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06-02-2020, 09:45 AM | #431 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,558
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Quote:
First favorite theme song, SURPRISE DRIVE. It has the best opening, that squealing guitar and propulsive drumming, the announcer saying "START -- YOUR ENGINES", the staccato rhythm right up until "Fire Up/Ignition", and then the guitar speeds up... it's so good! It's the best theme song for a Kamen Rider!
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Last edited by Sunred; 06-02-2020 at 09:48 AM.. |
06-02-2020, 10:02 AM | #432 |
Standing By
Join Date: Feb 2020
Location: USA
Posts: 2,108
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Well, Yuka's setting Kaido up here. She wants Kaido for herself, and that'll never happen as long as Mari is a possibility. She knows how Mari would react to a proposal (not well), which is why she suggests it to Kaido. It all blowing up in his face was exactly what she wanted!
Yuka's suggestion may have damaged Kaido's chance but she didn't do it intentionally! That's why she was watching from behind the wall, waiting for Mari to finally reciprocate his love and annoyed when Kaido is rejected once more. She thinks she's trying to do Mari a favor by giving her what she would want and feels that Mari is being ungrateful and doesn't realize how great Kaido is. It's the same when Mari calls him an idiot, Yuka can't see how anybody could fault him. Quote:
KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 25
--1-- Kusaka has some of the best facial acting of anyone in a Kamen Rider, ever. I think maybe 60% of it is those eyebrows, the ridiculous intensity they add to everything he says or does. But he really does make a meal out of every expression, finding some little tic or flared nostril or slightly curled lip to really drive home how messed-up he is. It’s an acting choice that probably wouldn’t work on another show. There’s not much that’s small about Kusaka’s choices, you know? The character is very broad, as portrayed here. But Faiz is such an overheated show, it’s hard to say it doesn’t work. It works great for me, anyway. Quote:
--2--
Which is good, since there’s a shit-ton of Kusaka in this episode. There’re only two plots, and Takumi and Kusaka are really the only reps for Team Faiz’s plotline. (Mari’s in one set-up scene, and Keitaro gets so into his role as a cleaner that he vacuums dirt instead of saving Kusaka.) Normally, I’d think a story where Takumi and Kusaka would have to work together to escape from Smart Brain HQ would lead to a bunch of buddy comedy bits, insights into how they’d work together to survive, that sort of thing. Nope! It’s all weird Ryusei Cram School (“Go Meteors!”) stuff, and it’s… I mean, there ain’t a lot here. It’s shot well, I’ll give it that. The transition from Smart Brain’s clean surfaces and fluorescent bulbs to the Ryusei School’s damp atmosphere and purple lighting takes us from a heist story to a horror story in one scene change. It’s terribly effective at heightening the tension, making survival seem unlikely. It’s very cool to watch. It’s just, other than some cool fights, it’s way more mysterious than it needs to be. My rule of thumb for mysteries is One Answer For Every Two Questions. A worse ratio than that, you’ve lost my interest. Here, it’s all questions. Why is the Ryusei School in the basement of Smart Brain? Why is there a new belt? Why is it killing people? What does Orphan Daddy want? Why is he in the Ryusei School? Why is he screaming at Kusaka to FIGHT? Did he get Shiro’s script from Ryuki by accident? Is Kusaka going to have to keep killing Orphnochs to save Mari from a coma? Does this make Takumi Shinji, or Kitaoka? SO MANY QUESTIONS. All of these questions will probably be relevant at the end of the series, but right here it was just too much, too fast. Quote:
--3--
