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01-15-2021, 04:31 AM | #621 |
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That said, tell me, your current verdict on the Hell Brothers? And I would like to add that while it may seem dark grey or even black depending on the lighting, the official color for Punchhopper is brown. |
01-15-2021, 12:21 PM | #622 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Nah that is a deep cut trivia not a whole lot of people know unless you are a trivia geek so no worries.
That said, tell me, your current verdict on the Hell Brothers? And I would like to add that while it may seem dark grey or even black depending on the lighting, the official color for Punchhopper is brown. The longer answer is that I love how the show has constructed what I think they think is Dark Team Tendou And Kagami, but it's really just Janky Knock-Off Team Tendou And Kagami. It's an attempt to dig into some of how Tendou and Kagami relate to one another, to comment on their bond in the same way the individual characters comment on each other. It's just all done with this hilarious affectation of Ooh They Bad that I love because of how fake it is, not in spite of it. It's two guys reinventing themselves rather than improving themselves, a lateral move from Self-Aggrandizing But Pathetic into Self-Effacing But Pathetic. Everything about them is a defense mechanism, and an obvious one at that. I love that idea, of What If Achievement Looked Like Failure, redefining how someone walks their path. And those suits! Very into those suits. A lot of it is the physicality of the actors inside them, the way KickHopper's head swings like the neck joint is loose, or the way they go from slouching to ALL KICKING or ALL PUNCHING so fast, like a switch gets flipped. (It reminds me a ton of Build Hazard, which is one of my favorite suit performances of all time.) Even the way Yaguruma Henshins with this eye-roll of resignation! Such a perfect touch. Yeah, I genuinely love them. I love them aesthetically, I love them thematically, and I love them narratively. Definitely scouring sites for good quality figures of them.
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01-15-2021, 02:20 PM | #623 |
I have a problematic type
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Man, I just really loved that last scene with Tendou and Kagami in the tall grass after the fight. The narrative beats were great - the whole "Put me down if I go berserk like I would for you" conversation was excellent and really highlights the amount of trust that Tendou has in Kagami, even when he can't help but act like a dick.
I really don't remember how the Red Shoes System thing resolves itself - all I really remember is Kagami's dad dancing while explaining it. We're really into the part of the show that I remember very little of now, so it's getting pretty exciting to rediscover some of these plot points. Also a fan of putting Renge and Tsurugi together for a scene. Renge is obviously working much more as a comic relief character than Hiyori, so having her partner up with the other big comic relief for a scene was fun (not that Hiyori couldn't be funny, it's just that she worked more as the aggravated voice of reason while Renge's big thing seems to be pratfalls). And hey, I guess we hadn't seen the last of Sasword. That's cool. |
01-15-2021, 02:32 PM | #624 |
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Also a fan of putting Renge and Tsurugi together for a scene. Renge is obviously working much more as a comic relief character than Hiyori, so having her partner up with the other big comic relief for a scene was fun (not that Hiyori couldn't be funny, it's just that she worked more as the aggravated voice of reason while Renge's big thing seems to be pratfalls).
Also, not to keep shitting on things I actually like, but Renge has such a bizarre character arc. She's introduced in a two-parter as Cheerful Bad-Ass, and then the very next story the show's like Nope She's An Adorable Klutz. I have to remind myself, every episode, that she was ZECT's cold-blooded assassin. It's fine to have a character get wackier as the series progresses (Tsurugi!), but with Renge, it's like she's got nothing of her original incarnation.
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01-15-2021, 06:16 PM | #625 |
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As of episode 33 the rest of the story didn't matter as long as I had my Hell Brothers fix honestly. Last edited by Sunred; 01-15-2021 at 06:22 PM.. |
01-15-2021, 06:26 PM | #626 |
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The Figuarts... I'd rather get the Seihous, and I can only find KickHopper. Even then, it's a damaged version, and I've said before that I need a minty version of Kamen Rider A Case Of The Mondays. I don't really collect SIC stuff, so those are out. And, like, I don't mind hunting around! This is a thing I didn't even know I needed until a week ago. I'm okay refreshing AmiAmi, Jungle, and Mandarake until something good pops up. Much like Yaguruma and Kageyama, I am okay living with disappointment.
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01-15-2021, 06:29 PM | #627 |
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The SHODOs, all I've been able to dig up is PunchHopper, and like: that ain't gonna cut it. He is the second-place member of a two-man team!
The Figuarts... I'd rather get the Seihous, and I can only find KickHopper. Even then, it's a damaged version, and I've said before that I need a minty version of Kamen Rider A Case Of The Mondays. I don't really collect SIC stuff, so those are out. And, like, I don't mind hunting around! This is a thing I didn't even know I needed until a week ago. I'm okay refreshing AmiAmi, Jungle, and Mandarake until something good pops up. Much like Yaguruma and Kageyama, I am okay living with disappointment. |
01-15-2021, 06:34 PM | #628 |
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*: arguable!
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01-15-2021, 06:50 PM | #629 |
The Immortal King Tasty
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There's some well-earned serenity at the end of the episode, with Tendou, with the show, exhaling after how insane the previous twenty-odd minutes were. It's the little way Tendou breaks the ice, mentioning how hungry he is after having a black-out fistfight and then watching his only lead to finding Hiyori get skewered by Worm Widow. It takes this serious episode and deflates it just enough to make room for reconciliation, you know? I really liked that.
