[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The balance of it all feels about right. It's fanservice-y fun to see Gridknight, but the actual plot is basically just the main cast having a sleepover together? Which is exactly the kind of thing I love about this show, for a bunch of different reasons?

Yeah, Knight and Music Note don't take over the story, which they absolutely could have for both narrative reasons (Dynazenon mostly can't get their shit together, and Gauma bristles at an offer of outside help) and meta reasons (returning fan-favorite). The episode keeps them as a kind of vote of confidence, with the team winning them over by being as insular and neurotic as ever. Good use of special guest stars!

(I say "special guest stars", which is how this episode treats them, but them and Gridknight are in the title sequence now, so I look forward to seeing how they'll integrate with the cast long-term.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

So we get our introductions to Knoght and Nidaime, adult incarnations of Anti and Kaiju Girl. You?d think this would clear up some confusion over continuity wih the previous show, but I?m not sure it does.

I gotta say, I have zero interest in litigating or speculating on how Dynazenon and Gridman overlap. Two different shows in my mind, despite me treating them in this thread like they're part of one continuity. (In my defense, I thought they were when I was planning this thread out? Maybe they still will be!) If things become more overtly tied together, that's fine. But I haven't spent a minute of this show wondering if the woman Gauma's referring to is, like, Akane. This show's doing its own thing narratively, and that's kind of all I care about right now.

[DreamSword]

Okay, I absolutely need someone to hyper-analyze this moment for me.



"Real Kaiju Users don't need to sleep."

That line has driven me totally crazy ever since I first heard it. The best I could think to guess is that maybe Shizumu is just being cheeky in the original Japanese? But if so then holy cow did the English dub not portray that in its voice direction like, at all. Dude sounded completely serious when he said it, and ever since my response has basically been "What? Why?" And to this day I've yet to get any sort of direct answer.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

That line has driven me totally crazy ever since I first heard it. The best I could think to guess is that maybe Shizumu is just being cheeky in the original Japanese? But if so then holy cow did the English dub not portray that in its voice direction like, at all. Dude sounded completely serious when he said it, and ever since my response has basically been "What? Why?" And to this day I've yet to get any sort of direct answer.

My read on it in the scene is that he's kind of shitting on Juuga for not being as committed to the project as the other three are. Sizumu came up with the plan for harnessing the kaiju, while Mujina and Onija are working 'round the clock to power it up; meanwhile Juuga's just sort of overseeing things, and I feel like Sizumu's not appreciating that?

[Sunred]

Speaking of Gridknight, I wonder in hindsight if the decision to keep the visor aesthetic from Anti's kaiju form + being the no.2 hero of the show + the decision to give Knight a business suit as his civilian attire was all collectively a nod to Dan Moroboshi/Ultraseven specifically from the 2010s ULTRAMAN manga which received a 3d anime adaptation on Netflix not too long ago.

[Androzani84]

Androzani84 Watches Gridknight Fight, Part 1

Full disclosure, I have no permission to be doing this here, but I felt I’d keep this thread alive during the breaks between posts with something that’s probably not on the docket to watch, since the only subs for it are in Italian (I myself am watching with hose subs turned off, meaning I had to watch on my computer, hence the low quality of these screenshots.



Like the old Ultra Fight series this miniseries homages, this is filmed entirely on location in a quarry, with no attempt to make the fighters look like giants (meaning that this is one huge quarry), and there’s a guy doing wrestling style announcements that describe everything that happens (in this case, Hiroshi Kamiya, the voice of Juuga in Dynazenon proper).



The fight in this part is between Gridknight and Dynazenon, both played by the suits used for their public appearances. And while Knight pulls off looking good in live action quite well, Dynazenon suffers from the lack of budget to use his various guns (not even the Don’t-Know-The-Name Beam) and the fact that since Tsuburaya have less experience making humanoid toy based mecha costumes than Bandai, his hands are in permanent “karate chop action mode” and he’s stuck weakly swinging them to simulate fighting.

But enough griping, let’s look at something this mini does better than its inspiration.



Specifically, we get the illusion of scale thanks to the presence of Nidaime, who is played by an uncredited actress always filmed at angles her full face can never be seen and the VA from the anime can be dubbed over. And reiterating my point that the narrator won’t shut the hell up, he repeats her rating of the apparent training fight 1 second after she says it (I sadly don’t know enough to say anything other than that it was positive feedback).



And pulling from the modern Ultra Galaxy Fight series, there is a thin plot connecting the episodes, as Alexis Kerib makes his appearance. While I applaud them for giving him the Cyberman mouth to indicate him vocalising, the divide between the rubber head and regular looking cape is very distracting.



Knight rushes in to fight him, leaving Dynazenon just standing there (and that’s actually the last time we see the whole robot in this mini). And someone realised that there needed to be some stakes here, so Knight looks to Nidaime for support.



