Blade didn't use Mooks, but late in the series when the Battle Royale ended in favor of the Black Joker, black monoliths appeared around Japan and started spitting out monsters called Darkroaches intent upon killing off humanity. The Movie, Decade, and subsequent crossovers turned Darkroaches into Blade's regulation Mook, with the movie introducing the recolored Albinoroaches serving an Albino Joker, and Decade making an Elite Mook called the Bossroach.note 
  • Kamen Rider Kabuto:
    • Kabuto had low-level enemies called Salisworms, who would molt into more powerful forms and become full-fledged Monsters of the Week if left alive long enough; this was especially problematic since this molting also granted them Super-Speed, making them a much greater threat.
    • It also expands on the Mook Rider concept introduced in 555 with the ZECTroopers, employees of ZECT in simple suits of armor and equipped with machine guns. There's also an elite group of ZECTroopers called Shadow, though some of its members are recurring characters as opposed to being mere cannon fodder.
  • Kamen Rider Den-O had the Big Bad produce a hit squad of three almost-identical Mole Imaginnote  to kill Den-O; during the Final Battle he mass-produced them, which resulted in their becoming the series' Mooks.
  • Kamen Rider Kiva had the Rat Fangire, a Monster of the Week who first appeared in 1986; he escaped destruction and survived all the way to 2008, gaining the ability to perform a Doppelgänger Attack. Naturally, the fact that there were multiple costumes made for this means the Rat Fangire became Kiva's representative Mook in later crossovers.
  • Kamen Rider Decade: Due to its nature as a Milestone Celebration crossover, Decade didn't have its own unique Mooks but instead tended to use the ones from whichever show's world he was visiting at the moment. When Decade's enemy was cemented as Dai-Shocker, he was likewise met with Dai-Shocker Combatants, who wore the same costume as the original Shocker Combatants but could launch themselves as living missiles.
  • Kamen Rider Double: While most Gaia Memories can turn people into a Dopant Monster of the Week, the Masquerade Memory summons squads of Masquerade Dopants, which look like men in nice suits and bone masks. They're much weaker and less monstrous than most Dopants, but don't carry some of the severe side effects that can come from Gaia Memory abuse. They're generally commanded by Memory dealers as opposed to actual enemy monsters, and only face the Riders a handful of times.
  • In Kamen Rider OOO, the main villains create the "Yummy" Monster of the Week from people's desires.
    • Similar to Kabuto, Yummy start out in a weaker, mummy-like Shiro Yummy ("White Yummy") form before developing into a full monster form — but this time, the Shiro Yummies aren't the mooks. One of the villains discovers how to make a lesser form of a Shiro Yummy called a Kuzu Yummy ("Trash Yummy") that can't develop further, but can be deployed quickly without a lot of investment, and can even be sent out on smaller, long-term resource farming missions that wouldn't draw attention the way a full monster attack would. In future crossovers, Kuzu Yummies are used as OOO's resident mooks.
    • OOO also features the 999th and 1000th episodes of the Kamen Rider franchise, and we get Mookdom taken to its logical conclusion: A Yummy created from the rage of a former Shocker Combatant whose name actually is "Mook" ("In Sendo" — see above) who is pissed at the years and years and years of mooks having their butts handed to them by Kamen Riders. He goes on to spawn a small army of footsoldiers from across franchise history... or rather, Yummies in the form of them. Apparently, foot soldier job satisfaction is about as low as you'd expect... but they take pride in it.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim does something similar as Kabuto, with Invase starting off in a weak "Elementary" state and evolving into more advanced forms if they manage to consume the Fruit of Helheim. It also had "Mook Riders" in the form of the Yggdrasil Corporation's Kurokage ("Black Shadow") Troopers, reverse-engineered from Kamen Rider Kurokage.
  • Kamen Rider Wizard:
    • The mooks here are called Ghouls, but this show lampshaded their general uselessness by having the Phantoms' leaders only really using them to delay Wizard, since they fully realized that such weak creatures were never going to defeat Wizard outright. They also served an important meta-purpose: Kamen Rider Beast needed a constant supply of Mana to keep his Bond Creature satisfied, and since he couldn't defeat every single Monster of the Week he'd usually get to mow down entire platoons of Ghouls.
    • In The Movie, Wizard is teleported to a land where Everyone is a Magic-User, including the police and the king's palace guards, meaning he gets to fight Kamen Rider Mages instead of Ghouls. (Three Mages also appeared in the series itself, but were fully-fledged characters and not no-name grunts.)
  • Kamen Rider Drive worked similarly to Kabuto and Gaim, where Roidmudes would start in generic low-class forms before evolving into ones with greater powers. However, because only 108 Roidmudes were originally made, they couldn't just be thrown around willy-nilly. As such, if an Advanced Roidmude ever has support, it'll be two or three Low-Class Roidmudes at best. Naturally the movies throw this out the window with any number of excuses, including an Outside-Context Villain who can assimilate and copy any technology or a Bad Future where the Roidmudes subjugated humanity and mass-produced themselves.
  • Kamen Rider Ghost: The Gamma have a form of hierarchy, with the mooks being those who are too weak to evolve into stronger forms and are subservient to those who can.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, since it has a video game theme, gives the Monsters of the Week the ability to summon genre-appropriate Mooks: knights and magicians for the Role-Playing Game, commandos for the First-Person Shooter, and street dancers for the Rhythm Game. It also takes on a darker twist about halfway through the series: the Bugster leaders release Kamen Rider Chronicle, a video game that turns the player into a pseudo-Kamen Rider called a Ride Player...and if they're defeated while playing the "game", they die. To make matters worse, the Bugsters tell the public that that Kamen Riders are elite enemies who drop special power-up items, meaning the heroes have to fight off several Ride Players non-fatally. After the government exposes the truth about Chronicle, all but the most stubborn people willingly hand over their copies to the Riders.
  • Kamen Rider Build has the Guardians, the robotic police/military of Touto who can combine en masse into big gangly battle mecha. At first it seems like a subversion since they only fight Build because he's a Hero with Bad Publicity, but then it's revealed that the evil organization Faust put a Trojan in the Guardians' programming and can take control of them at will. Later in the series, a "Hard" variant is rolled out that's explicitly designed for warfare, just as the bad guys decide to really escalate the situation.
  • In Kamen Rider Zi-O, the heroes once face a robotic warrior called a Kasshin ("Vassal"). It's treated as a Monster of the Week, if a nonstandard one that's sent by the Greater-Scope Villain instead of the usual Big Bad. But multiple Kasshins get brought out in force in the movie, and further spinoffs continue to use whole squads of them (even when said Greater-Scope Villain is out of the picture) to establish them as the Zi-O mook.

