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04-13-2021, 06:45 PM | #731 |
Warrior of Delusions!
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Wait, you dont know either?
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Den-O, when asked to clarify its series-long plot.
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04-13-2021, 08:45 PM | #732 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Hey, it's my night off, what if I spend a whole bunch of time trying to articulate my negative feelings toward a beloved section of a critically-acclaimed Kamen Rider series.
It... (I don't know if this is going to feel cathartic or just make me more miserable, but I'm willing to find out if you are.) It's easy to ignore the series-arc stuff, for the most part. There are these little flashes of humor, or clever shots. Usually, there's a specific character insight or touching moral. There's always something more than just a janky plot and Time Nonsense and Answers TBD and all of that. There's emotional content that shakes off the chains of a constricting plot and reaches for something real, something memorable. The last episode just 100% wasn't that for me. What emotional content there was, it's mostly just an echo of better Ryotaro stories. His willingness to see something through, even if it's misguided or he's out on a limb by himself, is a compelling aspect of his heroism. His ability to knowingly make bad decisions because to do otherwise would be a denial of the truth, that's nice. It's one scene of this episode, though, and the opposing force is Yuuto at his most charisma-free Immovable Object. It's what was irritating about the start of Yuuto's story, ramped back up for its finale. It's the show, as seemingly always, giving Yuuto zero credible reasons to dissuade Ryotaro. It's the show grabbing the plot by the ankles and dragging it away from an imminent resolution. It's stalling, and it's so blatant that it's difficult to overlook. And what makes this so shitty to talk about is that this is the main move for the show's series-long plot. These problems, they are the same problems as always. It's absolutely demoralizing to try and talk about a show that is just going to keep doing things that are frustrating. It's why people quit shows, you know? Like, I don't usually get this mad when a show screws up an episode worse than this one did for me. Intermittent failures can be really fun to analyze! When a good show borks an ending, or squanders a cliffhanger, or decides to send a fan-favorite character to France for the remaining episodes of a series, that can be fun to pick apart. When a show is usually good at one thing and then they aren't, it's worthwhile to talk about how they missed the mark. But, man, Den-O's just a show that is stretching half an idea over the length of a series; it's giving you the stakes after it gives you the resolution; it's grounding a ton of the Sakurai story on Ryotaro alone, which creates a plot that almost no one else on the show can take part in (Hana was pretty worthless in the last one!); and there's almost nothing visceral in the plot, because no one can really articulate what the hell's even going on beyond We Should Stop Kai. (To be abundantly clear: there is a train car full of emotional content and visceral storytelling in this series, as witnessed by the recent Momo/Ryotaro fight. There is so much to love about these characters and their interactions, but none of that is present in the Sakurai plot.) It sucks talking about this. This is a show that was fresh and vital when it would do these Imagin of the Week adventures. Someone has a problem related to their past. Ryotaro, Hana, and the Imagin investigate. There're jokes, there's character development, there's some action, and there's thematic weight to everything that happens. Those stories were so much fun. Even the Yuuto plot stuff, it felt grounded in him as a character. It's still full of things that only make sense in retrospect, but at least there was someone who was struggling with a part of themselves, a choice they made, and we got to see how they overcame the adversity. This last episode, all I'm getting from Ryotaro is his frustration. He's as in the weeds as he's ever been, and there's no sense of achievement at any point in the episode. Watching him try to solve a puzzle where no two pieces are from the same image, it's grueling for me to watch. If you're this deep into a mystery, you need to at least give the audience a plausible solution, even if it's inevitably wrong. I genuinely don't even have a theory any more of what could be happening, let alone the ability for the show to subvert it. It's like instead of providing me with a framework to invest in its endgame, a group of possible outcomes that might be reasonable to expect from the evidence shown... it's like I'm being asked to pick a number between 1 and 100, and when I randomly say "5", the show goes "HA HA, wrong, it was 72!" What am I supposed to do with that? I was picking it out of thin air. But, anyway, yeah. That's me being frustrated by this type of Den-O story, and more frustrated for how ingrained this type of storytelling is. I feel like an asshole for harping on the same flaws again and again, and it's not fun or funny. It's repetitious, and I hate repetitive flaws more than I hate abject failures. At least abject failures can be enjoyable to dissect. Hope this was fun to read!
