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01-16-2022, 12:38 AM | #301 |
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
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At least half the reason Kaidou is here is because his actor is one of those guys that inexplicably comes back a lot? He had a large villain role in Shinkenger; if you go back to Ghost you’ll see him as Musashi in the summer movie and a couple episodes; and spoilers but you’ll be seeing him again in another Rider you haven’t seen yet! I’m sure there’s yet another role I’m forgetting too. He’s all over the place
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01-16-2022, 12:46 AM | #302 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
At least half the reason Kaidou is here is because his actor is one of those guys that inexplicably comes back a lot? He had a large villain role in Shinkenger; if you go back to Ghost you?ll see him as Musashi in the summer movie and a couple episodes; and spoilers but you?ll be seeing him again in another Rider you haven?t seen yet! I?m sure there?s yet another role I?m forgetting too. He?s all over the place
The other half, though, is that Kaido's actor is really great? He's one of those actors in toku that's always making Interesting Choices in his performance: the weird pauses, the little stutters, the anxious body language that communicates a lot about what Kaido's thinking. He's fascinating to watch. If you can't give a major character a ton of screentime, you'd better have an actor that can become a multiplier on that limited time through charisma and talent.
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Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! |
01-16-2022, 02:54 PM | #303 |
Standing By
Join Date: Feb 2020
Location: USA
Posts: 2,098
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I'm opening my eyes for the epilogue of Faiz. You guys didn't think I'd miss it, right?
BTW, Die has now passed the halfway point on his rewatch list. Quote:
D-VIDEO SPECIAL: KAMEN RIDER 4
But, it’s more nuanced than that. A death can be a gift, a way of treating a life as something to be shared with those whose stories keep going. Takumi’s second life was lived in paralysis, haunted by ghosts and guilted by survivors. His second death was a reclamation of his heroism, a chance to make his life more meaningful and valuable by his ability to hand it over for the future of others. In his death, he finally got to live his dream of a clear sky and a brighter future. It’s not a tragedy that he died; it’s a tragedy that it took him so long to truly live. Quote:
Like, I forgot Kaido was in this?! I don’t know that I’d’ve picked him to be the one trying to keep Takumi from sacrificing himself, but it works. It works great. Kaido’s strength as a character was always how the actor played the self-deprecating aspects as a thin mask over endless oceans of bitterness and grief, so it’s the perfect way to incrementally refocus the story on Takumi’s death(s). Kaido gets to defuse the tension just enough to make the conclusion the spotlight, while still weaving in the appropriate melancholy of his and Takumi’s reunion scenes. It’s so great to see them together again, but you can feel how fleeting it is.
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It’s there in the use of the hill, and the screen, and what they represented in the finale. The hill was his new start; the screen was what was holding him back. Having the screen on the hill is the movie saying that Takumi’s new start is maybe what’s holding him back now, his possible future keeping him from dealing with his past. Staging his acceptance there, in that way, was such a love-letter to Faiz fans. It’s not just reused iconography and unearned nostalgia; it’s recontextualized history, the language of landmarks. The whole sequence was a beautiful return to the way Kamen Rider 555 would pose tricky questions about how best to live in a world that might not have place for you, and I couldn't be more grateful that they got it right.
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But that’s all beside the point, really. It’s a story about Faiz. It’s hinted at in the title, a subtle reference to the 4th Heisei Rider. As a Drive project, it’s not the best. Too slow, which is antithetical to Drive’s storytelling. But as a Faiz project? It’s a bittersweet tribute to one of my favorite shows, and it's a worthy end to one of the best Heisei Riders.
Very glad I rewatched this today. Quote:
Mouri seems to make working with other people's shows his specialty, so that's probably a huge reason this gets as close as it does to capturing more than just the surface level of Faiz. He's writing a belated epilogue to OOO now too, a show he actually DID write for originally, so thinking about it, this kind of makes me more hopeful that V-Cinema is going to turn out to be a worthy addendum in its own right.
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01-16-2022, 09:12 PM | #304 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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this was supposed to be the short fill-in project and it's been six weeks and i'm only half done Quote:
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It makes a lot of sense for Kaido to be the viewer perspective, as the one desperately trying to "save" Takumi from his destiny. I feel like, when Takumi is talking to him here, he's talking to us as well, asserting his intention to return to being dead since he's already lived. Kaido seldom fought and therefore didn't have to suffer any of the decay, but the downside of that is that he had to watch all his friends die around him instead and now that Takumi is back, he doesn't want to lose him a second time. While Takumi learned too late to appreciate his own life, Kaido learned too late to appreciate the people in his life, so Takumi has to use his own experience to help him to move on and continue to live as a human, by following Takumi's and Kiba's example. That's why I think having this epilogue, over a decade after the show ended and focusing on the development of these two specific characters with similar problems was such a clever way to highlight the morals that the show left on, about protecting dreams and finding hope even in the darkest of despair. For Takumi, that hope was the smile as he died and he wants to give some of that hope to Kaido before leaving once more.
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Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! |
01-16-2022, 09:25 PM | #305 |
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
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Well hey, most the stuff you've got left will be reposts! So it's not too bad after all
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01-16-2022, 09:45 PM | #306 |
Alias: ZeroEnchiladas
Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 2,576
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And you've got a few single episode watches too! So I'm sure those'll be short.
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01-16-2022, 09:54 PM | #307 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Oh, I was just being dramatic. (Mostly.) It's not the worst thing in the world to spend longer than estimated re-acclimating yourself with some of your favorite series.
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01-17-2022, 07:19 PM | #308 |
Warrior of Delusions!
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Wait, you dont know either?
Posts: 5,826
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I'd happily take a 3 page essay on why Kamen Rider Brain is secretly a deep subtextual message on how needless throaway jokes are no longer allowed to live as such things in the modern age of content.
