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:
Kamen Rider Die watches Masked Rider Kuuga
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12-12-2019, 12:21 AM
#
121
Kamen Rider Die
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
Holy shit, that was
AMAZING
. Easily the high water mark for this series, for me.
I was not expecting a superhero monster show two-parter that's devoted almost entirely to a young boy's ennui and the value of sadness in a society to be so goddamn effecting, but, well,
here we are
.
It's beautifully directed, with an almost ethereal quality to Sad Boy (if the Wiki doesn't remember this kid's name, I shouldn't be held to a higher standard) wandering through his grandmother's old neighborhood, the changes slowly crushing him. The story doesn't shove in dialogue where it's unnecessary, letting camera and music and acting do the work. The piano score smoothes out the normally frenetic feeling of the handheld camerawork in Kuuga, creating space to just watch. Shots are nice and long, centering the story on the quest for one boy to find something of value in a world he's growing apart from. Any scene that cuts away has to justify its existence, has to propel the story forward, or it's not used. Everything visually in the story is serving a purpose, telling either the A story of Sad Boy's search for meaning, or the very very minor B story of a new batch of Grongi murdering just a bonkers amount of people.
So, yeah, monsters on a monster show! For maybe the first time ever, I could not have cared less if Kuuga had dropped the Grongi entirely from this story, and that's despite the Grongi stuff being
incredibly
strong. That's just how good the Sad Boy stuff was! The Grongi scenes, though,
Jesus
. Beautiful. That weirdo star chamber they're all hanging out in? So cool! This show keeps finding new, compelling ways to present a bunch of monsters saying garbage syllables to each other. I'm just, like,
into
what they're doing with the Grongi. This series has its ups and downs (to put it mildly!), but the Grongi stuff consistently delivers for me.
For real, though, the non-Grongi stuff in this two-parter feels like this show finding a new level. In previous stories, the non-monster scenes were, at their best, not insulting. Competent, even, if I'm feeling super-charitable. This one was
great
. Like, I'd maybe even recommend this one to people in a general "Kamen Rider" sense. There's an assuredness to the storytelling this time, a belief in the actors to sell the story, an economy to using the characters that actually matter to the story rather than finding a spot for every rando, a great use of the time allotted so that nothing felt rushed or padded, and (most importantly to me) a story worth telling. There were recognizably human stakes, and a hero who saved the day.
Great job on this one, Kuuga!
__________________
Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on
KamenRiderDie.com
!
Last edited by Kamen Rider Die; 04-03-2023 at
10:08 PM
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