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03-11-2024, 03:40 AM | #381 |
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My two main thoughts from this two-parter.
So, did no-one think to dispose of the Gene Memory after Toru agreed to surrender? Sure, Wakana’s upgrade would otherwise be significantly improbably, but still… I recently realised why they specifically went with Wakana’s as the evil Phillip over Saeko. Their Memories (Cyclone and Claydoll) begin with the same letter, but embody opposite elements (Cyclone = wind, Claydoll = Earth). And now, the regular feature… Sentai-lert! Naoki Kawano, the guy playing Toru, seems to be a more versatile actor than he is. He previously appeared as the Infinity Dragon Long in Juken Sentai Gekiranger, the show’s big bad. He was later in Kamen Rider Wizard as Section Zero guy Kizaki. |
03-11-2024, 04:14 AM | #382 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
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Man, I hope Kawano returns to the genre for any kind of role be it big or small, hero or villain. Heck, maybe the next Ultraman show since he hasn't done one iirc. Fun fact, Ray Fujita who played Kitazaki/Dragon Orphenoch in Faiz and Rei/Zero in GARO is the vocals for a band called DUSTZ and Kawano was the drummer at one point.
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03-11-2024, 08:46 AM | #383 |
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Quote:
KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 38 - “VISITOR X - IN THE NAME OF THE MUSEUM”
This was an episode that was largely about moving pieces around, and providing crucial character information, but I think I more appreciated how it tried to maintain a consistent theme beneath all of those revelations. Like, I dug that everything came down to that Sokichi quote about the peril of indecision, and how not making a decision is probably worse than making a bad decision. Philip, Wakana, and Neurotaki are all characters that want to have everything, and can’t quite bring themselves to… Wait, no. I don’t– I don’t really think that theme carries across like I want it to. Quote:
Philip’s story is definitely about indecision. He doesn’t want to abandon his friends, but he can’t leave Wakana when she’s so scared and vulnerable. He needs to get off the fence, even if it means making a drastic change to his life. But the other two characters? Wakana and Neurotaki? They know exactly what they want: to escape from the danger of the Museum. They’re stymied – Neurotaki, by a Dopant assassin; Wakana, by her and Philip forgetting that cell phones are a thing – but they begin this story with a clear and actionable objective. Hell, Neurotaki actually gets what he wants, by seeing that his family got by fine without him! I wish this thing was held together by a common theme, but it really isn’t.
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And that’s the big reveal of the episode: Philip is the son of Ryuube, and the brother to Wakana and Saeko. As I’ve watched this show before, I can’t pretend it was some bombshell, but I appreciated how it was quickly digested by the team and allowed to impact the unfolding adventure. This wasn’t some cliffhanger swerve, it was a data point that helped add weight to an immediate dilemma. I like when that happens!
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On a rewatch, I feel like I can be a little more generous to what the show’s doing with Wakana. Her leaving wasn’t a Kirihiko-style morality clause, where the reality of what the Museum is up to became a line he couldn’t cross. She’s running away from home because she’s scared of her dad. She’s seen what’s happening to Saeko, and feels like she’ll be next. That’s it. She’s a scared child, and she’s trying to run away from her problems. (I mean, reasonably so! Definitely feels like a good reason to leave town forever!) Once Ryuube explains her importance, and plays to her ego and need for safety, it makes sense that she’d choose to stay at home. He only needed to stop creeping her out, and she’s inevitably going to stay where it’s comfortable.
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Where I have not grown more generous to what the show’s doing with Wakana is how she immediately tries to kill Philip. It’s such a gigantic change to her character from the last EVERY EPISODE that I don’t think the show can possibly come up with a reason why she wouldn’t be slightly more sensitive to Philip’s predicament. (There’s maybe a read on it where she’s angry that Philip never showed up at the train station, but neither of them ever mention it, and it’s not like she joined Ryuube out of spite.) I get that Wakana’s all in on being the main Museum heavy, but I feel like there could’ve been a bit more nuance to her change. Although, it’d arguably be out of character for this show to provide any nuance to a change in Wakana’s portrayal, so maybe I should at least be applauding their consistency.
