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04-17-2024, 10:44 PM | #671 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Quote:
I forgot how much I liked Reactor as a villain. He's just a dude who has a job that he takes pride in and doesn't appreciate having people maskedly riding all up in his business. Does that business involve murdering a whole bunch of people in order to create a shadow dimension city for blatantly nefarious purposes? Yes. Is that going to keep him from committing 100% to the job? No. Does he have possibly the single most impressive mustache in any form of Kamen Rider media? Probably.
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04-18-2024, 12:18 PM | #672 |
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FUUTO P.I. EPISODE 12 - “SUPERHUMAN R - DEATH, AND…”
Quote:
Not great? There’s some post-battle investigation into the deactivated Joker Memory that lays out some of Bando’s mad-science bonafides: he was another Foundation X guy, and vanished a few years back. His activities in Shadow Fuuto put him outside the scope of the Gaia Library, so he’s literally and figuratively a blank page for Team Double. Beyond that, he’s as mysterious as ever in Reactor’s death scene. He’s grateful for his lieutenant’s dedication to the mission, but what exactly that mission is remains unrevealed. As far as an Answers episode is concerned, even in the limited scope of laying out a single motivation or goal, this ain’t it.
It continues to amuse me that no one in the cast is like You Have The Exact Same Weird Hair Color As The Mystery Supervillain So There’s Probably A Connection There. No one’s real genre savvy, I guess! While this episode didn’t really do anything to further reveal Tokime’s past (beyond a no-boys-allowed full body search for a Memory injection port), it massively succeeded at making this final episode feel like a comprehensive conclusion to Tokime’s heroic actualization. Far from being the distant and closed-off character of the introductory story, she’s now giving heroic pep talks to guilt-riddled old men and swearing to defeat her own past through a heroic dedication to Fuuto. She’s finally a hero in her own right, and that’s honestly all this show really needed to do for me to feel like these 12 episodes found themselves a solid stopping point. Tokime’s really the point of this show, you know? She’s the POV character to what’s going on, and she’s pretty much the only one that can change and grow as a result of the stories being told. (As I talked about at the end of W, Shotaro and Philip literally aren’t designed to do either!) Giving her a story where she single-handedly escapes from danger and safeguards a client’s dreams… that’s it? That’s all I really wanted. And she does it with the sort of deductive cunning and bold action that typifies Team Double’s approach to the mystery genre.
Nothing much, really, but I do like how Bando’s emotional investment in Shadow Fuuto mirrors Team Double’s defense of Fuuto. There’s a really fun symmetry to the two groups trying to keep their homes safe, and I still like that a lot as a longform narrative.
Yes! Absolutely! And it’s a great one, worthy of a season finale or act break or indefinite hiatus or whatever the hell you want to call this current stopping point. Philip’s hilariously detailed explanation of Reactor’s whole thing creates a path to victory that’s all about fighting smarter instead of harder, and I always appreciate that. It’s a fight that pushes Reactor’s main advantage – limitless power build-up – into a disadvantage, and then lets physics do the rest. It’s not the longest or most intricate fight ever, but it’s great to see Double working through a complicated problem, and Reactor’s willingness to fight and die for his cause makes his defeat sort of tragic in a way that feels appropriately epic. This one hits different than the previous Dopants of the season, as it should. I liked this ending. I liked how it sort of sketched in a little bit how Bando’s group thinks about themselves, but I mostly enjoyed how the story’s really one of how Tokime is done dwelling on a past that’s out of reach, and ready to embrace the present. It’s not a finale, really, but it nicely sets up a new stage. I really hope that there are more episodes to come someday!
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04-18-2024, 12:29 PM | #673 |
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So here we are, at the end of the first (hopefully not the only) season. And it ends with what many interpreted as a hint to watch the main show, but a few more people who were more familiar with the manga pointed out that it also served as a lead in to the arc after this one, which is a partial retelling of both the flashbacks in W Movie War segments from Shotaro’s perspective, with… I’m sorry, I seem to have read too far ahead.
