In 2000, in Nancun Town, a county in northern Henan, four elementary school students saw a hero called “Kamen Rider” on a pirated VCD.
Xin Xiao'er, Song Dali, Song Yifan, and Cao Linhui practiced transforming in front of the mirror, made belts out of cardboard, and swore they would become men who saved the world.
[When we grew up, we realized there was no Shocker in the world.]
In 2020, 28-year-old Xin Xiao'er was delivering takeout in Beijing. Customers yelled at him, security guards chased him off, and even after a car hit him, he still had to pay for the repairs.
Song Dali hauled bricks at a construction site. Song Yifan tightened screws at an electronics factory. Cao Linhui drove for Didi and was buried in debt.
At a class reunion, Li Shuaishuai, who had mocked them back then, had become a business owner. Raising his glass, he asked, “Did that Kamen Rider of yours save the world?”
[Until one day, in an abandoned factory back home, they saw something they never should have seen.]
It turned out Shocker really existed.
It turned out those VCDs weren't cartoons. They were the last distress signal left for the world by the Riders of a previous era.
But they were already 28. They had mortgages to pay, parents to support, and a woman they didn't dare confess to.
As they put on those “childish” suits once more, they asked themselves:
“Can an adult who can't even save himself still call himself a hero?”