Coming to the conclusion that Kerib has kidnapped her, Knight engages him in battle… and despite being in his non-action form, Kerib still whoops his ass, ending the first part.



I’d cover the rest, since these are only 3 minutes each, but part three has some spoilers for episodes of Dynazenon not covered here, so I’m doing it in segments. To be continued… when I think of doing the next one.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

Speaking of Gridknight, I wonder in hindsight if the decision to keep the visor aesthetic from Anti's kaiju form + being the no.2 hero of the show + the decision to give Knight a business suit as his civilian attire was all collectively a nod to Dan Moroboshi/Ultraseven specifically from the 2010s ULTRAMAN manga which received a 3d anime adaptation on Netflix not too long ago.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Androzani84 Watches Gridknight Fight, Part 1

This is all very cool! Thank you both for keeping things active while I've had a weirdly busy last few days! Lemme go watch Episode 8 real quick...

[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.DYNAZENON EPISODE 8 - “WHAT IS THIS WAVERING EMOTION?”



There’s so much vacillation and uncertainty in Dynazenon generally – it’s a cast of introverted teens, aimless adults, and several literal Millennials who are team-building their way to property damage – but maybe never more so than in this episode. There’s a failed kaiju who just basically exists, and a cast of characters who need to figure out how far they’ll go for each other.

(First, to get this out of the way: I love how Sizumu gets the K.E. out of the way for this one? He’s all about people challenging their limits, and the K.E. can’t do anything with this episode’s kaiju, so he creates a Eugenicists’ Day Out subplot to keep his teammates occupied so that Yomogi can go on a little emotional journey. Sizumu cares about plots that illuminate our heroes!)

It’s a rambling, elliptical story, and if it’s a gear down from the last two-parter’s all-in look at the team’s bonds, it at least puts Yomogi more in the driver’s seat than some previous episodes. Here, he’s finding an emotional connection with a kaiju at exactly the point where he can’t seem to make an emotional connection with Yume, and that allows him a little bit of distance from the normal arc of these things, where an indifferent creature worthy of observation becomes a rampaging creature worthy of elimination. There’s no one really propelling this story – again, the K.E. are bowling, which is amazing – so there’s nothing putting too much pressure on the plot to steer away from Yomogi’s hilarious lack of affect, and his relentlessly open-ended sentences.

I joke about Yomogi being kind of comedically opaque, which can for sure not work for every viewer, but I like how minor and sweet his little plot is with Yume and the kaiju here. Yomogi can’t really talk to Yume in a way that anyone outside of 10th Grade would recognize as “communication”, but he can choose to push past his uncertainty in order to protect her, and that’s maybe more valuable than things like heartwarming speeches, or direct sentences, or verbally communicating your thoughts to a person outside of your own head. (I kid! But he’s kind of Peak Yomogi here, for better or worse.) There’s a tragedy to the destruction of the kaiju, making for a nicely melancholy denouement, but it means that Yomogi’s actions were decisive and considered, which is a kind of character growth for the kid. It wasn’t an easy choice, but he made it for Yume, and he’ll have to carry the weight of it from now on.

All of that said, this was still a goofy-ass episode of Dynazenon, with its now-standard balance of ridiculous nonsense (the kaiju capture scene, completely dumb in the best way) and well-observed mumblecore drama. It leaves itself open to interpretation, which I appreciate, even if this lingering question is driving me insane: why were Yomogi and Yume wearing their school backpacks on a Sunday?!

[Fish Sandwich]

This is an episode of this show I think about a lot. Not just because of that beautiful bookend that allowed Die to cheekily glue the screencaps together in a way that might trick someone into thinking both are from one scene instead of two (which is key to the beauty of it!), but because of the huge range of emotional tones between those mirrored conversations.

Toku plots about monsters who don't fit the normal weekly antagonist role quite right are generally favorites of mine, and I like how this one starts so relaxed before eventually escalating into something very intense, all connected by a vague sense of melancholic listlessness that sort of shrouds that whole side of the plot. There are plenty of fun and goofy moments in there, but a lot of them come from the show's actual villains taking a day off, making their side of things the one that's easier to feel cozy watching, which is itself another thing that's sort of backwards and not quite right if you let yourself stop to think about it too hard. I guess that's it, really? I like how the episode itself lets the viewer empathize with Yomogi by kind of baking the same messiness of the feelings he has throughout this one right into the actual viewing experience. Lots of questions, but very few clear answers.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Lots of questions, but very few clear answers.

I know, like why are the school kids wearing their backpacks on a Sunday?!?!

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I know, like why are the school kids wearing their backpacks on a Sunday?!?!

...they probably had stuff they wanted to carry?