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Kamen Rider Die watches Masked Rider Kuuga
Hi.
My name is Kamen Rider Die, and I'm going to be watching Masked Rider Kuuga and writing about the experience. Maybe that's something you'd be interested in? Some background, first. I'm relatively new to the Kamen Rider franchise, having started with Ex-Aid back in March of 2018. Since then, I've made my way through the following series: EX-AID (my first Rider show, love the designs, love how all of the main Riders at best tolerate each other) AMAZONS (great first season, weird second season, terrible movie) W (maybe the best main Rider, terrific theme song, sort-of falls apart in the last stretch) OOO (favorite series, not the best at anything but good at everything) FOURZE (best ensemble, maybe the best first 12 episodes, don't love the suits) WIZARD (favorite suit, show just had a ton of problems for me) GAIM (propulsive storyline, fun character development, great cast, don't love the suits) DRIVE (best theme song, fun mysteries, all-around excellent, except maybe the middle doesn't work super great) GHOST (better than you've heard, not as good as you'd hope, I talk a ton about it here) BUILD (great first third, killer middle third, up-and-down final third, I talk a ton about it here) ...aaaaaand that brings me to the present. I should technically watch Zi-O next, but I really wanted to do the rest of the Heisei Riders before I close the era off with Zi-O. So, Kuuga. I don't know really anything about Kuuga! This will all be totally fresh to me. As such, please please please don't post spoilers. I'd love to experience this as fresh as possible, which means please don't even hint at upcoming stuff. Also, please don't mention stuff from Agito through Decade or Zi-O, since I'm planning on watching those in the future and I'd really like to not expect things! That said, anything from W through Build I'm going to consider fair game, so if you haven't watched those shows, uh, maybe you might want to do that first? This thread will be here when you're done! Speaking of this thread, if you've not seen me talk about Kamen Riders before, maybe a little warning. I will be taking Kuuga both very seriously (I like examining themes, looking for emotional throughlines, and treating these shows as art) and completely not seriously (these are shows designed to sell toys to Japanese children, and as a Transformers fan I understand that often any narrative success is a happy accident). I will make up dumb names for characters. I will maybe forget to talk about new suits to dwell on a small moment of character growth. I am going to vent, I am going to criticize, I am going to cheer, I am going to praise. I have a lot of thoughts about Kamen Riders, it's why I'm here, and I need to get them out of my head. This is hopefully going to be a fun ride for everyone, but that means you'll need to make sure you're strapped in. I love when folks participate, so please chime in if you've got thoughts on these episodes or responses to what I'm saying about them. Just, yeah, no spoilers, thanks! That's all of the warnings out of the way, I think. Let's watch MASKED RIDER KUUGA! SOME FEAR! PROBABLY SOME PAIN! https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga00.png |
MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 1 - 2
A New Hero! A New Legend! So much to unpack and examine! Hey, let me talk about Doctor Who for a minute. I got into Doctor Who in 2005, same as a lot of modern fans. Chris Eccleston, Russell Davies, Billie Piper, that whole crew. I was aware of Doctor Who before that, of course. I had friends who grew up on Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy, were in fan clubs and ead Doctor Who Magazine. But it always looked so cheesy to me, hopelessly retro. If you don't have the nostalgia of youth, those rose-colored glasses, it's difficult to see past all of the cheap sets and corny music and stilited performances. It was a different era when those shows were made, but I'm watching them in this era. It wasn't until a fresh, modern version of Doctor Who came along that I could really invest in the franchise, where I could enjoy it without having to excuse anything. It was a fun, well-made show, not some relic of the past. Hey, speaking of "relic of the past": https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga01.png So, Kuuga. I, uh, I was not prepared for Kuuga. I am going to try very hard to judge this show on its own merits. Very hard. Because, you guys, it would be so, so easy to just shit all over the production values. It would be totally unfair, after having just watched 2018's Build, to compare it to 1999's Kuuga. Unfair, but so easy. The video tape looks laughably outdated, the pace is glacial, the fights are mostly two men who can barely move shoving each other, the special effects call the wrong attention to themselves... It's a lot to ignore. It is a lot. But, why shit all over it? What would the point be of that? You don't need me to chastise a 1999 TV show for looking like it was shot in 1999. Yeah, it looks cheap compared to 2019 visuals, but there's always been more to Kamen Rider than production values, right? On its own terms, the first couple episodes of Kuuga are solid, if not terribly exciting. Godai comes off as a slightly goofier take on your standard superhero. Ichijou is the gruff lawman, looking to sideline the vigilante until he