|
Community Links |
Members List |
Search Forums |
Advanced Search |
Go to Page... |
|
Thread Tools |
06-04-2021, 06:33 PM | #431 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,433
|
The Ryoko and Shinji story didn't do much for me, to be honest. It's not a bad story per se, but do you remember my issue with Biggie's story being recycled from Jetman? My issue with this story is that several aspects of the love story are not necessarily identical to, but at least very similar to a subplot from Kamen Rider the First. I won't go into spoilers in case your love for Inoue ever overcomes your Showa resistance to try out a Kamen Rider movie that's mostly a romance drama (and its bonkers sequel: Kamen Rider as a mid-00s J-horror), but there's a lot of tonal similarity between these episodes and an irritatingly large percentage of The First's run time.
|
06-04-2021, 06:37 PM | #432 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
|
So, as mentioned, this is Garulu Form's last time to shine in the series, following on from Dogga's that I also brought up, and, don't be too shocked, but Bashaa's appearance in 19 with its insert theme? That was also the last episode it was in. Just what could be going on here!? Well, if the answer isn't clear yet, you can always ponder it while listening to the third and final Arms Monster song, Shout in the Moonlight.
Not that it's a very orthodox choice for thinking music, mind you! It's naturally a super aggressive song basically all about how Garulu is going to come and mess you up with his savage instincts and there's nothing you can do about it. (Otoya learned that lesson the hard way in this one too, so... topical!) It's also been endlessly hilarious to me over the years because there's a lyric in there about breaking out from the "boring sofa", and let me tell ya', it's real hard to make yourself sound cool when you're talking about furniture. Like, it just makes me think of a puppy trying to hide from bad weather. It's such a weirdly specific metaphor to bust out; maybe one of the goofiest lines Shouko Fujibayashi has ever come up with, and I love it to bits. Quote:
We’re in 1986, at Mal d’Amour, and everyone’s celebrating Boss’s 34th birthday. Jiro’s taunting Otoya, Otoya’s flirting with Yuri, Yuri’s threatening Otoya. And then Megumi steps in front of the three of them, passing over to the other end of the cafe, where 2008 Boss and Wataru are sitting. It’s shocking, for how little of the old 1986-to-2008 switcheroo signifiers it uses. We’re on the set, and now it’s a different year. It’s fantastic for keeping the comedic and emotional momentum of the scene, for the breathlessness of the timing. But, as folks were recently criticizing a shift from clearly delineated timelines, it’s maybe a harbinger of some messier staging. I thought it worked great here, but I can see it being a problem with a lesser director.
Quote:
(The two screencaps I used for this post… god, they break my heart in the best way. The vulnerability of the upbeat Ryoko, to admit how precarious their relationship is, and the steadfastness of the previously-evasive Shinji to affirm his commitment to her? It is unbelievably sweet. It’s this economy of dialogue, where the actors and the staging are entrusted with delivering that emotional payload. It’s not a writer who feels like he has to spell everything out. It’s a faith in the process to let the tone multiply what they aren’t saying. I really thought it was lovely.)
The translation looks like this: "How far... is the train station?" "It's right where I'm standing." "Is it okay... if we're together?" "Yes." But, assuming I'm not messing this up too, it should be more like: "Do you know... how to get to the train station?" "I was just heading there myself." "Would it be okay... if we went there together?" "Of course." I think this makes everything you were praising about the scene even more true than it was? Like you say, so much of it is the staging and performances, and they utterly nailed all that.
__________________
|
06-04-2021, 08:05 PM | #433 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
|
Quote:
The Ryoko and Shinji story didn't do much for me, to be honest. It's not a bad story per se, but do you remember my issue with Biggie's story being recycled from Jetman? My issue with this story is that several aspects of the love story are not necessarily identical to, but at least very similar to a subplot from Kamen Rider the First. I won't go into spoilers in case your love for Inoue ever overcomes your Showa resistance to try out a Kamen Rider movie that's mostly a romance drama (and its bonkers sequel: Kamen Rider as a mid-00s J-horror), but there's a lot of tonal similarity between these episodes and an irritatingly large percentage of The First's run time.
