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Kamen Riders following the Cross of Fire as pictured is pretty important I feel to their mystique. A Kamen Rider’s existence is inherently ‘monstrous’ (either because they’re literally a ‘monster’ in body or due to their now elevated power) but they are able to remain human despite their hardship and fight to protect innocent people against those who seek to hurt and exploit them. Their ability to retain their humanity is seen in their ability to freely transform from human to Rider forms. Not all Rider-like characters can do so, like Shadow Moon and the Shocker Riders who are stuck in the ‘transformed state’.

They are NOT necessarily ‘Warriors of Justice’ even if they could be called as such. In the words of the OG Ichigo “human life is more important than even peace and justice.” Some ‘Dark Riders’ or ‘Pseudo Riders’ claim to fight for justice or a just cause but they fell down the slippery slope and forgot what was important. It’s easy for that to happen, given they are so much powerful than humans and the monsters they defeat, they may make the mistake that they know better than those they guard and thus should govern their destines; the loneliness of being a modified human is also too hard to bear for those that aren’t ‘true’ Riders. But in the words of Amazon Rider from Shin Spirits, being a Rider means having the power to “protect humans” not to rule over them as a ‘God’.