Plus it's just great because the script somehow managed to naturally land the episode right back at food, which is about as Kabuto as you can get. Quote:
Yeah, Tendou's got some good The Rider System Has Gone Haywire anguished screams. Sometimes, when a show goes to that well, they take the VO out so that it seems like the dude inside is gone, really play up how inhuman a Rider can be. Here, they just have Tendou screaming, wall-to-wall, and it's horrifying. This show wants you to know that Tendou's in there, going crazy from pain.
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A lot of it is the physicality of the actors inside them, the way KickHopper's head swings like the neck joint is loose, or the way they go from slouching to ALL KICKING or ALL PUNCHING so fast, like a switch gets flipped.
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01-16-2021, 12:31 AM | #630 |
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KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 37
God, what a weird episode. I honestly don't know if I liked it or not? There're some incredibly funny moments, alongside some tense and dramatic ones, but this thing did not cohere for me at all. It's doing a bunch of little things that I love while adding up to a whole that I was lukewarm to at best. I'm definitely in favor of a story where all of Team Kabuto goes undercover at a middle school, though. (And, like, Asumu's school from Hibiki, even! Very definitely in favor of that!) It's a chance to see these heroes interact with a group of kids, and that's pretty much always a winner for a Kamen Rider story. It's way more of a Kabuto flavor to have the kids be teenagers who are largely ambivalent about the frequent disappearances of their classmates under possibly supernatural causes. I mean, it's not unique to Kabuto to have the kids in crisis be teens. Fourze made their bones on teens in trouble, and, yeah, Hibiki had its share of problematic adolescents. But the usual approach is for a pre-adolescent, someone who is just learning about how dangerous or unkind the world can be. (Gon, for example.) Here, we've got kids who are already halfway to being hollowed out, making them impervious to the normal pep-talk a Kamen Rider might give. But, Tendou... yeah, he's not going to give you a big speech to make you feel better. He'll feed you, though, and that was my favorite part of this episode. In all of the time-shifting shenanigans of the last dozen or so episodes, I really liked that the most tangible stakes in this episode were centered on some teenage girl who feels like she's not succeeding enough academically. There's a thing about haunted mirrors and urban legends, but the episode seems to barely give a shit about it. (Or I'm just too aware of how much this seems like a Ryuki plot to invest much in the mystery. It's possible! I ain't too objective sometimes! Them naming the girl in this one 'Kobayashi' seems like they're hanging a lantern on it, though.) Where the drama comes alive is in how much Keiko feels pressured to achieve, and how much she feels like she's weak for being less than perfect. Having Tendou be there for her by giving her a snack so she can study better... yes. It's this incredibly small thing that feels like the most heroic act in an episode full of monster detonations. It's all about Tendou seeing someone working hard to improve themselves, and him giving her the support he thinks she needs. Not with a speech or a vow, but with some noodles in bread that redefine deliciousness. It's fully Kabuto, just like Keiko's story. That idea of feeling crushed by envy and self-loathing when you can't be as great as someone else, that's the core conflict of Kabuto. Nearly every hero on the show has needed to make peace with their limitations, or stop measuring themselves against others, or know when to stop pushing themselves, and so on. Usually, we get it with grown adults (and Tsurugi), but it can work just as cleanly in a younger setting. Doing, like, Lil' Kabuto Themes for an episode or two, that's pretty smart. When the episode gets out of its own way and lets Tendou try to connect with this girl by saving her a yakisoba bun, that's when I'm fully engaged. It's just, those moments are so buried in monster stuff and exposition that they're... you have to dig for them a bit. That thing with Tendou offering food to help a young girl, that's maybe twenty seconds long. It's great, but there's not nearly enough of it. And I almost hate saying this, but maybe the episode could've turned down some of the humor? I laughed hard at what's here, but the tone of every weird Tsurugi thing, or Kagami thing, or Renge thing, they're fighting against this episode creating a legible sense of threat, or menace. This is an episode with haunting disappearances and hopeless teenagers that also includes Tendou opening a bread shop on a roof and Tsurugi attending a middle school. You can't... I think this episode needed to pick whether it wanted to be a slapstick farce or an emotional character study, but it opted not to choose. Instead, you get these warring tones, and it keeps this episode from really achieving anything. Like, Keiko's story is really affecting! That kid has so much power in a small, soulful performance! But it feels like a dramatic subplot in a comedy episode, instead of what should be a dramatic episode with comedy cutaways. The balance of this thing is way out of whack, and it left me really frustrated by the end. Moments are strong, but they never feel like they're working together to tell a worthwhile story. A QUESTION It's an uneven episode with a lot of great gags, and none were better to me than Tsurugi getting Jiiya to do his math problem. Tsurugi's logic that, by employing and commanding Jiiya, he could claim Jiiya's skills as his own, was priceless. The clarity of purpose for Tsurugi, in him getting people to do his work for him, was adorable. Jiiya was also surprisingly good at math, for a valet? Not a skill I'd've expected him to trot out. In which grade school class could you have most used Jiiya's help?
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