Quote:
Oh, and speaking of those screencaps! I know I'm still retired from translation policing, but since you're putting that exchange in such a spotlight, I really feel compelled to elaborate here a bit. The whole point of it which is getting lost in the translation here is that it's one of those things where they're both literally talking about something mundane instead of what they're clearly saying.
The translation looks like this: "How far... is the train station?" "It's right where I'm standing." "Is it okay... if we're together?" "Yes." But, assuming I'm not messing this up too, it should be more like: "Do you know... how to get to the train station?" "I was just heading there myself." "Would it be okay... if we went there together?" "Of course." I think this makes everything you were praising about the scene even more true than it was? Like you say, so much of it is the staging and performances, and they utterly nailed all that. Such a good episode! Perfect time to watch another one!
__________________
Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! |
06-04-2021, 09:47 PM | #434 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
|
KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 24 - "EMPEROR: GOLDEN FEVER”
This is a real Halfway Point In The Series type of episode, you know? We get a new Upgrade Form for Kiva. We resolve the big Otoya/Yuri/Jiro triangle, probably. And Wataru gets to bear witness to a story that's equally about his past and his future. It's an episode that ends up feeling like the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end. It's not the tightest episode, unfortunately. While 23 felt like it was coherent and focused, using the Ryoko/Shinji brilliance to let a bunch of other sweet love stories branch off, this episode is mostly about the costs of love instead of the rewards. It gets at that theme in a variety of ways, which is nice, but there's some tonal stuff I wish they'd been more aware of. Like, that scene where Riki flirts with Yuri using Otoya's tips and tricks? Funny, but 1000% the wrong episode to have it in. It's in a lighter part of the episode, but its ridiculousness runs in contrast to Wataru's newfound self-confidence and the slow-motion tragedy of Shinji and Ryoko. It's a gag that's way too over-the-top for an episode whose central thesis is, as Superchunk once sang, "Everyone gets crushed/And every kind of love rushes out". This is one where we don't need to laugh at the Frankenbury who thinks Yuri is pretty. Because, god, Ryoko and Shinji! Again! I don't care about half of the other reveals and twists, because this episode creates an entire, indelible love story in just a few scenes. It's dumb to even try and put into words why the Shinji and Ryoko stuff works. It sounds so minor and basic when it's spelled out. Shinji and Ryoko spent a life together on the run, and now Ryoko is dying. Shinji never got to give her the life she deserved, but she got the life she wanted: they were together. It's a beautifully sad sentiment. It's simple. They were in love, and it didn't last. It never does, for anyone, one way or another. It's still sad. It's sad because it's minor and basic, maybe. It's not a story about skinny superheroes and supernaturally-gorgeous supernatural executioners, despite the presence of both. It's a tragedy that's all about human choices, human heartbreak, the sacrifices we make for the people we love. It's a story where a man can feel like a failure for all of the ways he wasn't able to do more for his wife, and then be confronted by the way their love grew massive over the decades. It's only tangentially a tokusatsu story. It's arguably cheapened by adding more toku to it, which you can tell in a lot of the staging. Wataru's frequently kept to the side for the truly emotional moments, since this story isn't about him, despite being for him. He's a witness to something he maybe shouldn't be, hanging around the periphery of a marriage that's ending in illness and grief. It'd feel too weighty for a TV show designed to sell toys to Japanese children, if it also wasn't integral to the entire next phase of the show. Because, yeah, we're seeing real love develop between Otoya and Yuri, plus some very strong feelings between Wataru and Mio, and that isn't going to always be blushing and flirting. It's going to mean compromise. It's going to mean sacrifice. It's going to mean getting mauled or kidnapped by a Clawolve, or finding out that your new girlfriend is the latest incarnation of a supernatural executioner. Things are going to get complicated for Wataru real quick (and they already have for Otoya), and he needs to see what it really means to care about someone as much as Shinji and Ryoko cared for each other. As for the rest of this episode... I mean, this show