Reiwa Era

  • Kamen Rider Zero-One: Magias, hacked Humagear androids that serve as the Monster of the Week, have the ability to extend wires that can convert other nearby Humagears into weaker Trilobite Magias.
  • Kamen Rider Saber: The Megid utilize Shimi, silverfish-like grunts. They're only used in large hordes however, as most Megid can either replicate themselves or come in teams if they need extra muscle.
  • Kamen Rider Revice: The two main field commandos of the Deadmans, Julio and Olteca, usually carry around a Giff Junior Vistamp to summon mooks by stamping it on the ground. On the opposite side, one of the heroic organizations reverse-engineered Kamen Riders Demons and Over Demons to create mass-produced Demons Troopers, though they're only seen a few times.
  • Kamen Rider Geats features a Deadly Game fighting various Jyamato monsters, including a basic mook variety. In fact, it's Invoked: the Jyamato are specifically bred to be the game's opponents; so the organizers are playing to existing archetypes, and they would want to have some disposable troops that players can defeat easily alongside the bosses with actual challenge. There are also Rider mooks that use the same gear as the game's actual players; Guard Riders who serve as its security staff and GM Riders that are being mind-controlled by the Game Master (whether they were originally players or guards).
  • Kamen Rider Gotchard is devoid of mooks for the majority of the series; monsters are instead occasionally assisted by one of the villains taking the identity of Kamen Rider Dread. But then one of the things that heralds the start of the show's endgame is the Big Bad Geryon getting the means to take the Dread powers and mass-produce autonomous Dreatroopers, a threat he makes good on in the series finale. And before that, the movie has the heroes face an Alternate Timeline Geryon from a Bad Future who also fields armies of Dreatroopers.
  • Kamen Rider Gavv
    • The Big Bad Ensemble can spawn minions in combat gear called Agents that usually serve as go-betweens between them and their employees, but can also be used as spies and enforcers. Agents are actually surprisingly strong for a Toku show, in some ways appearing as more of a threat than a Monster of the Week — monsters may have personalities and special abilities and such, but they're just part-timers hunting humans for a quick buck while Agents come across as professionals. There are even a number of episodes where a Rider is set against a pair of Agents instead of a Monster of the Week: early on, a few episodes ditch the monster in favor of Agents entirely; while later when there are multiple heroic Riders, one or two will fight the main monster while another simultaneously takes on Agents in a secondary fight.
    • A second, aristocratic villain family gets involved in the later half of the show; and they can spawn their own counterpart minions to Agents called Butlers. Butlers are dressed in fancy suits and for the most part act as actual butlers, but when necessary they're shown to be just as combat-capable as the Agents are.
    • As part of his Mid-Season Upgrade, Gavv can summon his own guards called Whipped Soldiers.note  They're weaker than Agents but no less competent; aiding Gavv with defensive maneuvers, disabling enemies, cutting off escapes, and so on.

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