Also, I’ve got to question why Tokime not having a slot was enough for Team W to acquit her of being a Dopant? Have they forgotten about the concept of Gaia Drivers? Last edited by Androzani84; 04-18-2024 at 01:38 PM.. |
04-18-2024, 12:34 PM | #674 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Good point! They're definitely making some assumptions here about Tokime's significance to the Shadow Fuuto group, that she couldn't possibly have been a higher-up. Hope that doesn't come back to haunt them!
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04-18-2024, 12:43 PM | #675 |
Alias: ZeroEnchiladas
Join Date: Aug 2015
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Maybe one day we'll get a Season 2.
But overall that was honestly a fun finale. It was great to see Tokime shine on her own and then we get a confrontation with Reactor leading to a really cool reprise of W Prism Xtreme set to the OP just to showcase how strong these Shadow Futo guys are. I do appreciate how cautious Bando is about things though. The man sees this and is like "Yeah no, we can't do direct confrontations right now". Really fun to see villains who are absurd levels of powerful also realize that their fights could easily be their last if their opponents figure out a way to beat them. That said, we got a little bit of animated Kamen Rider Skull in this and that's honestly what matters. Though not as much as the subs deciding to go with the correct label for the prequel to W's adventures, "Begins Night", none of these "The Night Where it all Began" shenanigans. But wow, we actually did it. Because as far as I'm aware the Futo PI Stage doesn't have any subs so I don't know if you're going to cover it. I don't know if I'll rewatch along with every Rider, I mostly did this since W was my first Kamen Rider and it's been over a decade since I last saw it. But I had a lot of fun. |
04-18-2024, 01:04 PM | #676 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Location: Chicago, IL
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Quote:
I do appreciate how cautious Bando is about things though. The man sees this and is like "Yeah no, we can't do direct confrontations right now". Really fun to see villains who are absurd levels of powerful also realize that their fights could easily be their last if their opponents figure out a way to beat them.
Quote:
I'm glad you had a good time!
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04-19-2024, 10:13 AM | #677 |
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THREAD WRAP-UP
And that's a wrap on "Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider W (and watches Fuuto P.I.)"! I'll be back in August for "Kamen Rider Die watches Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters"! Have a great spring and summer!
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04-19-2024, 11:33 AM | #678 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,426
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No matter how many times it shows up and how critical it ends up being, I will never remember that Accel's little tank buddy exists when it is not currently on screen. Meanwhile, I'll never forget Ixa's stupid dinosaur barrel tank, which is objectively less memorable. Memories are weird, which I suppose is a decent takeaway from W, as a sub-franchise.'
So, thoughts on the final episode? It was good. As usual, I like how the 3-episode structure gives stories more room to grow and to indulge in some extended denouements. Reactor remained a fun villain through the end of it and even got some decent pathos out of his final scene. Tokime getting a chance to shine in her own part of the case was also very appreciated. We also got a little bit of the show trying to make Foundation X happen again, which is always adorable. Final thoughts on the cartoon? Loved it. More than I remembered even, and I definitely remembered enjoying it. W is, as discussed, a show that has a pretty evergreen concept behind it and the cartoon absolutely highlights how well that works. Tokime is a fantastic addition to the cast, capably serving as a new viewer surrogate, a major point of mystery, and a source of new dynamics for the existing cast. If we ever get more live action W, somehow, I would be crushed if she's not involved. I definitely hope we get more of this someday. I don't know a lot about the Japanimation industry, but I do know that years between seasons is more common than not. It's not just that there are a lot of open plot threads that need to be resolved, it's mostly that I really liked this cartoon and want more of it. If this is it, though, I appreciate the hell out of it ending the way that it did, with Tokime asking for the full story of W's history and Shotaro starting with the opening scene from the first episode of the original series. Excellent enveloping. |
04-19-2024, 11:51 AM | #679 |
Standing By
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Whoa, that was sudden! I was expecting more dramatic build-up for such an important announcement. So, uh, what made you decide on Gobusters?
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04-20-2024, 02:42 PM | #680 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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That would be great! I found Fuuto P.I. to be a worthy continuation of the W story, and it'd be great to see how far an animated series can take things.
I'll probably talk more about it in a few months, but it's largely a mixture of the suit designs and the creative team.
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