Shouts to Victor Perfecto and TrafalgarLog over on the badsite for catching this insane bit of homage in the old Marvel Comics run. This comes from issue #92; Luke meets a mysterious-- hold with me, this gets complicated-- meets a mysterious pilot/Jedi trainee named Denin, who is revealed to actually be Denin's twin sister Vila, who is living AS Denin after her brother's untimely demise1.
The lynchpin here is the writer, Mary Jo Duffy, one of the great names in American comics and an icon both for women in comics and fans in comics. Mary started as one of the original fangirls, getting multiple letters published in early Marvel comics; she eventually got hired as an assistant and then editor at Marvel, eventually even writing issues of Conan, Wolverine, and Star Wars.2
Jo Duffy was also an aficionado of Japanese media, one any American fan is ultimately indebted to-- she produced the first translations for both Akira and Naruto, among others, and sure enough you can count on her writing this issue of Star Wars as proof the resemblance of Denin/Vila to Kamen Rider Takeshi Hongo is not accidental.3
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What's with the trope of "women living the lives of dead men"? Maybe it's just from watching Yentl yesterday, but it's like a thing, right? Yamato in One Piece, too. You never see male characters living the lives of their dead sisters. I guess that's a function of patriarchy, but it's also an invitation to you, the storytellers at home.
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Her run on Power Man and Iron Fist is an all-timer, by the way; if only for turning Danny Rand from an appropriative white savior into a dippy kung-fu himbo, and thereby making him a delight.
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It actually, if anything, adds to the characterization; in the original Kamen Rider, star Hiroshi Fujioka was injured during filming midway into season 1, and had to be replaced with a new actor/character, Hayato Ichimonji (played by Takeshi Sasaki). Rider 1 and Rider 2's suits look almost identical to one another; the idea of carrying on another's legacy is an important one to the Showa Rider series.
