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02-15-2020, 02:06 AM | #221 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Also (shit, I'm still thinking about this), I feel like a lot of fans who deride the newer shows for lacking the serious mood of some of the earlier shows, it's a weird thing I've seen fans do in other fandoms. There's this tendency to equate Taking It Seriously with Better, and, for me, strong disagree.
I could not care less if a show takes itself seriously. I don't think it's some standard to adhere to, or a goal to strive for. The only thing I care about is if the show takes the emotions seriously. You do that, you can pivot in any direction you want, story-wise. Taking the show seriously, honestly, it feels like it closes more doors than it opens. You throw things like Fun and Humor right the hell out the window, and I'm not sure Very Serious Stories Told Seriously are a great return on that investment. Because, man, if you only take the emotions seriously, you can do both! You can do high-energy stories that are goofy and fun but also poignant and sad and beautiful and deep! Like, Fourze did a story about the struggles teenage addicts have reentering peer groups and how that can lead to relapses, but they did it with magic space buttons that are handed out by teachers who are also space monsters. It's a fun set of episodes about an intensely harrowing topic, and it works like gangbusters. Shit like that, or (a billion spoilers ahead) when Emu kills Parado, or Hazard Trigger, or Mach feuds with Chase, or Takeru hugs Adel, or all of these things that feel vital and intense and it's all wrapped up in flashy colors and sound effects and shit you can buy on HLJ, I wouldn't trade a moment of that stuff for a more serious show. Not a single moment. And that's what I think whenever folks try to play the It Should Be More Serious Like The Old Days card. The current shows don't lack for serious emotions, real things, and they can still have fun while they tell those stories. I don't know if that made any sense! I just went to brush my teeth and I got real strong feelings all of a sudden. Sorry for being weird about something that is probably not a big deal!
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02-15-2020, 03:56 AM | #222 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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It made enough sense to me that I can say I wholeheartedly agree. Every story of all tones have their place, but Kamen Rider has been the biggest examples to me of how something can both be silly and genuine in one neat package.
You definitely have a point about these things being incremental probably playing a part. These days, I just don't bat an eye at the merchandise in the show singing an entire song in the midst of a dramatic scene. |
02-15-2020, 02:37 PM | #223 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 46
Aaaaand it seems like we're finally at an end for this storyline. I've got some complicated feelings about it. The big negative for me is how backwards-looking this whole string of episodes was, from full-on flashback episodes to so, so many old mysteries that got dredged up. This never struck me, especially in the fantastic midsection, as a Solving Mysteries type of show. I know there're a few big mysteries teased out in the beginning, backstory stuff that set up the current status quo for our characters, but that all felt largely abandoned as the show hit its stride. Spending so much time on how Shouichi feels about a character who's dead before the show even starts, or the time a bunch of nobodies met each other, or very long explanations of how two characters who are very dead once knew each other, it all feels like time misspent. Worse, it created conflicts that felt inorganic, irrelevant plot points getting in the way of established character development. A lot of these episodes felt like they were from a much earlier draft of Masked Rider Agito. There's an, as it would turn out with this episode, much bigger positive for me. I mentioned in a completely different thread how there are a few things Kamen Rider does as a franchise that I enjoy. It's a set of cultural lessons the show's imparting to children, and they're different from the kind of lessons American shows try to impart. One of the big ones is about heroism and power. A lot of American shows run a variation of the Spider-Man "with great power there must also come great responsibility." A character receives power, they misuse it, they realize they need to be more responsible, that's how you learn the importance of heroism. (Gaim does a version of this, which I found interesting.) Kamen Rider shows, as a whole, flip this dynamic, so that With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power. A character, powerless, shows courage and heroism, so they are rewarded with power by the universe. It's a standard setup for primary Riders. So it was awesome to see that be the crux of this episode, that the newly de-Agitoed cast throws themselves in front of the imperiled Mana, only to see the Agitosity they'd lost fight to return to them. It's a great theme to build an episode around, and it plays out tense and exciting. It feels appropriately epic as Shoucihi punches the Agito force out of the Spooky Man, with all three Agitos banding together as the Agito Club Shouichi had wished for. It's a super strong conclusion to a plotline that ended much better for me than it began. Didn't end great for everyone, though! Kino's dead, I guess? I assume it's from getting drilled