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08-24-2016, 09:58 PM | #11 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
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I never felt "betrayed" as you did when you first watched Gaim, and I don't think your post changed my mind about it. But that's mostly because I already felt a subtle reevaluation took place. What you did here however was clarify and confirm some of my suspicions about my own views of the show. For that, my thanks!
Den-O and Fourze are two shows that are close to my heart but even trying to look at it more objectively I really do think they're both more solid shows then Gaim. Den-O has the best character development of any Rider show in my opinion, and Fourze might have the most consistent theming. They're also the kind of shows that just keep getting better with each episode whereas I feel Gaim is very much a bumpy ride.
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08-25-2016, 12:01 AM | #12 |
Oldtaku
Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Atlanta, Ga / Portland, Me
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Loved the essay!
I noticed all the same problems that you did but they really never bothered me. I think my train of thought was "All this... To sell some toys?". Meaning, of course, that it was just really mind blowing to me that a kids show was even attempting something as ambitious as Gaim. Just wild, especially considering the 'seat of the pants' aspect of creating a TV program, particularly one as regimented as an FX heavy, toy commercial / kid's show. It's not perfect, none of the KR series I've seen are, but Gaim touches greatness more often than not. I'm glad you came around! |
08-28-2016, 08:47 PM | #13 |
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He's giving a dramatic speech about trusting his friends while one of those friends is trying to murder him. What Kouta says isn't wrong, and given the framing of the scene, what with the insert song and everything, he's clearly supposed to be right, but that's hugely undermined by the obvious irony at play. Confused moments like that are a dime a dozen in Gaim, and it really hurts the show's ability to convey what it wants to say.
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So at the climax of episode 46, Kouta kills Kaito. There's a whole lot I wanna mention about that episode and everything around it, but for now I'll just say this. For so long I held Kouta responsible for copping out on his beliefs by doing this, but now I get what they were doing.
Some of this is baked into the premise of the show, which felt to me like an attempt to make a better version of Ryuki. (I watched the shows in reverse order, so I only observed this after the fact.) Riders are going to fight, and Riders are going to die. Moral compromise is a tricky theme for a kids show to tackle, so it's no surprise that Fourze was more consistently able to riff off its theme. Quote:
This is what I mean about this stuff. It's so hard to remember what a fun ride this show was when my freshest memories of it are s*** like this. This is why I forgot so much of the love I had for the show up to that point. Being dark and dramatic is fine, but there's something wrong when I find the entirety of Amazons to be less stressful to sit through.
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So imagine my surprise when Kouta proceeds to take the broken tip of Kaito's sword and shank him in the chest with it. Not just some half-a**ed stab either. He drives the thing into his stomach for 10 whole seconds (I counted) while both of them scream, Kaito in pain, and Kouta in a mix of emotions I can't describe but man Gaku Sano is a great actor. This completely melted my brain. Not in a good way, either.
It was also a key moral compromise situation for Kouta. He couldn't just disarm Kaito. Kaito had transformed himself into a supernatural weapon, and Kaito's express intention was to destroy the world and start anew. It's excruciating for Kouta and for us, since we're invested. In terms of Gaim being a rehabilitated Ryuki, it corrects the most glaring flaw of that series, which its unwillingness to tarnish its hero, even though the series was about a Rider battle to the death. I don't actually seek out grittiness for grittiness' sake, which is part of why I'm not loving Amazons, but I do want a series to follow through on its premise. Quote:
You've clearly thought a great deal about the show, and I enjoyed reading your thoughts on it. Although Gaim is far and away my favorite Rider show, I agree with several of your criticisms. The time travel foreshadowing was poorly-thought-out, both the huge Rider battle tableau and Mai's attempts to intervene. I was a little surprised that the show did that, since I thought Decade sufficiently proved that it's a bad idea to write a end-of-series set piece into the first episode when you don't have a plan to make that pay off. I think Gaim's a terrific show, but also a messy one. Heck, if I were to recommend it to someone, it's be with caveats to skip the Hikaider and ToQger crossovers. I'm surprised it managed to carry off as much long-term planning as it did, but it absolutely stumbled over some of the things the first episode committed it to. |
08-28-2016, 10:43 PM | #14 |
The Immortal King Tasty
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In this specific scene, Micchi is aware of the irony, and it's part of why he's not listening or connecting to Kouta. Kouta's words would just seem hollow. This scene won't pay out until their final battle, when Kouta finally knows who he's fighting, and can make good on his values.