realizes that he gets results, dammit. Sakurako has some cute scenes, showcasing her skills without really pushing the story forward. No one really made a huge impression on me, they were all just sort-of there. It's weird how light the stories seemed. The monster fights take a while, which eats up screen time, but the rest of the episodes don't do that much. A character goes to a place, leaves, comes back, fights a monster. The monsters thus far don't have any apparent goals, there's no sense of what they want. They just menace people, and Kuuga has to fight them. There isn't much specific motivation yet for Godai, just Justice and I Don't Want People To Cry. The stories so far hit the beats, they tell a story, but there's precious little to talk about from them. They're just there. Thematically, they aren't about anything. Visually, they're not shot or staged in dynamic ways. Character-wise, the performances are professional but lacking idiosyncrasy. (Okay, Godai gets some fun line readings, and the way he throws himself into being a Masked Rider has an appealing earnestness to it, even if it feels lower-key than I'd like.) I don't want to say these episodes were boring. It wasn't that, exactly. But it just felt so generic. It felt like I was watching Superhero Show, not Masked Rider Kuuga. I wanted some specific flavor, and I got a bland but filling broth. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga02.png |
Kuuga is love it or hate it. Make sure you watch Agito afterwards, they (sort of) go together.
You'll probably really like Fiaz when you get to it. I think it's really one of the better seasons but i don't see it mentioned too much. |
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Agito is definitely next! I'm going to take the Phase 1 Heisei shows in order, so Faiz isn't too far away, either. |
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I think probably the reason it feels like Superhero Show and fairly generic in that sense is that Kuuga is the revival of Kamen Rider after what was essentially a very long period off the air -- and in terms of cultural significance, Kamen Rider (and Super Sentai) to Japan basically is Superheroes.
The best possible comparison I could draw is that imagine if Superman, somehow, some way went on a long hiatus for like 10 years or so, and someone was asked to bring it back. The beats it's going to hit are naturally going to be very archetypical and even if they are going for something new, the first stretch or so especially will be trying to capture the base essence of what Superman is before its own identity. Because, goddamn, it's SUPERMAN! It's-- it's the guy everyone thinks of when they think of Superheroes and the general stereotypes of one! This is actually one of the things I love about Kuuga -- it is very, very proud of its status as "Kamen Rider Is Back, Baby!" and it keeps that drive going. That ultimately is also what forms the core of the show, though. You'll probably find a lot of things that make it different later on, but I think if you're not into this sort of generalised archetypical idea of what Kamen Rider is, Kuuga might not be the most interesting show for you. It's what I personally love about it the most, but I can definitely see why others might not be into it; ESPECIALLY coming off literally every single Post-Decade series which are all going for a completely different theme and go all in on it. Ex-Aid is a Doctor/Video Game show; Drive is a Car/Police Drama show; Fourze is a Space/High School Drama show. Kuuga... is a Kamen Rider show. It's also very much themed around the idea of a Supernatural Police Drama, but first and foremost, Kamen Rider show is what I'd call it. It's very bare essentials. Still, super interested to see what you think of this going forward! I've really enjoyed all your analyses so far and Kuuga unlike the post-Decade shows is a lot more recent for me, so I'll be able to recall things a lot more freshly. |
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I guess the best comparison I can have for how I'm processing Kuuga is Jack Kirby. Kirby basically defined the language of post-1950s American comics. So much of what readers today see in how American comics work, that's Kirby. The artists of today learned from the artists who learned from Kirby. What Kirby did has been codified as Comics. That makes reading Kirby's stuff now, as a modern fan, super weird. It just looks like a rougher version of what you'd see today. It doesn't seem unique because it's been copied and refined to a point that anything other than that style would look wrong. Kuuga's got that sort of way about it. When you've seen the 19th Heisei show, rolling all the way back to the 1st can't help but feel basic, even if the 1st one laid the foundations for the rest to build on. |
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MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 3 - 4