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Check out my occasional ramblings! https://akibamusings.blogspot.com/
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01-17-2022, 10:54 PM | #309 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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KAMEN RIDER DRIVE: SURPRISE FUTURE
This one… it didn’t really work for me? I mean, it’s fine on a technical level. The story’s direct. It’s a Shinnosuke-centered narrative. Chase and Go are in it a little bit, as is most of the supporting cast. Kiriko gets some big moments, which I’m generally a fan of. (I’m a fan of Kiriko, full-stop. MAKE. HER. DRIVE.) The action, especially in the finale, is really well done. I don’t love the Type Special suit, but Super Dead Heat is solid, and Type Next is a great futuristic-villain look. The production isn’t offensive in any way, or anything. But there’s not really a ton for me to grab onto, at least that I want to grab onto. Like, there’s some fun thematic stuff they hint at in the beginning that I’d’ve been more into. Shinnosuke brings up Krim’s creation of the Roidmudes, and I thought that could be a fun concept to explore alongside Shinnosuke’s future-son: the idea of parenting, of how to feel when something you created doesn’t turn out how you’d hoped. That’s an idea that I’d get a lot out of. (There’s a bit of a parenting analogue, with Krim and Shinnosuke’s partnership. Shinnosuke regularly brings up how Krim’s views on justice have shaped his own. I don’t know that it’s an all-the-way-through-the-movie thing, in that it’s never really applied to Shinnosuke’s relationship with Eiji, but there’s at least something there on the present-day side.) But what’s here isn’t so much to my taste. It’s a mix between a superhero plot I can’t buy into, and a supporting cast plot I find pretty tricky to parse. Let’s hit the superhero part first! I cannot take Eiji’s claims seriously, from the jump. The idea that Krim is some ticking time bomb… no? No, I will never ever believe that? It’s a huge swing for the movie to start off with, and if I’m honest, it never really recovers from it. The post-reveal part of the movie is better than the pre-reveal, but you are asking the audience to believe that Shinnosuke’s Belt Dad is going to subjugate the future and bring the world to ruin. That is a ludicrous ask when the series is already forty episodes deep. If you want to come in with a plot where Krim is reprogrammed, or there’s an evil copy made, fine. But to come in and say Krim Is A Secret Evil Mastermind Who Has Been Lying To You All Along… man, what the hell. There’s no real twist in learning that Drive’s been lied to, because it’s such an unbelievable claim. The only twist is who’s lying, and why. Which, uh, some new Roidmude! Okay. He’s just a monster to fight, and that’s… I don’t know, whatever. There’s no real grudge, no reason why he’s using Eiji other than to enact his scheme. He doesn’t have some huge beef with Shinnosuke; he just wants to destroy Drive. It’s all fine, nothing memorable or special. The biggest flaw with the superhero side of the plot - aside from its ridiculous opening gambit - is that Eiji, the real Eiji, never gets to take part in the story. The villain spends the entire movie using his son’s face, but Shinnosuke never gets to spend a scene with his actual son. Eiji only exists as a weapon from the future, so we’re robbed of any catharsis. We never get to see an actual familial connection (beyond a nod to a ghost hologram?), which feels like the least we’re owed by the end of this story. But that’s the superhero stuff, which is, again, basically fine. Nothing I loved, but competently handled. Then there’s the whole plot about the police rallying around an officer accused of excessive force, in which a high-ranking police official is heroically guilted into shielding said officer from investigation, which… WOW. Wow. That is… I mean, maybe it played less terribly in 2015? I don’t know! I don’t think it should, but I don’t know! But, boy, in 2022? I do not have a ton of interest in a story that browbeats a cop out of holding other cops responsible for their actions. Accountability is an okay thing for the police to adhere to! Kiriko’s great, but when she’s like HOW DARE YOU QUESTION SHINNOSUKE’S MOTIVES, YOU SHOULD HAVE HIS BACK, I was cringing in my chair. It’s… this whole plot is a real bad look, man. Probably some stuff in there about being more dedicated to ideals than the appearance of ideals, but, no. Absolutely not, to this entire part of the movie. Also, Kamen Rider Ghost is in this! It’s been a minute since I watched Ghost, but I’m going to go ahead and say this is basically nothing like how Takeru fights in the show. He doesn’t (if memory serves) come out of portals, or creep around frames, or bob and weave like a skeleton. It looks great here, and I sort of wish it had carried over to the series, but it’s not representative of the show he’d star in. Character’s all weird, too. He sounds real Goth here, which is so hilariously Not Takeru. Anyway, yeah, this movie mostly wasn’t for me. The whole thing starts off on the wrong foot, and then it never really jumps above Okay for me. One of those movies that’s a decent timewaster – it’s an hour-long tokusatsu story with a bunch of action – but not much more than that to me.
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Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! Last edited by Kamen Rider Die; 02-24-2022 at 08:55 PM.. |
01-17-2022, 11:03 PM | #310 |
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
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Quote:
The biggest flaw with the superhero side of the plot - aside from its ridiculous opening gambit - is that Eiji, the real Eiji, never gets to take part in the story. The villain spends the entire movie using his son?s face, but Shinnosuke never gets to spend a scene with his actual son. Eiji only exists as a weapon from the future, so we?re robbed of any catharsis. We never get to see an actual familial connection (beyond a nod to a ghost hologram?), which feels like the least we?re owed by the end of this story.with a bunch of action ? but not much more than that to me.
Yeah, kinda just feel the same about this movie as you do! Definitely remember having fun, having a good time; far from the worst thing I've seen or the worst use of my time. But it fails at key moments to go beyond that, so it ends up settling on "yeah, alright movie"
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