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02-20-2021, 11:42 AM | #61 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Sometimes there are jokes!
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02-20-2021, 03:32 PM | #62 |
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KAMEN RIDER DEN-O EPISODE 3: "OUTLAW MOMOTARO"
A fun episode about partnerships, and how they need balance and respect in order to be successful. I can 100% see why Kobayashi revisited the Ryotaro/Momotaros partnership in OOO with Eiji and Ankh. It's such a fun story to tell, with this Odd Couple energy being applied to tokusatsu extravagance. Ryotaro and Momotaros are forced together by fate and bad luck, and they need to find some way to control Momotaros' more... visceral needs against Ryotaro's sweeter nature. The friction of that is so compelling, and it gives this episode so much spark. I mean, not a ton going on in it otherwise? The stuff with Airi continues to be the same sort of distraction the cafe scenes were for most of Ryuki (and the DenLiner already has a meal car! You don't need two restaurant sets in one show!), where I'm not sure it's really telling us stuff we don't already know about Ryotaro. The weird inclusion of the Airimirers... I mean, I hope it's going somewhere, because right now I find it pretty dull. The big guest-star for the week (Sid from Gaim!) is another neat look-in at the concept of partnerships, where it's less about mutual respect than it is about leveraging someone else's skills for your benefit. Yamagoshi is a hilariously underachieving scumbag, and it's smart to follow up the tragedy of Tetsuo with an Imagin host who is maybe less sympathetic. (Although, yeah, there's that band photo I'm sure we'll come back to in the second part.) It's some nice variety in the types of stories you can tell with imagination monsters from the end of time who grant wishes. Yamagoshi's arc in this one, though... again, not a lot to it? It's funny, and it goes down smooth, but it's mostly just here to highlight how badly things are going between our ostensible heroes. I think a big part of the success of the Ryotaro/Momotaros story in this episode is down to how uninvested they both are in the series-arc stuff so far. There's no driving goal to either one of them, and that boredom is causing problems. It's a function of the show giving the weighty hero stuff to Hana, which is unbelievably smart. She's the motivating force, the one who is on a mission, with Ryotaro and Momotaros just sort of around? It allows them to be more inquisitive (like Ryotaro is with Owner here), which is great for exposition, but it also keeps them from getting too wrapped up in anything that'd drag down the show's fun. Ryotaro shows up when he's supposed to, but is mostly just going along with someone else's requests. Momotaros is just here to fight and finish his contract, and he's not concerned with anyone besides himself. They're in this story about imagination monsters from the end of time, but the story isn't really about them yet. That ambivalence to the Imagin invasion is key to everything falling apart for both Ryotaro and Momotaros. Momotaros is tired of being cooped up on the DenLiner and getting berated by Hana (when all he did was nearly destroy Ryotaro's muscles and bones!), so he jumps at the chance to take over Ryotaro's body and team up with Yamagoshi for gangster beat-ups and some light heisting. Meanwhile, Ryotaro is starting to resent being Momotaros' human hot rod, and he's treating Momotaros like more of a pest than he probably should. (I loved that, when Yamagoshi suggests ripping off the gangsters, Momotaros asks if his cut will be 9350 yen. I'm assuming that's the money he took from Ryotaro to pay for his new clothes, and it shows a level of guilt from Momotaros that he'd probably never express. It's a small touch, but a necessary one.) It's an episode about these two characters, Ryotaro and Momotaros, needing to understand what they both bring to the table, and needing to understand why they're even at that table. As it is, you've got a monster who's sick of being treated like an unwelcome roommate, and a man who's sick of feeling like an obstacle. Going to be interesting to see how the two of them figure out how to work together! THE BAGGAGE CAR -Hana's so good in this one. Another actor would maybe come off as nagging, where she's being too cruel to Momotaros, but he both totally deserves it (there is no sense of personal space when it comes to him and Ryotaro) and never seems too offended by her anger. The shot of Momotaros getting caught by Hana, going "The nosy girl!", and then immediately getting punched in the face... fantastic. The beat of her realizing she actually just punched Ryotaro's face is a super funny button. Of all the relationships in this show so far, the one I'm most here for is Hana/Momotaros. -The sound design changes up with this episode, as MomoRyotaros, the Momotaro-possessed form of Ryotaro, drops the Momotaros VA from a lot of the performance in favor of Ryotaro's actor just changing his voice. I massively prefer it. I didn't mind it the other way (which still gets used for fight scenes and the like), but I love the confidence of the show trusting in the actor's performance to sell the changing circumstances. -There's another dude on the DenLiner! He would not like a coffee to go! I'm assuming it's the same guy we saw briefly at the end of Episode 2, but either way: certainly more to come on that thread. -I 1000% do not care about the Airimirers. At least there's only two of them now, hovering around a disinterested-but-polite Airi. Maybe in another couple episodes there'll be zero! -The Owner scene is great, if only for the adventure-genre message of Please Don't Sweat The Details Right Now. It's asking the audience to put character ahead of plot, and that's completely my taste in Kamen Rider. I appreciate his outlook on storytelling!
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02-20-2021, 03:43 PM | #63 |
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Something I’ve noticed. You’ve started using the individual titles for episodes. Not complaining, just curious about the change.