Makura throws his weight around against a powerless suspect by yelling. He's not nearly as cool as he thinks however, as Jinno sends him to buy tea. And after this, Yamashiro actually talks, where he was kidnapped in his son's 7th birthday, but he abandoned his family for research, thus now he wants to apologize but he feels he had no right to see them. So despite Jinno being a joke at times, he's still more sensible than Makura, and again, a showing about how mean and strict ways don't always work if you want to get something out of someone, contrary to the belief of how success can only succeed if they're built in strictness, meanness, harshness, etc. It can instead make others less likely to listen to you, shown in Yamashiro only talking when the yelling Makura's out of the scene. And second time Jinno got beaten up by another female "cop" (disguised Grasshopper) using kicks, and being choked with her thigh as she changes into Hopper.
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03-11-2024, 10:08 AM | #384 |
Standing By
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Quote:
KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 39 - ?THE LIKELIHOOD OF G - BAD CINEMA PARADISE?
Everything with the cinema, the Gene Dopant, the cow-puppet hand, and the filmmaking? so good. Such a great low-stakes conflict after the last few bigger, more epic scenarios. This one?s full of terrific details (Toru?s movie is over seven hours long and no one knows why, including him) and cute performances (the Gene Dopant 100% does not know what to do in a fight) that are a perfect distraction from a Museum/Foundation X plot that does not really do it for me. Quote:
How unfortunate that Jinno was the only one willing to eat the hopper, but he still gets beaten up anyway.
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03-11-2024, 11:20 AM | #385 |
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Quote:
Tooru just wants to make a movie about a cool, dark warrior! It's not because he wants to date anybody! WHY CAN'T SOMEONE CAST A CO-WORKER AS A BEAUTIFUL WARRIOR THAT'S SUPER AWESOME WITHOUT HAVING PEOPLE MAKE ASSUMPTIONS.
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03-11-2024, 04:15 PM | #386 |
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I think I remember why this two-parter stood out to me at the time. I think this was the point where Akiko officially won me over. Excellent showing for her; still silly and hyper, but in a way that didn't overshadow her role in the plot or feel like it was all she was doing. This might be peak Akiko.
And the debut of Claydoll Extreme! That is something I totally remembered existing and did not completely forget about since the show ended! |
03-11-2024, 07:17 PM | #387 |
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Quote:
KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 39 - “THE LIKELIHOOD OF G - BAD CINEMA PARADISE”
Basically, I have officially stopped caring about Wakana, and I now zone out whenever the plot focuses on her, or tries to redeem her. She has pretty much ceased feeling like a person, and exists solely as a character that behaves in whatever way is required by the current scene. There’s an attempt in this one to say that Wakana’s completely new character is down to her mind being warped by excessive Memory usage, but it’s a hard explanation to accept. For one, Wakana barely used the Clay Doll Memory recently, so it’s difficult to say that she’s suddenly deranged or malevolent. For another, she was fine in one scene in 38, and then immediately ready to kill Philip. It’s not… I don’t think it’s ever been like a switch got flipped, right? It’s been more of a process to be corrupted by a Memory. (You could maybe point at Isaka’s experimentation on her Driver, but again: she never really used it, and she was fine for multiple episodes.) With Wakana, the show clearly didn’t feel like it needed to do the work to flip her, and I don’t enjoy their attempts to do so now. Quote:
The Dopant story is a good one, though. I like how it’s using this weird couple to talk about the necessity of communication in any relationship, and how you’re allowed to be critical of people you care about. Philip’s in this weird place where he’s written off Wakana in much the same way I have, but he’s clearly feeling betrayed by her in a more personal way, while also not that ready to cut her out of his life. Akiko’s here to remind him that you need to be honest with yourself when you’ve been hurt, but you also need to help the people who’ve hurt you try to improve. It’s a sweet little lesson for Philip, wrapped up in a pleasingly absurd adventure.