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga03.png It's fine. It's still fine. The villains are getting a little more colorful, which I appreciate. I wish they talked in a language someone else on Earth could translate, but I'm glad they at least look cool. I still don't have a sense of what their plan is, but they're grouping together, so there must be one. I'm not getting mad watching this show, is what I'm trying to make clear. It's not bad. Here're two small things and one big thing that are bugging me, though. FIRST SMALL THING - I have no idea why every single scene change needs a location flashed up, as well as a timestamp. Way, way too much information. Unless this is a documentary (seems possible) or Japanese children are the most nitpicking assholes on the planet, I don't think we need the specificity of what time Ichijou got into his car in the parking garage. It has no bearing on the story! Do I need to know if a nighttime scene is taking place at 8:03pm rather than 8:07pm? I do not! Kuuga's either exploding a monster in the daytime, or the nighttime, and that's all I'm looking for! I really hope the show leans back from these prompts. SECOND SMALL THING - The handheld camerawork is 100% on my nerves. There's a shot in the third episode, where Godai is talking to some woman (his sister? Maybe? I didn't catch it) and they're walking forward in frame, with the camera operator walking backwards in front of them. The camera might've been more stable if you'd tied it to an explosion. It's just two people talking, shot from a few feet away, and yet they looked surprisingly calm for saying their lines during an earthquake. There's a bunch of shots like that so far, where no one seemed to think a second take might help reduce viewers' nausea. They gotta, gotta level this shit out. ONE BIG THING - Do... do the producers know that Godai is the star of this show? Do they wish they'd made Ichijou the star? Because the structure of this show so far is 80% Ichijou investigating Monster Crimes, 10% Godai being charmingly upbeat, and 10% Kuuga. I like Ichijou, I think the actor balances "there are rules and we need to follow them" with "no one wants to see me yell at a superhero" pretty well. But these first four episodes, and these last two especially, Godai seems at best incidental to the plot. He's a very reactive presence, interested in fighting Monster Crimes but with little plan beyond "maybe one of my allies will figure out a clue". Ichijou is actively investigating, following up leads, making connections. You give that guy the driver, I feel like this show works at least a little better than it does right now. But, y'know, it's still a Kamen Rider show, and I like those in any variety. I like the, I don't know, the feeling of watching a Kamen Rider show. It's comforting. I wish this was changing my life or something, but I'm okay with it currently just being an agreeable 20 minutes of motorcycle men (so much motorcycling in the fourth episode) fighting Monster Crimes. That's okay with me. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga04.png |
Fun fact: that church you see in episode 2 (the one where Kuuga does that transformation sequence) was not an actual church: it was a scratch-built set specifically made to be burnt down just for that henshin scene alone.
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Man, this might end up being tricky for me. Not only am I some kind of anomaly that's never, ever been able to see things as "dated" the way other people do (look at the CG for RabbitDragon in Build's finale and tell me again how far we've come), but the pre-Decade Heisei shows aren't even something I would consider that old to begin with.
I've always thought of them as soap operas with the occasional monster fight, and if you're familiar with the kind of... let's say "rugged" production style TV soap operas have, looking at them that way might help explain a lot. It's not just pure age; they also looked slightly behind the curve even at the time. Which is probably why you seem to be under the impression a show that started in late January of 2000 is from 1999. I don't want to be too argumentative about this, but this might be something of a hurdle for both of us. :lol I'm glad you're (more or less) enjoying it, either way. |
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I see your point, about the soap opera approach. It shares that languid pace, the way scenes and shots go on just a little too long. I'm definitely used to a modern "more is more" aesthetic, where the editing is crisper, the stories are denser, the lights and sounds and all of it just pummels the senses. Kuuga, it's, like, quaint? It's a quaint show about a police detective who watches a motorcycle man fight monsters. |
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MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 5 - 6
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga05.png Pretty good two-parter! Nothing earth-shattering, but I'm really starting to get a handle on what Kuuga is as a show. I joked about it being "a quaint show about a police detective who watches a motorcycle man fight monsters", but, uh, that's almost exactly what it is? It's still weird how unintegral Godai feels to the show. (Less the monster fights, obviously.) I was a little frustrated at first at how reactive he was, and how much that reminded me of the dynamic on Wizard, where the well-adjusted, upbeat hero mostly sat around and waited for monsters to attack. But now, after six episodes, I'm not getting as much of a Wizard vibe. I mean, I am, but not nearly as much as I'm getting an Amazons vibe. Amazons had a primary Rider, Haruka, who felt way more like a background player than a series lead. Most of the story was driven by Jin, or by the Nozama Peston Service. Haruka was great in a fight, but most of the rest of the story happened around him, not because of