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04-14-2021, 07:23 AM | #733 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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I thought it was fun to read, even if it sounds like it wasn't too fun to write!
For me, just about every Kamen Rider show has either weaknesses or big gaps in its overarching story, but that's never why I chose to be into any of them. Like so much about things like the Bugster Virus or Nebula Gas etc either contradicts itself or is obviously being made up as the show goes along, but I look past it because actually watching things unfold and seeing the characters do stuff in those shows is engaging and appealing. Den-O is... exceptionally uncaring about the 'mechanics' of why things happen, but is also exceptionally all about the heart and the feelings of the characters compared to other shows. Once it was said and done, the latter is obviously all I care to look back on, which I think is the common takeaway for people who watch it. I totally get what you mean though, how it feels like you're being fed a whole lot of exposition about literally nothing among other things. I never felt that with Den-O but there's definitely one show which that 100% describes my feelings while watching. Hopefully the sheer charisma and heart of Ryotaro and gang manage to overpower all those things for you by the end, or at least lessen the burn!? Last edited by FreshToku; 04-14-2021 at 07:28 AM.. |
04-14-2021, 08:19 AM | #734 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,426
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Honestly, I’ve always thought that Den-O’s endgame was pretty weak. It’s not, like, Ghost levels of bad, but it ain’t no Blade. I used to blame it on Kai, but this time through I’m definitely seeing it more as a byproduct of having a “tell, don’t show” mentality when it comes to the whole Sakurai part of the series. The bits of it that make sense, at least. Den-O is really at its best when it’s being a madcap romp; its attempts at a deeper narrative tend to fall flat.
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04-14-2021, 09:14 AM | #735 |
Standing By
Join Date: Feb 2020
Location: USA
Posts: 2,108
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I enjoyed reading it since I pretty much feel the same way. Like I said about Yuto being a big plot character, I think that's one of Kobayashi's flaws, that she writes plot at the expense of characters. In contrast to Inoue's works, which are usually all about the characters and how they affect the plot, not the other way around. Not that Yuto doesn't fit with the themes or anything like that, since he has some presence as a character and a comedic routine with Deneb, but his entire existence creates this big mystery that has little relevance to how others feel, or even how he feels. Like he's supposed to have this connection to Airi in the future, but that doesn't exist. He's like a ghost, on a different wavelength to everybody else in the present. If he was a POV character, maybe it would be more interesting, but he's not, so it isn't and the result is a dissonance between the amazing comedic characters and the plot that comes to kill the mood.
It's the same with the Kanzaki subplot in Ryuki, it's extremely important to everything that happens in the show but it's presented in such a boring and diluted way compared to the actual Rider War and the character interactions. Maybe Kobayashi writing so much of Den-O can be a disadvantage and shows a lack of faith in other people. Not everybody has stamina like Inoue. If you exhaust your stamina, you get writer's block and then the quality of your work declines if you rush it to meet a deadline. My favorite episodes of Ghost were written by Mouri, who is consistently great at taking the wheel when he needs to. I think it's important for a writer to understand their limits and when it's best to delegate work to somebody else. If you want my personal opinion on the direction of quality from here, I think it starts improving again from Episode 47. Just hold out one more episode for the climax to this climax!
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04-14-2021, 10:03 AM | #736 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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I don't have a ton of time (getting ready for work), but I want to thank everyone for putting up with me the last couple days, and assure everyone that I'm not some neurotic mess right now -slash- in general. I can get a little... overly dramatic when I'm talking about something, get a little heated, but it's not, like, torturing me or anything. Just a TV show I got some feelings about.
