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04-01-2024, 01:55 PM | #541 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
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Ryuube's furious because he was busy dancing with the memory of his wife, and then Isaka dragged him into some weird villain plot! Isaka is being very inconsiderate!
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04-01-2024, 07:28 PM | #542 |
Warrior of Delusions!
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Wait, you dont know either?
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You see, the Time Vent card, in association with the Newton Eyecon, and the PuToTyra medals, all combined together in a horrific negative reaction with the Pausing and Hyper Clocking Up at the same time, and now they have the month of Smarch in Rider world.
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04-01-2024, 07:52 PM | #543 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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I'm surprised that's still the case, since I'm pretty sure Touma spent a year in Wonder World trying to get these timelines back in alignment. He's a better writer than that! Mei wouldn't let him just make up an extra month!
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04-01-2024, 08:57 PM | #544 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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originally posted on December 4th, 2021, as part of “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Legend Rider projects (and more!)”
KAMEN RIDER X KAMEN RIDER OOO & W FEAT. SKULL: MOVIE WAR CORE Not my favorite movie. I didn’t really love it the first time around, and I don’t love it now. The thing is, my opinion on the two sections/portions of this film – OOO and W – have sort of completely flipped around? I really disliked the W portion on this viewing. Like, a lot. Setting aside the incredibly weird Daddy Issue stuff of having Akiko’s actress play Melissa, a woman who is in love with Skull (HER DAD), it’s a story that traffics in one of my least-favorite Kamen Rider tropes: Heroic Abandonment. Skull’s portrayed as a stoic, suffering hero. He’s betrayed by his closest friend, called a monster by a woman he gave up everything to save, and unable to ever touch his daughter again. It’s a story all about the lengths Kamen Riders have to go to in order to protect the people they love, even if it means they have to cut those people out of their lives. It’s horseshit. Even before he became Kamen Rider Skull, Sokichi wasn’t answering his daughter’s phone calls. (He totally forgot about her birthday!) He lives in a completely different city for reasons that aren’t established in this film, and I don’t recall from the series. He’s making a choice to ignore his responsibilities as a parent, way before he’s forced to abandon his daughter for her own safety. (Which, two things. The No-Touching Spider in his body will only kill Akiko if he touches her. He could still, like, see her. Or call her. Like everything else in their screwed-up family, it 100% feels like Sokichi is looking for any excuse to bail on his parental commitment. The other thing… like, killing Matsu doesn’t kill the spiders? It dissolves the webbing immediately, but it doesn’t defuse the time bombs infecting everyone in the city? What… what did Sokichi even accomplish by killing Matsu, then? Everyone who didn’t already blow up is forced into a life of misery? This is what we’re calling a victory now?) This should be a story about sacrifice and duty, but everything in it reads like a story about deadbeat dads with poor work/life balance. Which, honestly, fine. I don’t need my Kamen Riders to be completely logical and emotionally healthy. I like Faiz, you know? But there’s basically no judgment on Sokichi’s actions in this movie. Akiko is furious about the ways her life has been negatively impacted due to Kamen Riders failing her as friends, family, and lovers, but the moral at the end is just Her Suffering Is A Small Price To Pay For Justice. It’s an entire story where Akiko’s theatrical-but-honest emotional turmoil is brushed aside in the face A Man’s Silent Suffering. Whatever. The even more galling failure of the W portion is that the OOO portion is specifically refuting that worldview. The W portion is about how Kamen Riders are solely focused on helping people, even if they have to give up on happiness as a result. But the OOO portion is about how hollow and unfulfilling it is to solely dedicate yourself to anything! The OOO portion – which I originally thought was laughably bizarre and generally irrelevant – pretty much ended up being the only part of this story I liked. It's Inoue, which was nice. Inoue Forever and all of that. (There's a bit where Eiji says that Nobu is still Nobu, which feels like a secret message between me and Inoue.) It does the