him. Kuuga has that same feel, where Ichijou spends most of this story tracking down clues, talking to information sources, putting together the mystery, and Sakurako is the one who not only changes and grows as a result of the story, but who cracks the language barrier and tells Godai how to defeat This Story's Monster. Godai spends the majority of this story in Kuuga form, or sleeping. It's... y'know, it's definitely a story choice! Not one I'd make, necessarily, but it's the one that Kuuga made. That said, absolute honesty, I'm not sure how upset I am at it. With this story, I started to look at it as, not Masked Rider Kuuga, but Guest-Starring Masked Rider Kuuga. It's not a story about heroic Godai, defending the city against evil monsters. It's a story about street-smart Ichijou and book-smart Sakurako, getting to the bottom of an ancient mystery. And, sometimes, when things get too intense, that wacky Godai transforms into Masked Rider Kuuga to take care of the monsters. He's not what the story's about though. It's about a detective and a scholar, putting aside their fears and skepticism to protect the world. (Also there is sometimes a motorcycle man who explodes monsters.) When I look at it that way, where Masked Rider Kuuga is the bonus in an X-Files-ish Japanese procedural, I kind-of like it a lot more? It's like, I'm recalibrating my expectations for what this show is actually doing. It's not, uh, what I would prefer they do, but I'm liking this Guest-Starring Masked Rider Kuuga version a bit more now. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga06.png |
That's a nice interpretation and I feel that expectation recalibration ('Character Drama feat. Kamen Rider') applies to a lot of Phase I Heisei shows. I'm watching Faiz atm, and the Kamen Rider stuff feels even more like an afterthought, haha. They're just different, for better and for worse, and could be really jarring for viewers more accustomed to the back half of the era.
I re-watched Kuuga a couple years back, and despite the obvious stuff that don't age well as well as severe lack of fun factor, it struck me just how charming the character interaction it could be and how the set of villains could generate the sort of horror and tension that the villains from Phase II Heisei could only dream of. It takes a while to get to the really good part, though. |
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And, yeah, it definitely keeps the horror vibe going with its villains. I just finished Build, and for all its serious stakes and deep wells of emotion, Evolt was a HILARIOUS villain. That dude was a chatterbox when it came to kicking Rider ass, and he just oozed charisma. The monsters on Kuuga, they feel distant, unknowable. They are killing people, they don't crack wise, they don't taunt Godai (or, they do, but he can't understand them, which means the audience can't understand them), they don't have anything we can relate to, even as it looks like they have some hierarchy or community. It feels at times like "What If Roidmudes, But Terror", with how alike-but-different they feel from the human cast. (Shooting the villain meetups in that aquarium hallway is, obviously, also what makes me think of Roidmudes. Or was that set from OOO? Or has every Kamen Rider villain group met in that aquarium hallway?) I don't know that it's bad that it's not fun, since that clearly isn't the goal. I'd maybe like it better if it was conceived as a more light-hearted show, but it wasn't, and the sci-fi/horror approach has its merits, too. Apples and oranges, I guess. |
I'm really curious to know which version of this you're watching. Are the Grongi being subbed into English or not?
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OH GOD DAMN IT is there a version where their dialogue is translated?! |
The subs with the translated Grongi stuff is cute, but more as a trivia-filled second watch so you're constantly going 'oh so that is what they were saying'. I feel like your first time through the show, it's only appropriate to watch the show as it originally was, with us only being able to guess or estimate what they could be saying (which granted is rarely much more elaborate than 'i sure do love killing people')
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My first watch of Kuuga was one with the Grongi speech translated and I've super regretted it ever since. It really makes some later scenes lose their impact.
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Yeah you’re better off with either the version that doesn’t translate it at all or the one that makes up gibberish subtitles; you shouldn’t be able to understand them, that’s the point.
It’s also fun to try and guess what they’re up to. I remember (or want to at least) that their language is actually Japanese with altered syllables or something, so people speaking Japanese could deceiver it, and us non-Japanese speakers could at least recognize recurring words and sentences to understand a topic or theme. Also, I know I'm late but: Scolding the show which almost burned an entire church down for low production values is kinda hilarious to me. I know what you meant, but still. |
Yeah, just like the Overlords, the Grongi speak in a fairly straightforward substitution cipher of Japanese. I believe Midnight Crew did the same thing as Aesir on Gaim by translating the lines and then putting them into their own, English cipher for the same effect.