One of the things I've found instructive in trying to figure out how Den-O's plot is screwing with me is to look at the perfect Kamen Rider show as a comparison: Kamen Rider OOO. Thinking about OOO made me feel pretty confident that there are big structural problems in Den-O's framework, because Kobayashi corrects them in OOO. The main villains in OOO, the Greeed, arrive literally fully-formed in the first story. We know their names, their history, their goals, their personalities, everything. Same thing with Ankh, Eiji, Gotou, and so on. Oh, there are things we learn about them all later, but (and this is absolutely crucial) those things are never presented as mysteries. We're not (to my memory) teased with some aspect of Eiji's past being hugely important and mysterious for a dozen episodes before it's revealed. It's more I Wonder Why Eiji Became This Way, and then we slowly uncover it. There's still plenty of room for twists and turns and reveals, but they get built up and explode in a much shorter window. We don't see some random train line and then ignore it for a few episodes while saying Well That's Very Mysterious. We get to know the characters, fully, and then we get to see them make decisions. There's very little obfuscation in OOO. It mostly plays fair with its audience, so we can connect with everything in its world. Den-O wasn't doing that, with a key piece of its plot, and this is the result.
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04-14-2021, 10:27 AM | #737 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
For me, just about every Kamen Rider show has either weaknesses or big gaps in its overarching story, but that's never why I chose to be into any of them. Like so much about things like the Bugster Virus or Nebula Gas etc either contradicts itself or is obviously being made up as the show goes along, but I look past it because actually watching things unfold and seeing the characters do stuff in those shows is engaging and appealing.
But, yeah, the series-arc stuff really only works when you care about the characters it's effecting, and the Sakurai stuff just doesn't do that for me. It's a mystery with no emotional payload. Quote:
Honestly, I’ve always thought that Den-O’s endgame was pretty weak. It’s not, like, Ghost levels of bad, but it ain’t no Blade. I used to blame it on Kai, but this time through I’m definitely seeing it more as a byproduct of having a “tell, don’t show” mentality when it comes to the whole Sakurai part of the series. The bits of it that make sense, at least. Den-O is really at its best when it’s being a madcap romp; its attempts at a deeper narrative tend to fall flat.
Quote:
I enjoyed reading it since I pretty much feel the same way. Like I said about Yuto being a big plot character, I think that's one of Kobayashi's flaws, that she writes plot at the expense of characters. In contrast to Inoue's works, which are usually all about the characters and how they affect the plot, not the other way around. Not that Yuto doesn't fit with the themes or anything like that, since he has some presence as a character and a comedic routine with Deneb, but his entire existence creates this big mystery that has little relevance to how others feel, or even how he feels. Like he's supposed to have this connection to Airi in the future, but that doesn't exist. He's like a ghost, on a different wavelength to everybody else in the present. If he was a POV character, maybe it would be more interesting, but he's not, so it isn't and the result is a dissonance between the amazing comedic characters and the plot that comes to kill the mood.
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04-14-2021, 11:58 PM | #738 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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KAMEN RIDER DEN-O EPISODE 46 - "NOW TO REVEAL LOVE AND TRUTH”
Everything after those two words was perfect. Before that, I can't really say much good about it. It's Ryotaro trying to piece together a mystery about a man I don't care about, being stonewalled by a friend who knows every answer, and left with no avenues for a solution. It's Time Nonsense, and I don't care about that. I'm watching this show because I'm invested in these characters. A mystery about someone I've never met doesn't mean anything to me. Airi, though. Having Airi be at risk, be the key to everything, is excellent. It changes the entire equation for the better. Airi matters. I care about Airi, beyond just what she might mean to Ryotaro or Yuuto. She's an established character with strengths, someone who is crucial to the functioning of this show. She's played by someone who finds grace and dignity in the most absurd situations, elevating banal lessons into universal truths. Making her the lynchpin makes this entire endgame work, and work well. Like, that scene on the DenLiner. I mean, holy shit. It's one of the most beautiful things this show has ever done, and its special bonus Christmas gift to me is that, while it explains some of the mechanics of what's going on, it also demonstrates why those details are a distraction. You could do that entire scene