pretty much shot itself in the foot by having that big Ryoko death scene in the middle of the episode. Everything after that, Jiro's insanity and Mio's reveal and Kiva Emperor Form and Tatsulot, is going to feel like karaoke at a wake or something. It's inappropriate, and vaguely offensive. It's not reading the room, you know? I think Shinji's whole Suicide By Rider thing with Nago worked out the best. Shinji's a guy who lost his last tether to this world, and here's the physical manifestation of the things that kept him from feeling like he wasn't dragging Ryoko down with him. IXA isn't Maya, but he's one more thing that wouldn't let them be happy. Sure, why not fight IXA until one or both of them is dead. The introduction of Emperor Form... again, not sure this is the best place for a hilarious new Henshin Monster! Tatsulot is, uh, a lot. It's chipper and goofy and a man's wife just died. The suit it generates is, like, Why Are You Wearing That To A Funeral. It's a plot development that expects us to see more emotion in Mio getting knocked out (for maybe actual good reason, if she's the new Queen!) than Shinji's devastating grief, and that is such a total miscalculation. It ain't like I'm rooting for Mio or Kiva to get demolished or anything, but I'm not feeling excited about some new duds for Kiva. Let me mourn, dudes. The Jiro stuff, while being the Shout It To The Cheap Seats melodrama that the minor key Shinji/Ryoko stuff strenuously avoided, worked... I don't know. It's there to complement the 2008 story, to double-down on love as being something you don't experience without at least a little pain. It's full-tilt crazy, with Jiro screaming in Yuri's face for her to love him, and the shift from Shinji feeling the weight of his dead wife on his back and just standing there, rooted to the ground just like that tree... the shift from that to Yuri getting strung up by some fake-looking vines while Jiro cackles maniacally, it's not great. It is some tonal whiplash that this episode didn't need. I don't know how much I care about the parts that didn't work for me, though. It sounds stupid to look at a toku episode and say I Loved Everything But The Toku Parts, but I did. The Shinji/Ryoko story is probably one of the three things I'll remember after I've forgotten everything else in the first 24 episodes. (The other two are Kengo's return to save Wataru from bullies and that Fangire chef's hat getting stuck in the doorway.) It's so evocative and tragic, a world apart from the overheated whatever of Otoya/Yuri/Jiro. It's hard to care about Wataru and Mio's upcoming betrayal and/or star-crossed lovers bit when a man is mourning his dead wife. I don't know. Maybe the problem isn't that everything else in the episode couldn't measure up. Maybe the problem is that the Shinji/Ryoko story was just too good?
__________________
Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! Last edited by Kamen Rider Die; 09-30-2023 at 08:28 PM.. |
06-04-2021, 10:45 PM | #435 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 2,481
|
Quote:
I'm glad I read this analysis even if I havent read most the analysises. Just gonna steal this whole sale.
__________________
|
06-04-2021, 11:53 PM | #436 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
|
Quote:
So I'm reminded of the toaster bit from the last episode of faiz here. It was also an odd bit of comedy in a dramatic episode, but that worked, but it sounds like the comedy didn't work here. For reasons I can't explain, I feel like this is very reflective of Inoue as a writer. It has heart-breaking tragedy, intense drama, odd bits of comedy (that sometimes work and sometimes don't), and then some toy advertisements tacked on.
I'm glad I read this analysis even if I havent read most the analysises. Just gonna steal this whole sale. Yeah, Inoue and comedy... it's usually deployed a little better than it is here? It's one thing for a minor bit of business, like Keitaro going back for the iron (which is maybe the thing you're referring to? I don't remember Faiz that great!), but when it's a whole thing with Riki floating off to the heavens on wings of love? I don't know! Felt weird to me. (And, to be fair, I think the comedy did work, in isolation. It's a very funny bit that's a great callback to the previous episode. It's wholly based on characterization. It's just not the episode I'd've maybe dropped it into.) I think the big problem with this episode is just that it had Ryoko's death occur way too early. The real over-the-top comedy still might not've worked in retrospect, but I think more of the toku fight scenes and Jiro stuff would've. It's... the Ryoko death scene is pretty much the climax of the story, and then there's still twelve minutes of show left? Including Kiva's upgrade? Weird structure to this one.