And that’s a shame, since the Kaido plotline totally delivered for me. Kaido’s someone that has maybe the broadest range of anyone in the cast. Last episode, it was pure comedy. Him swooning over all of Yuka’s compliments, his ridiculous marriage proposal, the fact that the fake monster attack he does with Kouhai uses Thriller choreography… it’s a whole episode of him being a giant cartoon. But then this one, it’s pure sadness. He wanted to be rid of his humanity, but he can’t do it. He doesn’t see the value in the family he’s made, but he can’t throw them away. There’s a sweet story about acceptance in this one, about Kaido concentrating on what he has rather than what he doesn’t. It’s amazing how well the actor sells it, making Kaido’s return to the fold of Team Orphnoch feel both like the best of bad options, as well as something he’s grown to love. Kaido already has something important that he takes for granted, his friendship with Kiba and Yuka. He led Rabbit astray so when Rabbit attacks Kiba and holds Yuka captive, I think it's a great development for Kaido who previously only cared about himself to accept responsibility for his mistake and come to their aid the way they came to his. He's like Takumi in that way, a man without a dream, but he has a purpose. He didn't ask for it, he didn't want it, but it's something that belongs to him. He doesn't want to lose his friends in Team Orphenoch even if he won't admit it. Quote:
--4--
Both stories get incredibly cool fight scenes to close out the episode. The Takumi/Kusaka vs Faiz/Kaixa fight does some fun tricks with lighting and shutter speed, making the fight appear quicker and more disorienting than normal. I liked how, despite the appearance of Orphan Daddy, the fight’s won by Takumi using what’s at hand (a killer belt) to get the belts back on our heroes. (Last episode’s fight was all about undressing, while this one has undressing and dressing! Escalation!) It’s a fun fight. The Horsepower vs Rabbitpunch fight, it’s a decent brawl that has a great, emotional hook in the middle. The disappointment Kaido feels in Kouhai, the way he tells Kouhai that if he needs to hit someone, hit Kaido… so great. While the Rider fight is stylish and clever without having much weight behind it, the Orphnoch fight feels like it’s about something, something that matters to the characters beyond their survival. I think they could've omitted Kaixa Shot so then he could equip Pointer in the left slot instead of the rear which looks like it would be harder to reach and easier for others to pickpocket. Notice how Faiz's rear slot is always empty. Quote:
I forgot to talk over about theme songs. I already talked about my opinions to Justifaiz early on, and I also have memorized all its lyrics (and lemme test myself here without looking at the other sources).
Hirogaru uchuu no naka can you feel Chiisa na hoshi no hanashi wo shiyou Tell me the truth shinjite ta mirai ga Kurure sarou to shiteru Kanashimi wo kurikaeshi Boku ra wa doko e yuku no darou (Chorus) Ima hitori hitori no mune no naka Me wo samase the time to go Tsuyoku aru tame ni Mata mamoru koto to tatakau koto Dilemma wa owaranai hashiri tsuzukete mo The end Justifaiz the means! Ashita no kono sora sae keep you real Eien ja nai kamo shire nai Over again messeeji wo okuru Byouyomi wa hajimatta Boku ra ni wa mada kiito Yaru beki koto ga aru no nara (Chorus) My top 5 Heisei KR theme songs are: 5) Warera Omou Yueni Warera Ari 4) Justifaiz 3) NEXT LEVEL 2) Life IS Showtime 1) Be The One
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心 と 刃 Last edited by Sh Ranger; 06-02-2020 at 10:08 AM.. |
06-02-2020, 06:39 PM | #433 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Orphan Daddy here making his appearance with that exact same Mirror World sound effect (or at least something really similar), and immediately telling Kusaka to 'Tatakae!' was very surreal. Just imagine that he handed Kaixa a Survive Card and it wouldn't be much more out of place...
It would be like if midway through Ghost, you heard someone shouting TIRE KOUKAN as he used the Enzo Ferrari Eyecon in the middle of a huge revelation. Like, it'd be awesome, but there's no way I'm paying attention to the next twenty seconds of TV show. Quote:
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Oh boy, here we go again. Yuka isn't spiteful enough to sabotage Kaido's love for Mari. She just wants what's best for him. You've got it backwards. Yuka isn't trying to destroy Kaido/Mari, she's trying too hard to make it happen. She's projecting her own desire on to Mari to understand why such an infallible guys keeps getting rejected and concludes that the only thing better than being his girlfriend is being his wife. From her perspective, she would agree to marry Kaido if he proposed to her, so Mari should agree as well. It doesn't work since it's too much escalation and she fails to consider that maybe her idolization of Kaido isn't universally shared by all girls.