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It's stressful, though, because we're led to care about the characters more than I usually do in Rider shows. Amazons is grittier, I guess, but it doesn't register so much with me because I care dramatically less about its characters. (I'm also not finished with it; I haven't been that motivated.)
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There are probably Rider shows more messy than Gaim (but I don't think that many), but Gaim is hurt by it so much more because it's nominally a very tightly plotted series, making the gaps in the writing stick out way more than something like Kiva or Ghost, at least in my opinion. Quote:
I know they're inherently sort of incongruous with the show but I think they get way less credit than they deserve.
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08-29-2016, 05:26 PM | #15 |
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I'd read that in a snap. My enjoyment or lack thereof of those two episodes had to do with how much I knew of the "guests." Kikaider I didn't know much about, so it was just okay. ToQger I knew and like a lot so I enjoyed that one more.
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08-29-2016, 08:36 PM | #16 |
The Immortal King Tasty
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The ToQger crossover is basically the Sentai/Rider teamup everybody had been asking for. They meet a minute in, are instantly on the same side, and they fight bad guys. It's simple and it works, and while the Gaim characters are admittedly a tiny bit off, I think they deserve credit for taking two very different shows and putting them together as well as they did, like making Gaim's darker tone a plot point as Kouta basically tells the ToQgers to skip town. It's not even close to perfection, but taking two shows with polar opposite tones should've been a total trainwreck (pun not intended), and it wasn't, and for that I think it deserves a lot of credit. The Drive/Ninninger crossover was actually worse in my mind, and those shows lend themselves way more to doing a crossover. The Kikaider crossover is mostly just a neat done-in-one side story. I won't stick up for it nearly as much as the ToQger one, and it suffered from poor timing too, but I think they were clearly having fun with it. You get to see Professor Ryouma put his brain in a robot death machine, and if that isn't in character for him, I don't know what is. I'm also personally fond of how many scenes in it involve Kouta hanging out with Akira in their apartment. Kouta's domestic life was an element of the show I always liked seeing because I felt it really grounded Kouta's character in a way other Rider protagonists usually weren't. I also really like all the movies Gaim was in, although the Movie War with Wizard suffers from Kaito being massively out of character, but only because the writer made the same assumptions about his personality early on that audience did, so even that I find hard to hold against it.
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08-30-2016, 04:56 PM | #17 |
Oldtaku
Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Atlanta, Ga / Portland, Me
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I really need to rewatch Gaim again after reading this back and forth so I can better get in on this conversation.
Still working through Ryuki and loving it. |
08-30-2016, 06:38 PM | #18 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Manila
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This is one of the best exchanges I've read online. It's a careful (some would say obsessive, as if that was a bad thing in this case!) examination of taste and text, so much thanks, Fish Sandwich!
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08-30-2016, 08:18 PM | #19 |
The Immortal King Tasty
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Good to hear! Ryuki was one of my first Rider shows and while I wouldn't consider it particularly above average it's always had a special place in my heart. It's also another really unique, daring kind of show. I find it so funny the first Heisei show to actually use the name "Kamen Rider" in dialogue was the one that changed about as much as you could while still calling it that.
Aw, geez~ You'll make me blush...
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08-31-2016, 09:24 AM | #20 |
Sky Henshin!
Join Date: Apr 2013
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I'm glad you were able to make peace with it. I definitely feel that it has a lot of writing flaws in it and the more I examine it they didn't have a lot of good direction in it. I know a lot of people loved the changed the formula for Gaim but I hated that because I love how Kamen Rider was and is now. Gen Urobuchi is a equally a very good writer and a very flawed writer as I have watched multiple things of his they have a combination of brilliance and atrocity. I feel like I might rewatch Gaim down the line to see if I can make peace with it but that is going to be difficult because this show betrayed me pretty bad. Like I am scarred because of this show lol.
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