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Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Blade
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09-03-2020, 01:49 PM
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881
Kamen Rider Die
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,154
KAMEN RIDER BLADE - SERIES WRAP-UP
THE THEMES:
Kamen Rider Blade is a show about failure.
(Real quick note about themes in art: they're very subjective! I definitely subscribe to the Death Of The Author school of criticism, where the author's intentions are as valid as the audience's interpretations. There's what the author meant to say, and then there's what they said, and those can be two different things. Also, shows can have a lot of different themes! This is an interpretation, not the answer to a question!)
It's about failure as an inevitability, and the idea that how we respond to those failures defines us as people.
Kamen Rider Blade opens with two significant failures. Kenzaki fails in saving BOARD from Tachibana, and Tachibana fails himself by destroying BOARD. Narratively, the shock finale to the first episode of Blade is to throw us in the deep end, shake up our expectations. Thematically, it's to prepare us for a limitless number of setbacks.
Kenzaki's origin is about failure, and how that failure haunted him. He couldn't save his parents, so as an adult he tries to save everyone. Tachibana is a failure engine, constantly letting himself and his friends down. Mutsuki fails throughout the series, putting power ahead of the reason to have power, leading to the deaths of several mentors. Hajime fails… well, Hajime fails at the end, and that's the point of almost all of this failure.
Hajime can't keep the power of the Joker buried. He fails to save himself, fails to keep the people he loves safe, fails to hold off the apocalypse. But Kenzaki's there to help him, to lift him back up and give him another chance.
That's what the whole series is about, what's demonstrated over and over. (Mostly with Tachibana.) Failure isn't the end of a story. It could be the middle, like with Tachibana's various screw-ups. It could be the very beginning, like with this show. But it's not the end, as long as you're willing to get up and try again. Because life isn't scaling a mountain, where failure drops you to the ground. It's a path, and failure could just be stumbling for a moment before you start moving again.
Kenzaki represents the optimism of help, of assistance. Hajime can't really fail for good as long as Kenzaki is there to help him, to shoulder some of the burden. Hajime's failure doesn't define him, because people like Kenzaki are out there rooting for him, cheering on his happiness. (Nozomi fills the same role for Mutsuki. Dr Ladyfriend filled that role for Tachibana, and probably always will. The whole cast fills that role for Kenzaki.) It's a way of looking at failure as a learning experience, a thing to not wallow in or ignore, but acknowledge and overcome.
The Sealing Stone is the inevitability of failure. Everyone fails at something at some point. You can't destroy failure. You can't run from it. It's going to happen, eventually. All you can do is understand it when it happens, and count on your friends to help you through it. Or, if you see someone who's failed, offer to help, offer them another chance.
The various villains, the bosses, they're the ways society will pigeonhole you for your shortcomings, try to leverage those deficiencies as something only they can fix. Every boss in the show knows better, can fix what's wrong with you, or doesn't believe in you. Your failures are stains that they can scrub off, or reasons why you don't belong. Triumphing over them is owning your losses, using them to become a better version of yourself.
There's a reason why every Rider on this show is so weird and damaged. It's to show kids (and adults like Tachibana!) that it's no sin to fail. Everyone does. How we process failure, what it becomes fuel for, that's what separates villains from heroes.
---
Obviously, there are a lot more themes to discuss from this series. There's
Fighting Against Fate
, which is by far the most prominent theme in the series. There's
Power Without Morality Is Worthless
, a theme that comes up around the villains, but also around Tachibana and Mutsuki. There's
Grief And Mortality
, which is a big theme of the first-third. All big themes! All worth discussing! Failure, though, that's the one that I thought was unique to this show. Feel free to chime in about these or any ones I've missed!
THE GOOD:
-
KENZAKI
. He's an outstanding lead. I've often referred to him as A Very Sweet Boy, and like, that's his
whole thing
. I don't want to call him uncomplicated, because that sounds like a passive-aggressive way of saying he's uninteresting, but I think the show was smart to have Kenzaki be (relative to the rest of the cast) pretty fully-formed when the show starts. He's a hero, through and through. There's a lot that's in the writing (that whole Be The Hero The World Doesn't Have speech he gives Umi!), but the performance is so winning, so charming. It's so easy to root for Kenzaki, to invest in the things he cares about. He's a very fun character to go on a journey with, played by a great actor. Speaking of!