Yuka's suggestion may have damaged Kaido's chance but she didn't do it intentionally! That's why she was watching from behind the wall, waiting for Mari to finally reciprocate his love and annoyed when Kaido is rejected once more. She thinks she's trying to do Mari a favor by giving her what she would want and feels that Mari is being ungrateful and doesn't realize how great Kaido is. It's the same when Mari calls him an idiot, Yuka can't see how anybody could fault him. Quote:
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I guess I'll be the first to mention this as well but the last piece of Kaixa Gear, the Kaixa Pointer, dramatically fell through the ceiling in to Kaixa's possession. Unlike Shot, Pointer has a unique design shaped like binoculars. Functionally, it's the same as Faiz Pointer but twice as strong!
The Ghost theme song is one that really didn't work for me, until it all of a sudden did. Snuck up on me for sure. Good list!
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06-02-2020, 07:08 PM | #434 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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until it all of a sudden did.
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06-02-2020, 07:30 PM | #435 |
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
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I think it'd be quicker to list the ones that don't work for me? Kabuto, Wizard and Drive. Rider (and Toku in general) is consistently good on OPs
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06-03-2020, 12:03 AM | #436 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 26
--1-- Torn on this one! Aesthetically, this episode is sumptuous. The cinematography is jaw-dropping. The music (or lack thereof!) is perfectly deployed to heighten every emotion. It's an episode that eschews all of the things that make Faiz Faiz, in favor of finding a new way into these characters, this premise. There's a grounded nature to what's happening that makes it all feel like a slow collapse, the inevitability of misfortune. Narratively, it's kind-of a nothingburger? It goes in hard on the return of the Ryusei Cram School alumni ("Go Meteors!"), bolstering the dwindling ranks of nobodies with a few more nobodies. You could cut almost all of the dialogue scenes with the human characters and just have them all saying Delta Is Coming. Almost all of the narrative energy is centered on Kusaka's reactions to what's happening, and holy shit do I not like Kusaka in that way. This one, it's like lipstick on a pig. --2-- Pretty great lipstick, though! Visually, it feels like the director read this script and went Oh Man I'm Going To Have To Save This One. So many fun tricks to make a bunch of shitty dialogue scenes work at all. The best one, by a mile, is the one with Houjou and Kageyama and Murakami. They're in this art gallery, and it's rectangles of flat colors, each of them looking at a different painting. As the scene starts, the camera focuses on the person listening, not the person talking. It's a brilliant choice, making the reaction matter more than the action. It matters more how someone is processing the information, how they're conveying it on their face, than what the information is. (Mostly because the information is that Lucky Clover doesn't like that Murakami is keeping secrets. There is not a lot there!) It sucks you completely into the scene. The other scenes are no slouch! The scene where Takumi finds out Kimura is a nekojita, and he gets up from the opposing couch to sit next to her and be polite, and it's all one shot. The breakfast scene, where the action (Kusaka and Mari) is one shot, and the reaction (Takumi and Keitaro) is the other shot, a bisected setup. A beautiful static shot of a doorframe, and Kusaka leans back into it to start his line. And, god, every single one of the new Orphnoch's scenes. The way the bus he's on goes into the tunnel, blacking everything out, and he's illuminated by the burning origami crane? Yes. --3-- And the sound! Such smart choices! Up until the end, it's all diegetic sound, which pays such enormous dividends for this episode. Even if you don't notice it, it's changing your perception of the story. Instead of fun music or tense music or spooky music, there's just... scenes. It's not telling you how to feel about it. It's not leading you emotionally. It's just saying Here. Here is a story. It's happening. Watch. And those scenes with Skullcandy, the EDM Orphnoch, amazing. Amazing. The first attack was brilliant, only the second scene in the whole episode with any music in it. (There's a radio playing as Takumi works the counter.) The camera zooms in on his headphones, music filling the soundstage, slowly drowning out all of the incidental noises. Then a monster enters the frame. No screams, just panicked victims, trapped with a monster. The music not sculpting the emotion, but adding to the wrongness of the scene. This isn't right. This isn't what a monster attack is supposed to be like. The second attack twists it, leading with one track and then zooming into the headphones for a harsher, more aggressive track.The killing happens with club lights and dance music, wrong, all wrong. The last victim is another Orphnoch, caught up in the carnage. It's