Eternal thing of crafting a villain that reflects/inverts our hero’s shortcomings, but turned up to Evil. Nobunaga, a man whose name autocompletes with ‘s Ambition, is someone who is consumed by his need to attain, to control. He’s everything Eiji isn’t. Nobunaga sees the world around him as both a birthright and a banquet, all of it waiting for him to claim it. But in seeing the world that way, he misses the point of it all. Nobunaga can’t understand how Eiji can find joy in a life without taking. What Eiji points out to him is that the world exists outside of the ambitions of men. The sky is blue. Art is created. It doesn’t need people to control it, because it doesn’t bow to that control. It’s a pretty basic Stop To Smell The Roses moral, and it could probably only work when applied to the story of Oda Nobunaga. (It’s a bit like only being able to land a simplistic message like Don’t Bite People in a story with Dracula.) But I think it worked here due to its own bonkers commitment to the story of a cloned warlord who used his heretofore unrevealed healing powers to undo the damage he caused a woman he was stalking, as well as the proximity to a much less appealing story in Skull’s celebrated abandonment of his daughter. But at least Kamen Rider Birth shows up! I like Birth okay, but its introduction here is like nearly every other Fan Service thing in this story: missing the point entirely. It’s just the Birth suit, not either of the Birth characters. Date isn’t in this movie at all, and Goto’s turn as Birth is both noncanonical (pretty sure the series doesn’t let him be Birth for a good long while) and robbed of its significance. There’s a really great arc in the series about Goto becoming Birth, but here it just happens off-camera. Same thing with Tajador; awesome suit, fun to see it kick ass, but it’s almost unforgivable that it’s introduced with Ankh just showing up with the medals. And, man, I said how great it was that A To Z managed to find time for its entire TV series cast, so here’s a movie that Ankh’s human form is in for about forty-five seconds, and the full cast of W is almost entirely sidelined for a prequel story. It’s a bummer. It’s a movie celebrating two TV shows, and it’s compromised versions of both. Plus, not super crazy about the concluding section. The villain at the end, Kamen Rider Core, doesn’t make much sense, or have a defensible viewpoint. It’s just a monster that hates Kamen Riders, and thinks they make everything worse, all so Akiko can feel bad about holding the men in her life responsible for abandoning her. He’s a giant flaming Ghost Kamen Rider, and defeating him isn’t clever or anything. It’s just new power-ups and Early-Bird suit debuts. I had honestly completely forgotten about him, and now I know why. Yeah, man, did not dig this one! The OOO stuff is good enough, but it sucks to not really have any Eiji/Ankh scenes. (I mean, they literally never share a frame, so I’m just going to assume that Ankh’s couple scenes were filmed separately from the rest of the cast.) The W stuff features my least-favorite W plot – Akiko and Terui’s totally unconvincing romance – and one of my all-time least-favorite Kamen Rider tropes. It’s okay to say that Sokichi was a good Kamen Rider but a shitty dad! That would’ve made the movie so much better! Instead, we get a middle section that exposes the lie the first part is telling, and then a third part that ignores the exposure. Not one I liked rewatching! — DIE-A MEMORIES -Ha ha, SAME. Same, Die from 2021! Still didn’t like this dumb movie! My April Fools’ Day prank was on me for rewatching 2/3rds of this stupid thing. (I skipped the OOO section – the only goddamn part I liked, naturally – since I’ll be rewatching this thing again next year.) -While I had more patience for the Akiko/Terui wedding bookend this time through, it still would've been nice if we’d really ever seen their relationship progress beyond hints and innuendo and headcanon. We go from Akiko asking the audience to root for her in the summer movie, straight to her and Terui getting married, without really any work done in showing their actual relationship. Disappointing. -Also, man, the giant flaming spectral Maximum Drive balls to do the final W story, and have it mostly be a Skull story that Double doesn’t even get to witness. WOW. I think the Accel V-Cin has those guys playing more of a part in it than this movie, which feels colossally misguided. Begins Night is fine, because it helps fill in some necessary blanks while also illustrating Shotaro’s unresolved guilt, but here it’s just… why? Why this story instead of an actual farewell to Kamen Rider Double? We really gotta see Young Shroud? (It is actually cute to see that vendor from the Beast/Zone story, though.) And, y’know, see above for how well this story conveys its weird themes of abandonment and manly suffering. -Makura got a haircut! It looks good!