by that Unknown, but maybe it's just that his arc ended? He atoned for his attacks against Ryou and Shouichi, he took responsibility for his actions, he helped Majima believe in himself, and he was finally at peace. It feels weird for him to die just a few episodes before the finale, but it's not like he's been around forever, either. It felt... I don't know, it felt like the show saying Someone Has To Die for the story to feel huge and impactful and it might as be Kino. I didn't love how it happened, but I think it's fine that it happened. The Shouichi and Mana stuff, I'm glad that's over. The resolution feels as much of a shrug as I'd prefer, an acknowledgement that the outcome of the storyline was the point, not the motivation. Mana gets a Your Dad Wouldn't Want This talk from Uncle and a Being An Agito Is Hard talk from Ryou, and then she's all Team Agito again, and I still don't get what the show was doing with her in this storyline. It still feels wildly out of character, but it's over now, and that can be that. I don't want to dwell on it anymore than it seems the show wants to dwell on it. In keeping with The Ending Almost Made Me Forget How Dumb The Journey was, that sequence of Houjou bursting into the Team G3-X trailer to be Hikawa's eyes, beautiful. Thrilling and surprising. Hikawa deciding that his hysterical blindness when operating a machine of death was a minor handicap, nothing to worry about, crosses the line for me from Hikawa's usual stubbornness and martyrdom into recklessness and stupidity. How could he not tell Ozawa?! How could he think this would work?! It immediately fails, nearly killing him. Houjou saving the day, I mean, that buys the show a lot of my goodwill, but the decisions made to get there are dumb. So, yeah, mixed bag on this storyline. It felt, story-wise, beholden to a version of the show that no one wanted to make anymore. Deep secrets and elaborate mysteries that don't matter to the present at all. It ended up eventually saying something interesting about heroism in general and the characters in specific, but I'm not sure the path to get there was that great. Happy to move on!
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02-15-2020, 05:01 PM | #224 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 47
Aw. bless. What a delight this one was. The cast moves on from the recent darkness, the show reinforces its themes, and we encounter the final villains of the season, the, uh, Zodiarts? The one bum note for me on this episode, and I hate a little that I always seem to bring these things up at the start, is the whole thing with Hikawa's mysterious blindness. We got a couple episodes of it occurring, a doctor saying there's nothing wrong, Hikawa nearly getting murdered, and now... it's gone. That's it. What caused it? No answer. What cured it? No answer. Great! GREAT. A plot that went absolutely nowhere. Jesus. Aside from that, a real winner of an episode. It's nice to see the show putting some thought into what's next for Shouichi and Ryou. It's definitely tied into the themes of finding a place, protecting it, and finding careers that allow them to feel useful and a part of something works along those lines. The idea of them being motivated by Kino's death, I mean, not sure I see that, but it's still a strong premise for an episode. There's also some fun symmetry at work, the ways the plots mirror each other. Both of them have jobs fall into their laps, both of them have friction with women at work, and both of them try to apply their unique brands of heroism to solving regular human problems. Shouichi offers sympathy and support, while Ryou offers gruff honesty and maybe a little bit of negging. It's weird to see them doing the hero thing outside of saving people from monsters, but I really enjoyed it. It's something this show can be great at when it wants to, that thing of letting character relationships carry the narrative. The last however many episodes seemed so plot focused they missed what was special about Agito. This one, it's got room for Shouichi and Ryou to just talk, for Shouichi's goals and Ryou's need for normalcy to feel like stories worth telling. It's smaller stakes, but I think that's way more in this show's wheelhouse? The big plot stuff, though, I am pretty into it. Spooky Man tells Truegami that since he got punched in the face, humanity's got to go. On the one hand, feels like a bit of an escalation. On the other hand, it's totally in character for a god to go from, like, You Are All My Children to How Dare You Humanity Is Cancelled. I really do love that all it took was Shouichi laying hands on him for a star to get pulled down to wipe out human civilization. That seems several orders of magnitude bigger than we've seen as the show's stakes, but it's so insane (an entire star!) that I like it. It's just crazy enough to work! Before that star gets here to wipe out humanity, we've got some new Unknown at work. It's not totally clear who's what and how they all work or whatever, but I like the one who shows up at the end here. It's a little weird that there's a bunch of constellation iconography at play, since that's not really been the show's motif, but the Eagle Archer Unknown is pretty boss. I love the fight song that plays over the end battle, too. It's a great little fight between Gills and the Unknown, nothing on the scale of the last few episodes, just a fun rooftop fight. It's like the rest of this episode, comfortable in executing the basics and confident in hitting what it's aiming at. Yeah, I dug this one. Nice to be enjoying Agito again.