__________________
Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! |
06-05-2021, 12:04 AM | #437 |
I got nothing
Join Date: May 2016
Posts: 148
|
Emperor form was introduced so early for real life reasons called the base form was too heavy and almost killed the suit actor, so odds are it was never meant to show up in this episode in the original version
Also tied into that is that the core idea of Emperor form is being extremely lightweight and easy to do stunts in but it comes at the cost of literally the entirety of Kiva’s arsenal being abandoned except for the base Kiva form like I’m pretty sure due to Emperor form being able to kill the soul of a fangire we’ll never see castle Doron ever again same with the bike |
06-05-2021, 12:10 AM | #438 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
|
Quote:
Emperor form was introduced so early for real life reasons called the base form was too heavy and almost killed the suit actor, so odds are it was never meant to show up in this episode in the original version
Also tied into that is that the core idea of Emperor form is being extremely lightweight and easy to do stunts in but it comes at the cost of literally the entirety of Kiva’s arsenal being abandoned except for the base Kiva form like I’m pretty sure due to Emperor form being able to kill the soul of a fangire we’ll never see castle Doron ever again same with the bike
__________________
Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! |
06-05-2021, 02:47 AM | #439 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2,556
|
And here we are, at the debut of what I recently called my favourite final form, Kiva Emperor. I like how sleek and regal it looks, I like some of the gimmicks it shows off and most of all, it has the best Rider insert of all time accompanying it.
And to be honest, I wasn’t getting invested in the one-off character’s love story, because… well, it’s a one-off character’s love story. And given this show has tragedy as a major element, it was just as likely not to work out as it was to work out. And lie, I said, the rest of the episode did give me this reaction image. |
06-05-2021, 05:44 AM | #440 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
|
Awwwwww yeah! It's finally time to talk about Supernova!
I mean, there's probably not even that much that needs to be said though, is there? I'm pretty sure the song for Emperor Form has a legitimate reputation among anyone who even slightly cares about Rider insert themes as being that god tier, grade A, greatest of all time material. The show certainly loves to play it at any given opportunity, at least! And it isn't hard to see why, because it really is pretty much the perfect theme for it. It's especially interesting for how it contrasts with Destiny's Play to create this duo of themes that essentially portray Wataru prior to his character arc and after. Supernova is infinitely more straightforward as a song for a hero, with a rocking sound that would make Kengo proud and lyrics all about how much Wataru isn't doubting himself for once. It's pretty amazing. They took a character themed around night and the moon and stuff and then named his final form's theme song after the brilliant light of an exploding star. Supernova is maybe a favorite for everyone, and that's no less true for me. Again, I'd like to emphasize that I knew Kiva's cast entirely through the soundtrack for a good few years, and I was kind of predisposed to like Wataru going in thanks to character songs with this much character in them. Emperor Form itself is just spectacular, too. It's not even a matter of whether or not it's a favorite for me as much as it being basically an objectively perfect concept for Kiva? It's Wataru after literally breaking his chains. It's so perfect I don't know if anything more than that one simple sentence is even necessary. The design itself informs you about the context and meaning behind it in a very clear way, and it does all that while being all gold and pretty and named after royalty and having a cape. It's textbook. God tier, grade A, greatest of all time material in its own right. And if meant Takaiwa got to feel just as unburdened as Wataru was, then all the better! I can't even begrudge the series for losing interest in the cool form changes at that point. You really can't go wrong with this suit! ...I wasn't the biggest fan of the episode it debuts in though, if I'm being honest! First of all, on the '86 side, I vividly recall finding the whole plot to be so insultingly embarrassing and tacky for Yuri that I had trouble taking it seriously, to say the least. And then over in '08, Shinji being so fundamentally sympathetic made it extremely difficult to feel good watching Wataru off him with such little hesitation, regardless of whatever danger you want to put Mio in. It stung especially because the episodes that made me start truly liking both Kiva the show and Wataru in the first place were the ones that ended with him refusing to kill a sympathetic Fangire. I can see what the show is going for in both cases – more so in 2008 – but, at least on an initial watch, I wasn't a huge fan of how this one played out. I guess maybe that Shinji/Ryoko story really is just too good!
__________________
|
|
TokuNation News & Rumors |
Ultraman X Avengers |
Memorial Edition GoPhone Announced |
Kakuranger: 30 Years After |
ToyRise RyuKenDo |
Alternative Cut of "Day Of The Dumpster" Released |
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:47 PM.
|