-
CASTING
. Killer, killer lineup on this show. Bit parts like Nozomi and Shima shine due to smart actors finding clever ways into stock roles. Tiger Queen brings rage and gravitas to a short arc. Kotaro and Hirose handle whatever's thrown at them in compelling, grounded ways. The core Riders are all fantastic, for different reasons. Kenzaki, as noted, a very sweet boy. Hajime, giving an edge to his performance that never obscured his innate decency. Mutsuki, frustration and self-loathing that was always watchable. And Tachibana, a mountain of memes that got sculpted into a character by some bizarre acting choices. For the heroic side of the show, they hired some smart, smart people.
-
DESIGN
. I really like the suits on this show. Garren and Blade have a vague Utilitarian feel to them, something it seems like an organization would design and hand out. Leangle comes off as a more regal version, a little outside and above the BOARD Riders. And Chalice! Gorgeous suit. The monsters, overall, equally impressive. Nothing on this show was my favorite of all-time, but everything looked pretty cool. I'm not asking for more than that on a Kamen Rider program, sometimes!
-
THE FINALE
. It's probably the first and last thing I'd use to defend Blade to folks that don't care for it. Incredibly confident writing that's comfortable with a bittersweet send-off. Not every show is! Folks've invested a year of their time, they're never going to see most of these characters ever again, you maybe want to give them some joy. Blade decides that it's as important to give them some sorrow, so that the joy feels more precious. It's the absolute right move, and it makes for a top-shelf finale.
THE BAD:
-
VILLAINS
. Even if I want to ascribe some thematic importance to the villains on the show, it doesn't in any way make them more interesting. I found nearly every villain impossibly dull, with motivations that never stretched beyond Be More Powerful and Win Battle Fight. There are a couple cool one-offs that had clever performances, but the main motivations for the bosses on this series were
so
poorly conceived. It's fine if the show feels there's more story to be told by examining the ways the Rider cast fails, but they needed to make sure that the boss characters had enough going on to be worth the cast's attention. I never got that feeling, and it definitely drags the show down. Easily the biggest flaw on the show, and one that's too major to forgive.
-
FAILURE AS A THEME IS MAYBE NOT WORTH EXPLORING
. I mean, I really like Failure as a theme. I really like a story that tells you it's okay to screw up, so long as you never stop trying. But
good lord
does this show test your patience with how much of an absolute disaster Tachibana is, followed
immediately
by how much of a disaster Mutsuki is. It's a grind to watch. It's salvaged (for me) by a few good speeches, and some pretty compelling acting, but I can't get mad at anyone who found one-half of the Riders to be a waste of their time. Fifty percent! That's an awful lot of the story to be pissed off at!
-
WHITHER HIROSE AND KOTARO
. Jesus Christ, does this show just forget about Hirose and Kotaro. Despite being very fun actors who knock out of the park whatever speeches they're given (Hirose getting Kenzaki back on track to finish off that Category King!), the show basically gives them nothing to do in the back-third, and only a few things before that. Hirose gets a couple episodes to react to U.N.D.A.D., but she's pretty much under house arrest alongside Kotaro. They're both there to exposit, to react, to look worried while the Undead Scanner triangulates. It's nothing, it's drama-less. They don't even really get any final scenes with Kenzaki before the finale, nothing to sum up their relationship. For what were, at one point, his
only two friends
, the show 100% pivoted to Kenzaki/Hajime as the core emotional stakes of the story, and... I mean, we got that finale, but at what cost?
-
THAT GODDAMN BIKE CHASE IN THAT STUPID RACE TRACK EPISODE
. Worst sequence in the worst episode of Kamen Rider I've ever seen. Even if they'd made a dozen more episodes like the finale, this thing existing is a crime. Someone should have gone to jail for this one.
I had a good time watching Kamen Rider Blade. It's not my favorite show, by far, but it is fun. Kenzaki is an all-time great lead hero. Hajime's arc is nuanced and emotional. Tachibana and Mutsuki are varying levels of ridiculous and inspiring. But the series as a whole gets dragged down by repetition and dull villains, as well as the unnecessary exclusion of a big chunk of its (very good!) cast. It's imperfect, but it's got enough to recommend it.
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Last edited by Kamen Rider Die; 08-12-2023 at
12:34 PM
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