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04-01-2024, 09:57 PM | #545 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,431
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I really didn't care for this movie the first time I watched it, which felt weird because it was the first piece of W media that really didn't click with me. I think a lot of it was that I was excited to see Shotaro, Philip, and Terui back in action again after almost a year of OOO and what we got instead was this. Team W ends up taking a backseat to Skull and, frankly, I don't care enough about Skull/Sokichi to feel like I needed or even wanted a fully detailed origin story for him. It really wasn't what I wanted and was only the better part of the movie for me because it felt like the writer had actually seen the show they were writing a movie for which is definitely not the vibes I got from the OOO part (but that's a conversation for next year).
This time around I liked it more, but I still don't love it. I think a lot of that is just lowered expectations; knowing this was a Skull feature meant that I was able to just accept it for what it was. And what it was was fine. Sokichi is definitely a character that has a lot of style and it was very much on display here. The story was reasonably entertaining as a hard-boiled detective story, questionable reuse of Akiko's actress notwithstanding. The action scenes were pretty decent. Shroud's wig was even more laughable than normal. It's still probably my least favorite piece of W media, but I have an Eternal movie left to go through before I can make that call. |
04-01-2024, 10:22 PM | #546 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Yeah, it's... if this was just a completely disconnected Skull V-Cin -- Shotaro reading through old case files or whatever -- I'd probably be unenthused, but generally forgiving. The two things that tank it for me here are the aforementioned last-ever chance at getting a Double story (Legend Rider appearances and other characters' V-Cins don't count) turning into a glorified spin-off, and the fact that the lens for said spin-off is Akiko learning that her dad abandoned her In A Good Way. The latter is a recurring Kamen Rider trope that I find infuriating, and the former is just such a monumental bummer. The producers want to do a thing where cool-ass Skull deals with betrayal and sacrifice? I'm down for that. They want to do it during a Double movie and make it so Akiko is the one who needs to learn a lesson? Slightly less down for that!
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04-02-2024, 03:42 AM | #547 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2,554
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Yeah, the OOO segment is really the highlight of this whole movie. Aside from that, the W segment is just a few quick “wink and nod” moments (like the cameo by kid Shotaro and his GF from the premiere). And honestly, the Bat Dopant looked more interesting after they retooled the head into Another Kiva. Speaking of which…
Rider-lert! Our secondary villainess is played by Reon Kadena, latterly Alain’s sister Alia (and his mother Alicia through the magic of hair extensions) in Kamen Rider Ghost. Which I only knew because someone doing a video showing multiple transformation devices used by one actor (eg. The Garren Buckle and the Libra Switch) had a segment showing off the Bat Memory and the Proto Ulorder with the Necrom Eyecon. Details for OOO coming when I’m contractually allowed to discuss them. |
04-02-2024, 08:50 AM | #548 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Location: Chicago, IL
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Quote:
Our secondary villainess is played by Reon Kadena, latterly Alain?s sister Alia (and his mother Alicia through the magic of hair extensions) in Kamen Rider Ghost. Which I only knew because someone doing a video showing multiple transformation devices used by one actor (eg. The Garren Buckle and the Libra Switch) had a segment showing off the Bat Memory and the Proto Ulorder with the Necrom Eyecon.
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04-02-2024, 09:54 PM | #549 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Location: Chicago, IL
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KAMEN RIDER W RETURNS: KAMEN RIDER ACCEL
Basically the perfect Kamen Rider V-Cin, assuming you can get past some of the directing choices. I mean, look. I love Sakamoto. This has got his hallmarks all over it: tons of out-of-costume stunt action, leggy dames, slow-motion sequences throughout, verticality in the costumed fights, and a solid grip on pacing. This thing keeps a remarkably tense atmosphere for the majority of its run-time, with a constant pressure that never becomes anxious or suffocating. It’s, in almost every way, exactly what this movie needs. What it did not need was for the Director of Photography to juggle the camera during every single shot, nor did it need the Editor to make sure that no shot lasted longer than three seconds. Those choices created a film that is a rough watch, even as the story had me completely hooked. Basic chase sequences are rendered nauseating by how heavily the camera swings around the frame, and the really good fight scenes become difficult to follow as the edits keep the geography of the players obscured. Everything’s frenetic and frantic, which I get as an aesthetic choice – it’s to