You absolutely are not meant to watch the show knowing what they're saying. Not at first. Don't even consider it an option. |
Dear God, the Grongi speech, do I hate it! This is just visual noise for me, every time that happened I pretty much mentally checked out because there was just nothing of value for me listening to gibberish I have no clue understanding, the fact that they actually talk about plot-important stuff just makes it worse for me.
Strangely enough, I have no problem watching RAW's for whatever reason... |
From what I understand, the Grongi outright spoil large portions of the show if you know what they are saying, so it's best not to the first time you watch it.
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As for the Grongi language, best way I can describe it is "a mutated form of the Japanese language with a hint of Pig Latin" for a lack of better words. |
Huh, even I didn't know that. I guess the whole story about them getting in trouble because they filmed this in a real church and almost burned it down by accident people told me while I was first watching Kuuga is complete bullshit then. Ugh.
But man, for a set this looks really good. Would’ve never guessed it’s a fake church. |
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The argument over whether or not to sub the Grongi dialogue has always been kind of a hot button issue with fansubbing the show. |
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And, I don't know, maybe I should clarify "low production values", since the physical effects work is really not bad at all. (They crashed a goddamn police car into a lobby in the first episode!) The stuff I'm less into on Kuuga, the stuff that seems cheap, it's more about how the computer effects are distractingly primitive (to 2019 eyes) or how unnecessarily long shots make everything seem stagey, or lack verisimilitude. And, yes, I just criticized the monster-fighting motorcycle superhero show for lacking verisimilitude, I don't know what's wrong with me, either. Quote:
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... oh, on a point completely unconnected to Kuuga (but, kind of, considering era starters): have you started Zero-One? Or do you want to do all the Heiseis before that?
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It's like, I can't watch Zero-One until I watch Zi-O. I don't know how strictly true that is in the sense of spoilers or narrative connections, y'all who've seen Zero-One might be like "Don't worry about it", but my brain won't let me. But I can't watch Zi-O until I watch the first 10 Heisei Riders, so, yeah. This is the mental prison I've built for myself. |
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It, man. It makes me wonder sometimes if I'm being obsessive, or if I'm being manipulated. |
Well, how do I put this... I watched Decade after only watching Kiva, Kabuto and Den-O (and also every post-Decade show at that point). I was able to enjoy it without watching all the other shows, and with me now only having Blade and about half of Faiz to go; I'm looking forward to a rewatch!
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Of all the cool-sounding Heisei Phase 1 series (Den-O! Kiva! Ryuki! Hibiki!), I think the one I'm most curious about is Blade. No spoilers, but it's weird to me how many fans mention that as the one Heisei series they haven't done. My only exposure to any of Blade was the Gorider series, which I thought was enormously clever. He seemed okay in it? But, yeah, I know that Blade didn't do so hot on broadcast, and it doesn't seem to get a lot of love in the fandom, so that's interesting to me. I'm looking forward to finding out maybe why that's a series so many fans skip, or save until later. |
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... Not sure. I decided my remaining four Heisei Shows (Kuuga, Ryuki, Faiz, Blade) should be done in order, but aside from that it was mostly individual circumstances. I wanted to get Hibiki "out of the way" because of all the bad things I'd heard about it, and I wanted to watch Agito before Kuuga because everyone told me to do the exact opposite. So it really just ends up that Blade is my last out of circumstance which is fun, because I keep hearing nothing but good things about it and initially it was the FIRST pre-W show I wanted to check out! Partly because, fun fact; in Fourze X OOO, the monsters Aqua was shown fighting in the future? Re-used suits from Blade. |
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I have seen everything from Kuuga onwards apart from maybe the odd movie except I stopped watching Ghost and I don't mean to be controversial early on but I also gave up watching W! Maybe I missed something in that show seeing as most people liked it but for one reason or another I just couldn't get into it.
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I'd also say Ghost might be worth re-examining, especially the middle episodes, but I think I'd get a lot less backup from others on that point. Also, welcome to the boards! These folks are great. They'll take good care of you. |
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