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02-15-2020, 05:08 PM | #225 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Oh! And I'm looking at that picture of Shouichi laughing with his old teacher, and I'm like, "That dude looks super familiar." Go to the Wiki, and it's Shun's dad from Fourze. Small world! I love when these shows reuse actors. One of my favorite gags is from one of the Fourze Net Movies, where Gentaro learns about Kamen Rider Garren, and he's like, "oh shit, the principal's a Kamen Rider" and then it's like, no, that's a guy named Tachibana, and he's like, "the principal is Tachibana?!" Such a great way to lean into recasting actors as new characters.
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02-15-2020, 06:47 PM | #226 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,404
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Ah, you're into what I always consider the "epilogue" era of Agito. I always feel like the big parts of the plot are over by this point and we're just getting a little bit of final run-around to wind down the clock. I don't dislike these episodes, but they always feel narratively distant from everything that led up to them.
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02-15-2020, 06:58 PM | #227 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,158
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Quote:
Ah, you're into what I always consider the "epilogue" era of Agito. I always feel like the big parts of the plot are over by this point and we're just getting a little bit of final run-around to wind down the clock. I don't dislike these episodes, but they always feel narratively distant from everything that led up to them.
I think I'm okay with it for two reasons. First, I wasn't super crazy about the last storyline, at least how it was constructed. Second, I'd love for the ending to feel more optimistic than that last story ended. That one had a lot of darkness that gave way to heroic resolve and relief. I want more than that from Agito, I guess. I want a story about Shouichi getting a job and Omuro being an ineffective bike cop. I think that last one is what we all want?
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02-15-2020, 07:59 PM | #228 |
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
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I'm gonna be as non-specific as possible so I don't spoil anything; but I find it... really interesting how the way you're talking about certain things here reminds me of how people talk specifically about Den-O that I've never seen applied to Agito before. ... then again, this is still the series no-one talks about; despite being amazing as you keep laying out post after post.
Talking of which, as a big Agito fan; your posts have actually made me like it even more and realised a lot of things about it! I like your theories on its meaning and how everyone feeds into it; it's been fun
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02-15-2020, 08:59 PM | #229 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Quote:
I'm gonna be as non-specific as possible so I don't spoil anything; but I find it... really interesting how the way you're talking about certain things here reminds me of how people talk specifically about Den-O that I've never seen applied to Agito before. ... then again, this is still the series no-one talks about; despite being amazing as you keep laying out post after post.
Talking of which, as a big Agito fan; your posts have actually made me like it even more and realised a lot of things about it! I like your theories on its meaning and how everyone feeds into it; it's been fun
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02-15-2020, 09:05 PM | #230 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Location: Chicago, IL
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MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 48
God, I love how they're using Shouichi and Ryou to talk about the best ways to support people. Incredibly strange to make that (what looks to be) the final storyline, but, I don't know, maybe not so strange? The real meat of this episode are the various Shouichi/Kana and Ryou/Scorpion scenes. (Of course Ryou would fall for a no-good street racer named Scorpion. Of course.) There's other stuff around the edges, like the fact that people with birthdays between October 23rd and November 21st are falling victim to a string of inexplicable suicides (hey, my birthday's on November 21sssssssshit) that certainly won't create problems for people named Scorpion, and the next evolution of Team G3-X (topical!), but all that's really worth talking about this time are those Kamen Rider Life Coach scenes. (Okay, there's the Ozawa/Omuro scene, which kills. Omuro breaking down crying when he thinks there's a chance he could go back to being ignored by Ozawa and Hikawa, adorable. Closing the blinds so that no one outside can see him blubbering, genius.) I always think it's a fun idea to take one story and run it through a few characters simultaneously. It's a great way to emphasize both the similarities and the differences of characters. Here, both Ryou and Shouichi reach out to help women in despair. Shouichi wants to help Kana realize her dream (although it seems like she legit sucks at being a chef, so maybe he'd be better off letting this one go), while Ryou wants Scorpion to stop thinking she needs a dream and to be okay with a normal life. And, like, yeah, that's those two guys. Helping People looks completely different to each of them. Shouichi helps people by being emotionally present, by being encouraging, by wanting them to believe in themselves. Ryou helps people by letting them know that sometimes surviving, persevering, is the best you can do, and that's not a defeat. It's everything you need to know about their worldviews in a couple scenes. Shouichi's found a family, found friends, loves everyone. Ryou's suffered, lost, and still engages with the world without blinking. This episode was like a definitive statement on who these two men are. And I think that's why it's not so weird to have this story at the end of the series. I want this show to end with a statement of purpose, a lesson in why these characters were worth watching over 51 episodes. I want something that isn't a secret past or an outside menace, I want a story about why Shouichi and Ryou are heroes, why they want to help people, and how they provide that help. I'm really grateful this is how Agito's going out.
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