all so purposeful, finding a way to let us know that this isn't just a more powerful monster, but a killer that we haven't previously had to contemplate. This isn't a funny monster, this is an inhuman beast. It's taking Faiz, the funny show about jerks, and making it into an episode of Kuuga. --4-- I got a little disappointed at the way the big Fighting Score came up after Kaixa ran after the Drop Bear Orphnoch. (What in the hell was it doing on top of a wall?) I thought they'd go the whole episode without non-diegetic music, and I was so ready to knock points off for ruining it. But they did it so they could drop it all out again. Kaixa rounds the corner and sees the tunnel. He freezes. It's just the sound of him breathing, hard. It's fear. You can hear it in his breathing. Faiz rolls up, sees Kaixa immobilized. He tenses. It's all tension, speaker to speaker. The Orphnoch stumbles out of the tunnel, burning in red flames. Delta. It's Delta who did this. --5-- And, like, hopefully I described that in a way that sounds like it worked it pretty well! That's the stuff I like talking about, the stuff that works. Because I could've done points 2 through 4 on how much no one cares about random Ryusei Cram School alumni ("Go Meteors!"), how it's ridiculous to think the show's effectively heightening tension by killing them off, how I don't love that Kusaka wants to keep Mari in the dark to protect her (one of my least-favorite tropes!), how I don't really get why Lucky Clover is so worked up about Murakami keeping secrets when he immediately tells them what's going when they asked, and just basically how dull I found the story that all of this smart construction was in service of. There's such craftsmanship here, but it's covering up a pretty forgettable plot.
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Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! Last edited by Kamen Rider Die; 08-03-2023 at 08:14 PM.. |
06-03-2020, 12:24 AM | #437 |
I got nothing
Join Date: May 2016
Posts: 148
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so this is the episode I will die on the hill for the original music choices in the broadcast version. You know the super generic music that plays whenever the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is going on a murder spree? Guess what song is playing? if you guessed that it was one that had the N word in it every other line you'd be correct.
And to explain why I love this it isn't because of the song as a matter of fact I to absolutly hate music and speach with slurs in them, it's because the fact I can say with proof (as far as I'm aware at least) that this happened in a show aimed at 6 year olds to sell role play toys crosses so many lines it goes from terrible to a surrell form of hilarious |
06-03-2020, 12:26 AM | #438 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,426
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Aside from Mari and Kusaka there are maybe three Ryusei students you need to bother trying to remember. Their main role is to serve as Faiz’s version of Star Trek’s redshirts. There are a lot of them and they die very easily, but there always seem to be more waiting in the wings.
Today’s casting trivia: young Mari is played by a girl named Aoi Yuki, who would grow up to be a professional voice actress. Among her roles are the title character from Gen “Gaim” Urobuchi’s Madoka Magica and Yurusen from a Kamen Rider Ghost. Quote:
so this is the episode I will die on the hill for the original music choices in the broadcast version. You know the super generic music that plays whenever the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is going on a murder spree? Guess what song is playing? if you guessed that it was one that had the N word in it every other line you'd be correct.
And to explain why I love this it isn't because of the song as a matter of fact I to absolutly hate music and speach with slurs in them, it's because the fact I can say with proof (as far as I'm aware at least) that this happened in a show aimed at 6 year olds to sell role play toys crosses so many lines it goes from terrible to a surrell form of hilarious Last edited by Switchblade; 06-03-2020 at 12:28 AM.. |
06-03-2020, 12:35 AM | #439 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
so this is the episode I will die on the hill for the original music choices in the broadcast version. You know the super generic music that plays whenever the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is going on a murder spree? Guess what song is playing? if you guessed that it was one that had the N word in it every other line you'd be correct.
And to explain why I love this it isn't because of the song as a matter of fact I to absolutly hate music and speach with slurs in them, it's because the fact I can say with proof (as far as I'm aware at least) that this happened in a show aimed at 6 year olds to sell role play toys crosses so many lines it goes from terrible to a surrell form of hilarious Quote:
Neat! Thanks!
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Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! |
06-03-2020, 12:52 AM | #440 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,426
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