simulate how little room there is for Terui to breathe – while bemoaning it as a storytelling choice. I don’t know that the visuals needed to be this jittery. Everything else, though? Perfect. Perfect movie. I love how the two main threads, the Commander Dopant and Terui’s marriage, are really just about one idea: the way personal growth is hindered by both our past and the judgment of others. It’s a crime movie about how recidivism is the consequence of both the criminals and the cops, which is such a neat Kamen Rider Accel concept to explore. Terui’s a grim executioner who became a hero, and he’s also a grieving man who became a loving husband. His whole story is about finding reasons to live and abandoning reasons to kill, so he’s the perfect vessel to explore a tale of criminals who can’t escape the suspicion of the cops, and cops who can’t see a reason to extend grace to evil. Like, the very fact that Sagami views criminals as evil is such a clever extrapolation of A Cop Who’s A Kamen Rider, and how the need for empathy is what really makes someone a Kamen Rider. Terui isn’t a hero because he detonates monsters or catches thieves; he’s a hero because he cares about the citizens of Fuuto, even the ones who’ve turned to a life of crime. Without allowing for things like rehabilitation and penance, what’s even the point of fighting for justice? And how the movie ties that into the Terui/Akiko marriage is brilliant. Terui’s kind of a not great husband in this – he doesn’t communicate well with his wife, thoroughly and continuously, DON’T QUESTION ME as terrible spousal advice – but he’s trying to be a good husband. He loves his wife, and he shows it in the ways he knows how. His inability to call her by her name is because he respects her too much to not refer to her as Chief. She’s the boss, and he always wants her to know that. All of this lines up with the hard work that Terui’s asking Aoi to do – find someone that’s worth being a better person for, and live up to what they’ve given you. It’s not going to happen immediately, and you’ll always run the risk of falling back into old habits, but remember that they want you to succeed. Terui’s romantic comedy storyline is Aoi’s noir criminal storyline, all the way through. All of that expert storytelling, with a non-stop action veneer, makes this a top-shelf Kamen Rider installment. It honestly might be one of my favorite pieces of Kamen Rider W entertainment. — DIE-A MEMORIES -Androzani’ll run down the lengthy roster, but EVERYONE is someone in this movie. Top of my head, we’ve got Piano Man, Kekera, and of course Sawa. Easy to see why someone casting a Kamen Rider show a few years later that needed a secretive beauty who could also kick ass thought to bring her back full-time. -The weirdest part of this movie is how much it feels like a pilot for a completely separate Accel spin-off series. There’s a real attempt to give this film a different vibe than W, complete with new recurring sets. Accel’s even got his own cafe to hang out in! -Much like how the Skull feature smartly brought back folks from the Sokichi story in W, this one takes Lily and her grandad from one of the Terui spotlights and makes them his supporting cast. It’s cute! -JINNO FINALLY NOTICED MAKURA’S HAIRCUT!
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04-02-2024, 10:29 PM | #550 |
Alias: ZeroEnchiladas
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So this was a solid flick, not amazing but I did enjoy my time revisiting it.
I just do find it funny how much the plot has to twist and bend to fit a certain narrative in order to keep it going. There are things where this story would not work out well if something minorly different happened. Like if pickpocket lady decided to actually give Terui back the thing she saw him use to beat up the people trying to attack her the prior night when said same people show up again. It was mostly an excuse for a handcuff fight scene which is pretty unique, that and the restaurant brawl gave me huge Yakuza/Judgement vibes. Though when it came to action sequences I did kind of start tilting my head and asking "But why bus though?" when it came to certain things. Akiko... I like, kinda get where she's coming from. But once we hit the bus scene she regresses really badly and I honestly did not like most of her scenes until the very end. Anyway Commander Dopant is cool and I do like how we find a bit of an excuse to bring in W to fight but not fight the main threat. Accel Booster is also fun to see in action. I do like that it's not even like its a pure flight based form, it's basically maxing out the idea of a motorcycle boosting and making it to where he can do that in various points of his body which in turn allows his gliding and flying. Though that said I do like how it's very clever for them building up to Accel needing a different form due to being temporarily crippled. There's constant focus on his right leg getting struck, and when the main hit actually lands, it's believable because that leg's been taking a beating all day. Speaking of forms though is like... is Trial a form that needs to be used in Rider Form to actually function? Because like "Oh no Accel Memory is gone" but what about Trial? And on that question... have we ever seen Terui go straight into Trial before? I don't think so... Anyway random rambling aside, this was an enjoyable flick. |
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