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EmeraldSaucer
Joined: 31 Jan 2025
Posts: 942
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 Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2025 11:33 pm |
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Besides having no reason to assume the movie producer and the TV producer ever spoke to one another (much less shared story ideas) besides that they both work at the same large company, the TV producer is absolutely right in that "hero who fights in dreams" is very much not a novel concept
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GNPixie
Joined: 25 Jul 2018
Posts: 361
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 12:23 am |
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| Quote: | | I've never seen a superhero who transforms and fights in a dream, except for D. Diver. |
KR W had the Nightmare Dopant which was almost 15 years ago.
Marvel has a bunch. DC has a bunch. The only big thing is the transforming bit but even that's arguable.
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Mew Berry
Joined: 02 Apr 2016
Posts: 189
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 7:41 am |
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| GNPixie wrote: | | Quote: | | I've never seen a superhero who transforms and fights in a dream, except for D. Diver. |
KR W had the Nightmare Dopant which was almost 15 years ago.
Marvel has a bunch. DC has a bunch. The only big thing is the transforming bit but even that's arguable. |
There’s Dream Hunter Rem, which is from the 80s, so it’s definitely not a new concept.
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Calsolum
Joined: 11 May 2010
Posts: 937
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 8:17 am |
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Yeah that concept isn't exactly unique, hell the first thing I thought of when it mentioned (hero) who fights in dreams was Yumeria. And that was produced back in 2003 when every dating sim was getting a 12-13 episode anime.
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Greed1914
Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 5359
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 9:52 am |
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I don't know. My first thought with watching the premiere episode was that it was kind of like a reverse Nightmare on Elm Street, where instead of a killer getting people in their dreams, it's a hero saving people in dreams. If that idea is applied to a show like Kamen Rider, then there are going to be transformations.
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Wyvern
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 1792
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 9:56 am |
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As others have pointed out, heroes entering dreams to fight villains is a pretty well-used trope.
One of my favorite old-school video games, Alundra, is a JRPG where the hero enters the dreams of other characters and fights monsters there, and that game came out in 1997.
| GNPixie wrote: | |
KR W had the Nightmare Dopant which was almost 15 years ago.
Marvel has a bunch. DC has a bunch. |
They're probably not that well known in Japan, but DC had The Sandman (not the goth Neil Gaiman one, a different one) fighting villains in dreams as early as 1974, as well as minor characters who could do the same thing like Nightmare and Nemo. Marvel also has heroes who enter dreams like Sleepwalker and the X-Men character Somnus. It's not an uncommon trope, even if you just limit it to superhero-style characters. I don't think Mori really has a leg to stand on here.
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Zased
Joined: 30 Nov 2024
Posts: 145
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 11:02 am |
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I feel like people are just going for generic 'going into dreams' plotlines rather than focusing on the MC in D DIver transforming into a tokusatsu esque hero. Stuff like Alundra does not have those elements. Alundra has been accused of ripping of Legend of Zelda though because it shares a lot of similarities with that game (intentionally so). You wouldn't say Alundra ripped off Record of Lodoss War because they both have elves though. The devil is in the details.
The biggest questionable component is Mori meet with Toei to discuss a Kamen Rider film which ultimately ended up going nowhere after pitching his ideas. It's very possible they could have taken his idea and used it later on. It would be hard to prove one way or the other though. I can see the similarity accusations. If Mori had never met with Toei to discuss a Kamen Rider series I wouldn't think twice of it being a coincidence but that fact alone does kind of give pause to it being a 100% coincidence.
The strongest argument against this would be that Kamen Rider Wizard already did a some similar theme where Wizard and Beast went into people's subconscious's to stop their Phantoms from breaking free and taking over their bodies. It's not technically dreams but it's a similar concept from a narrative point of view.
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Zendervai
Joined: 06 Apr 2012
Posts: 263
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 11:16 am |
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| Zased wrote: | | I feel like people are just going for generic 'going into dreams' plotlines rather than focusing on the MC in D DIver transforming into a tokusatsu esque hero. Stuff like Alundra does not have those elements. Alundra has been accused of ripping of Legend of Zelda though because it shares a lot of similarities with that game (intentionally so). You wouldn't say Alundra ripped off Record of Lodoss War because they both have elves though. The devil is in the details.
The biggest questionable component is Mori meet with Toei to discuss a Kamen Rider film which ultimately ended up going nowhere after pitching his ideas. It's very possible they could have taken his idea and used it later on. It would be hard to prove one way or the other though. I can see the similarity accusations. If Mori had never met with Toei to discuss a Kamen Rider series I wouldn't think twice of it being a coincidence but that fact alone does kind of give pause to it being a 100% coincidence.
The strongest argument against this would be that Kamen Rider Wizard already did a some similar theme where Wizard and Beast went into people's subconscious's to stop their Phantoms from breaking free and taking over their bodies. It's not technically dreams but it's a similar concept from a narrative point of view. |
The idea, IIRC, is that it needs to be proven the idea couldn't have been come up with independently. "Toku show where the fights are in dreams" is not exactly a complicated or difficult concept to come up with and it's really, really not at all hard to think that a toku producer or writer would encounter a thing about dreams and go "what if we make a toku thing out of this?"
Star Trek DS9 and Babylon 5 have a similar chain of events, but even there, it ran into the question of "how hard is it to come up with the idea of 'Star Trek show set on a space station'?" It'd have to be something really, really specific to prove an actual chain of causality there, because otherwise, you just have "well, it kind of sounds like it happened but I can't prove that the actual people involved deliberately did this."
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EmeraldSaucer
Joined: 31 Jan 2025
Posts: 942
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:14 pm |
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| Zased wrote: | | I feel like people are just going for generic 'going into dreams' plotlines rather than focusing on the MC in D DIver transforming into a tokusatsu esque hero. Stuff like Alundra does not have those elements. Alundra has been accused of ripping of Legend of Zelda though because it shares a lot of similarities with that game (intentionally so). You wouldn't say Alundra ripped off Record of Lodoss War because they both have elves though. The devil is in the details. |
But people have pointed out other examples of characters who do transform when doing so. Not to mention that this whole devil's advocate stance ignores that it's Kamen Rider, of course it's going to involve transformation. A Kamen Rider going into dreams to transform isn't a sign of a show stealing ideas, it's a sign of what happens when you make a Kamen Rider centered around the very broad and well-worn concept of dreams
I think Mori needs to step back and accept that his idea isn't especially original and that it's not particularly difficult for someone to independently come up with something that is similar in some aspects (as far as I understand it Mori's work doesn't have any sort of spy fiction element, which is the other main component of Zeztz). And that maybe it's more than a little manipulative to go "my beloved dead friend Miura told me nobody has done this before"
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Zendervai
Joined: 06 Apr 2012
Posts: 263
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:52 pm |
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| EmeraldSaucer wrote: | |
I think Mori needs to step back and accept that his idea isn't especially original and that it's not particularly difficult for someone to independently come up with something that is similar in some aspects (as far as I understand it Mori's work doesn't have any sort of spy fiction element, which is the other main component of Zeztz). And that maybe it's more than a little manipulative to go "my beloved dead friend Miura told me nobody has done this before" |
I can see why Mori feels really strongly about it, but yeah, unless he's actually accusing Zeztz of ripping off specific details and the execution of it, I don't think he really has any position here.
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Mew Berry
Joined: 02 Apr 2016
Posts: 189
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2025 7:53 pm |
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I didn’t think about this when I replied earlier, but I’m kind of surprised no one’s mentioned Paprika yet. That one even has the agent/detective element, but I definitely would t accuse Zeztz of ripping it off.
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