without dialogue and it'd work at least as well as it already does. It's all on the faces of Airi, of Ryotaro, of Yuuto. It is simultaneously the most heartbreaking scene this show has ever done, and the most uplifting. The how of it all, Here's How It All Fits Together or The Truth About Sakurai Is Whatever... it just fundamentally doesn't matter. When this show grounds its stakes in the emotions of its characters, it is unstoppable. Taking the convoluted Time Nonsense and making it about Airi's melancholy, it is perfect. Airi realizes what has to happen next, her loss and her isolation and her undefinable sadness, but she also sees that it matters. Even if she can't articulate how it matters, she can see from a younger Yuuto and an older Ryotaro that her sacrifice will help. It'll do some good. Defining that good is irrelevant. She has faith. It's that belief in her family, Yuuto included, that makes her sacrifice so beautiful. It's this scene that's all about the hardship these three people have endured. Airi sees Yuuto, and knows what he's given up. She sees Ryotaro, fighting for the first time in his life, and she worries. It all seems so impossible, so hopeless. Ryotaro, though. He's still here. He's been fighting because Airi bought them time. He's able to win because he has friends. He's doing this because she's raised him right, given him the moral clarity to meet adversity head on and find a way to help people. The very fact that they're having this conversation, quietly and gently, is proof that Kai hasn't won yet. There's still hope, because there's still time. And isn't time just the memories we've built with each other? I've rewritten this section a few times. I hit this line, and I'm fumbling for the words to describe the second half of this episode. I started crying during it, obviously. Airi in the DenLiner, silent and saintly in white, her candle-lit walk to speak with Ryotaro. It's her last few moments, basically. It's her being confronted with the awful cost of protecting time, while trusting in the strength of the people who love her to find a solution. It's her love for them that gets that scene to greatness. It's a scene that's not about exposition or vague stakes or mysteries or anything like that. It's about the bond between Airi, Ryotaro, and Yuuto. It's about what the two men in her life will do to protect her, and what she'll do to protect them. It's a scene of unimaginable power; hope and sadness in equal measure. The trauma of a sacrifice concurrent with the key to undoing it. It's defeat and victory in one move, one action. It's an endgame that switches from brain to heart, and it is just in goddamn time. A perfect second-half of this episode. Absolutely perfect. THE BAGGAGE CAR -Best move in that Airi/DenLiner scene was dropping out the music, and keeping the dialogue split between Airi and the two boys, while giving the bulk of it to Airi. It's not a scene where two men explain to her what's going on or what they've done for her. It's a woman sympathizing with the pain two men have suffered for her, and her shouldering her share of it. She gets to be a hero in her own story, and nothing in the production is competing with her for that focus. -When the Imagin hear that Ryotaro calls them his friends! You guys! I was already crying! They are gilding the lily! -And Yuuto! And Deneb! On the beach! At a campfire! Committing to their friendship! I only got so much water in my tear ducts, you monsters!
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04-15-2021, 01:15 AM | #739 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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I was thinking about this episode a little more, and I realized how on-point it is for the show to be saved by ignoring both the past (how did we get to this stage in the plot) and the future (how are we going to resolve this problem) in favor of appreciating the present. Pushing away every piece of Time Nonsense and just being present in this moment with Ryotaro and Airi, to just feel this emotion, right now... like, this is the show's thesis statement as a functioning work of art. That is extra amazing.
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04-15-2021, 01:57 AM | #740 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2,553
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Okay, NOW I can discuss my second issue brought about by the Zero Form debut two-parter.
Sakurai and Airi planned to temporarily erase the good future the Imagin want to replace with their own, then have Ryotaro restore it later. But in the aforementioned Zero Form two-parter, Yuto gets killed before he gets involved in any of this and doesn’t get restored because “Ryotaro didn’t know him at that age”. So what happens to all the other people important to this future (as Bill and Ted Face the Music points out, two people alone can’t change the future) that Ryotaro didn’t know yet? Or never met at all? Thus, it stands to reason that the future they believe in no longer exists. And yes, that last sentence is a quote from Justifaiz. |
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