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What are you watching? Other Toku Series Edition
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02-22-2019, 11:48 PM
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762
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
I've
finally
gotten around to giving Madan Senki Ryukendo a chance after a few people around here recommended it what feels like an eternity ago at this point.
This show seriously deserves more attention than I've been giving it.
I'm 12 episodes in and I have absolutely nothing negative to say. This show is amazing. Not only has it filled the Carranger-shaped hole in my heart, but I'm pretty sure I like it even more than that show, which is nuts, because I loved that show so much it... well, so much it left a hole in my heart when I realized I'd finished watching it. For one thing, watching the first few episodes, it dawned on me I'm apparently very nostalgic for the aesthetics of early-to-mid 00's tokusatsu, which wasn't something I'd ever consciously thought about before. It probably helped that Ryukendo is a show made in 2006 that
looks
like it was made several years earlier.
More important than that is the simple fact that the show is absolutely brilliant. It defies the laws of nature and manages to both have, and eat its cake at the same time. A show that embodies all the most generic toku hero tropes there are, while also constantly undermining and ridiculing them, while ALSO managing to keep a sense of drama in spite of all this.
This is the part where I wish I was posting about this show on an episode to episode basis, because I'm not sure I can do the writing justice without directly summarizing entire scenes. Ryukendo is essentially a loving sendup of its genre, but the way it pokes fun at all the usual conventions is generally more subdued than a straightforward parody would be. There are many subtly subversive moments that aren't even strictly played as jokes, but are absolutely hilarious if you know how things are "supposed" to go. Heck, they even manage to do it dramatically in some instances, such as when the only serious bad guy in the show proves how tough he is by throwing etiquette to the wind and hitting Ryukendo while he's about to change forms.
The entire world of the show is just "off" in some way. The way everything from the heroes, the villains, the cops, the small town under attack, and the "new products" are treated passes for normal at a glance, but look even a little bit closer and you'll see how twisted it all is.
Where this became really impressive to me is that, underneath all that (or maybe above, I'm kind of losing track of all the layers here), the episodic plots, character building, and comedy that isn't satirical in nature, are all totally up to snuff, and are probably better than a lot of other shows. There's all the heroic action, devious bad guys, wacky antics, and dramatic turnarounds you could want, and Ryukendo is careful never to do anything that truly compromises that. This takes a show that could've merely been an amusing distraction and elevates it into something a lot more memorable.
Needless to say, I'm looking forward to watching the rest of it.
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