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Everything with the cinema, the Gene Dopant, the cow-puppet hand, and the filmmaking… so good. Such a great low-stakes conflict after the last few bigger, more epic scenarios. This one’s full of terrific details (Toru’s movie is over seven hours long and no one knows why, including him) and cute performances (the Gene Dopant 100% does not know what to do in a fight) that are a perfect distraction from a Museum/Foundation X plot that does not really do it for me.
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Except for Saeko, that is. Her desperate mission to regain some small amount of control over her fortunes is, once again, the Sonozaki story I’m most invested in. Her need to show everyone that she’s better than them, no matter what risky thing she has to do (sneaking into Digal by dressing up like a custodian!), is exactly the sort of character-based plotting that Wakana now lacks. The Saeko stuff feels like an effect from a previous cause, instead of a bizarre plot-dictated reality we all have to live with. Saeko’s still fun to watch! Because she’s a red Nazca now!
Though it feels common with toku, there'd be the movie version of TV shows (and for KR now, it's yearly). I did wonder before how would Shotaro react to Kaze no Saheji in front of others, I thought that he'd treat it as a guilty pleasure due to his disinterest to historical stuff otherwise, but actually no, he displays it openly, as he invites Akiko to watch it together. Akiko at first smacks Shotaro with a slipper for not focusing on the case...but of course she'd be tempted too, being the one to 'introduce' the jidaigeki series to Shotaro after all. It also had a little advantage for the case that the manager can't kick them out as they're now the customers (as Akiko says.. a payback to the unreasonable manager). The roles have reversed here, now Shotaro's the one that had attention deficit while Akiko's the 'sensible' one who tried to get him back on track, only for Shotaro's antics to unwittingly move their case forward.
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03-11-2024, 08:04 PM | #388 |
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Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
I think I remember why this two-parter stood out to me at the time. I think this was the point where Akiko officially won me over. Excellent showing for her; still silly and hyper, but in a way that didn't overshadow her role in the plot or feel like it was all she was doing. This might be peak Akiko.
Quote:
I did wonder before how would Shotaro react to Kaze no Saheji in front of others, I thought that he'd treat it as a guilty pleasure due to his disinterest to historical stuff otherwise, but actually no, he displays it openly, as he invites Akiko to watch it together.
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03-12-2024, 12:38 AM | #389 |
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SHOTARO HIDARI HARDBOILED DELUSION DIARY EPISODE 10 - “WHAT IF AKIKO WAS AN ASSASSIN?”
oh my god it’s so laaaaaaaaaaate This was a nicely-straightforward Delusion Diary, with something nominally approaching a beginning, middle, and end. I honestly maybe liked the bookend stuff better, with Akiko trying to find her lost DVD. The assassin stuff was cute, but it’s really just a few costumes and the Gene Dopant, the end. The part where Akiko can’t find her DVD gives us Philip declining to use the Gaia Library on trivial matters, Shotaro rapidly escalating a situation, and Terui canonically enjoying the same samurai drama as Shotaro and Akiko. (I assume that Terui enjoys it in a better way than Shotaro.) It’s a fun little hangout story, and I like seeing the cast like this. Good short! Sorry this is posting so laaaaaaaaaate!
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03-12-2024, 07:13 AM | #390 |
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This was a fun one, purely because it's one of the few where the non-delusion part seems like an expansion of the "lore" of the Narumi Detective Agency. Compared to the others which were more Akiko gags.
That being said I did love the twist that the Shotaro we first see in the delusion was actually Gene. When he got all scary looking I was caught off guard and then suddenly, there's a Shotaro behind the desk and next thing you know, Gene! Really clever usage of the Dopant Suit this time around honestly. |
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