Quote:
-The sound design changes up with this episode, as MomoRyotaros, the Momotaro-possessed form of Ryotaro, drops the Momotaros VA from a lot of the performance in favor of Ryotaro’s actor just changing his voice. I massively prefer it. I didn’t mind it the other way (which still gets used for fight scenes and the like), but I love the confidence of the show trusting in the actor’s performance to sell the changing circumstances. Quote:
-There’s another dude on the DenLiner! He would not like a coffee to go! I’m assuming it’s the same guy we saw briefly at the end of Episode 2, but either way: certainly more to come on that thread.
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-I 1000% do not care about the Airimirers. At least there’s only two of them now, hovering around a disinterested-but-polite Airi. Maybe in another couple episodes there’ll be zero!
Anyway, enough preamble. Time for my regular feature, discussing the credits of the Chameleon Imagin’s VA (a bat and a chameleon. Where’ve I seen those motifs before?) Jun’ichi Kanemaru Notable Anime roles: Kukan Sugoroku in Dragon Ball GT, Sonic the Hedehog in Sonic X (and all video games and Wreck-It Ralph movie dubs since 1998), Harley in Pokémon Advanced Generation. Notable Dubbing roles: Swiper in Dora the Explorer, Henry in Thomas and Friends, Riff in West Side Story |
02-20-2021, 03:57 PM | #64 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Quote:
booooooo
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02-20-2021, 04:27 PM | #65 |
The Immortal King Tasty
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I'm pretty certain that stopwatch guy isn't the same guy as random Den-Liner passenger guy? They've got similar taste in coats, for sure, but passenger guy isn't hiding his face under a cool hat, you'll notice. I believe he's a random extra only there to reinforce for the viewer that the Den-Liner serves a function in-universe that isn't 100% directly related to heroic adventuring. Like, they do in fact have passengers sometimes, you just don't always see them.
Getting to hear Takeru Satoh's actual voice for Momotaros is a great showing of how talented he really is as an actor. Like, he mostly still just sounds like Momotaros, even though he literally doesn't? He's playing two different very exaggerated characters, and makes both of them very believable. I've always been especially fond of the very specific whispery tone Ryoutarou speaks in for how much it instantly tells you about his personality. Oh, and while the subject of the episode titles, Den-O marks the point where Rider consistently starting caring about them again after half of a decade of Takatera apparently being the only one at Toei who thought they were important to have in the episodes. As I've mentioned before, I think titles can hold a lot of value to a story, so this is one more trend I'm grateful that Den-O set in motion. There's no specific scheme or pattern to Den-O's titles that I'm aware of, but there's a sort of overall tone conveyed by them that I love, even though I can't even begin to describe what I mean by that.
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02-20-2021, 05:14 PM | #66 |
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Yes, that is Sid himself, Mr. Kazuki Namioka, who became prominent in toku as Dark Knight in Genseishin Justiriser first and then went on to appear as the lead role Shishimaru in Lionmaru G, a reboot of a classic obscure toku hero show from back in the days. It was after that show we see him in this show as guitar guy for this ep.
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02-20-2021, 06:36 PM | #67 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
I'm pretty certain that stopwatch guy isn't the same guy as random Den-Liner passenger guy? They've got similar taste in coats, for sure, but passenger guy isn't hiding his face under a cool hat, you'll notice. I believe he's a random extra only there to reinforce for the viewer that the Den-Liner serves a function in-universe that isn't 100% directly related to heroic adventuring. Like, they do in fact have passengers sometimes, you just don't always see them.
Quote:
Yes, that is Sid himself, Mr. Kazuki Namioka, who became prominent in toku as Dark Knight in Genseishin Justiriser first and then went on to appear as the lead role Shishimaru in Lionmaru G, a reboot of a classic obscure toku hero show from back in the days. It was after that show we see him in this show as guitar guy for this ep.
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02-20-2021, 06:56 PM | #68 |
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Quote:
One of the fun things about watching a lot of these shows in reverse order is getting to see later series-long actors back when they were just single-story guests. Despite his weird blonde hair, as soon as I saw that face (with the added context of him being a shady creep) I was like SID FROM GAIM, and that made me so happy. It's neat to see what roles made later casting directors decide to give those actors more to do, you know? Yamagoshi's able to be completely untrustworthy, while retaining enough charm to see why folks keep trusting him. Sounds like the guy you'd want to play Sid in a few years!
Last edited by Sunred; 02-20-2021 at 06:59 PM.. |
02-20-2021, 07:03 PM | #69 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Quote:
Going back to the Hell Brothers you should check out the latter half of Ultraman Nexus if you wanna see Kageyama as a cheerful almost Godai-like optimist who becomes Ultraman. And Go-Onger if you wanna see what Yaguruma with blonde hair, dresses up in a gold suit, and rides a sentient chicken/helicopter hybrid is like.
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02-20-2021, 07:32 PM | #70 |
I have a problematic type
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One of the things that I like about this episode is that it shows the wear and tear that being Den-O puts onto Ryotaro. Really adds a nice touch of down-to-earthiness to the show about genies from the future possessing people to wreak havoc in the past.
Interesting to hear that using Takeru Satoh's own voice was an error. I'd always assumed that the shifting between different styles for the possessed Ryotaro's voice was more of the showing trying out different options before settling on the one that it eventually ends up with. |
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