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12-12-2019, 12:21 AM | #121 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Holy shit, that was AMAZING. Easily the high water mark for this series, for me. I was not expecting a superhero monster show two-parter that's devoted almost entirely to a young boy's ennui and the value of sadness in a society to be so goddamn effecting, but, well, here we are. It's beautifully directed, with an almost ethereal quality to Sad Boy (if the Wiki doesn't remember this kid's name, I shouldn't be held to a higher standard) wandering through his grandmother's old neighborhood, the changes slowly crushing him. The story doesn't shove in dialogue where it's unnecessary, letting camera and music and acting do the work. The piano score smoothes out the normally frenetic feeling of the handheld camerawork in Kuuga, creating space to just watch. Shots are nice and long, centering the story on the quest for one boy to find something of value in a world he's growing apart from. Any scene that cuts away has to justify its existence, has to propel the story forward, or it's not used. Everything visually in the story is serving a purpose, telling either the A story of Sad Boy's search for meaning, or the very very minor B story of a new batch of Grongi murdering just a bonkers amount of people. So, yeah, monsters on a monster show! For maybe the first time ever, I could not have cared less if Kuuga had dropped the Grongi entirely from this story, and that's despite the Grongi stuff being incredibly strong. That's just how good the Sad Boy stuff was! The Grongi scenes, though, Jesus. Beautiful. That weirdo star chamber they're all hanging out in? So cool! This show keeps finding new, compelling ways to present a bunch of monsters saying garbage syllables to each other. I'm just, like, into what they're doing with the Grongi. This series has its ups and downs (to put it mildly!), but the Grongi stuff consistently delivers for me. For real, though, the non-Grongi stuff in this two-parter feels like this show finding a new level. In previous stories, the non-monster scenes were, at their best, not insulting. Competent, even, if I'm feeling super-charitable. This one was great. Like, I'd maybe even recommend this one to people in a general "Kamen Rider" sense. There's an assuredness to the storytelling this time, a belief in the actors to sell the story, an economy to using the characters that actually matter to the story rather than finding a spot for every rando, a great use of the time allotted so that nothing felt rushed or padded, and (most importantly to me) a story worth telling. There were recognizably human stakes, and a hero who saved the day. Great job on this one, Kuuga!
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12-12-2019, 03:37 PM | #122 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 27 - 28
An incredibly solid outing that maybe doesn’t have the surprise emotional heft of the previous story, but manages to tuck some decent drama into a really stellar monster plot. One of the things that’s bothered me about Kuuga is how few moves the Grongi Spree Killing plots tend to have. Obviously there’s more at work than them just offing a ton of citizens, but the nuts and bolts of a Grongi plot tend to just be Monster Keeps Showing Up At Places To Murder People Until Kuuga Murders It. Once you add in the formula of Kuuga Fight At End Of Part One and Kuuga Fight At End Of Part Two Plus Explosion, it can make the already-somewhat-formulaic Kamen Rider two-parters into pure repetition. There’s still some fun to be had in the (brief) fight scenes, but everything getting to that point starts to drag. This story came out great, I think, due to the main twist of an actual pattern to the killings, meaning all of the Ichijou investigation stuff had a really fun reveal. The idea that the Grongi is following a piece of music to pick locations and number of targets, man, I was thrilled with that. It’s weird enough that I didn’t see it coming, and yet exactly the sort of thing I’d expect a supercop like Ichijou to figure out. The right balance of insane supervillainy and logical deduction. It made the whole story feel like it was leading up to something and then actually led up to something. That is not a given for Kamen Rider Kuuga! The use of the rest of the cast to sell the nightmare of living in Tokyo during this season of Kamen Rider is in line with what made the last story work. This show can off ten, fifty, a hundred people in an episode, but if I don’t know them, care about them, it’s just a number. With Sad Boy last time and Nana and Minori this time, there’s a face to the stakes. I care about the cast of Kuuga (not, uh, a lot, but I don’t wish them ill or anything), and when they’re terrified about the constant, unending assault by the Grongi, it makes the show feel more dangerous. It might sound like faint praise to acknowledge that it’s smarter to imperil characters the audience has any connection to rather than just list an ever-increasing body count, but conveying the stakes of the story is something Kuuga’s had a real tough time with for me, so credit where credit’s due. And, not to be a broken record, but all of the Grongi stuff is perfect. The Polar Bear Club Grongi (look, I can’t remember their nonsense word names) had a real mysterious energy, and a great M.O. The Scorekeeper Grongi is totally surreal, a nicely creepy escalation of the game. And the new Kuuga Grongi (“Twoga”), holy shit. Awesome motorcycle duel, a unique vibe as an antagonist (?) and clearly some history with past Kuugas. Into it, into it, into it. Just give me whole episodes of Twoga chasing Godai around and Rose Grongi being in weirdly lit rooms. Anyway, yeah, no real complaints this time out! Even the Enokida/Jean scene, with two of my least-favorite/most-superfluous characters, tied in to the whole “you have to find some way to soldier on even when things are overwhelmingly dangerous and it’s hard to live your life” theme that the rest of the supporting cast was dealing with. Just a top-notch Kuuga story.
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12-12-2019, 05:37 PM | #123 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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So what you're saying is that Inoue put all the table's legs in the right places this time? Because this was another one from him. Maybe he's trying to get you to let your guard down...
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12-12-2019, 06:01 PM | #124 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
(It definitely helps that the base level of craft, the Putting Together A Kuuga Story of it all, seems much improved. Camera work, acting, casting, dialogue, stunts, CG, it's all at least not bad.) Honestly, I'm a little grateful that a dude who's made me unreasonably angry at a 19-year old Japanese superhero show can turn out some quality on occasion. Especially since people keep hinting at his involvement in future shows. If some one-and-done chump tanks a story, it's a bummer but I'll live. If there's a dude who's with the franchise for years and I only/always hate their work, I've got a lot of disappointment in the future. It's a relief that not everything Inoue does is going to make me apoplectic.
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12-12-2019, 07:30 PM | #125 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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That Grongi's name is Twoga?! I love that so much.
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12-14-2019, 10:32 PM | #126 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 29 - 30
This one had a very Back In The Kuuga Mines feel to me. Not bad, but overly concerned with a million supporting cast things, to the detriment of the Grongi plotline. Overstuffed. Too many stories to serve in just two episodes. That said, I always think it's cool when a Kamen Rider show can check back in with a former victim (or villain), so it's nice to get a return visit from both Chouno and Mika. Well, more the former than the latter. Chouno is still hilariously bad at living his life, while Mika's just, like, happy to be there. It's cute, but it makes her blend into a few already slightly-dull storylines. (It's a tough choice which plot I care less about: Will Enokida and Jean get together, or will Nana get Godai for her own? I hate both of these timewasters so, so much.) With Chouno, the stakes are so ludicrous (he only has 30 minutes to turn in his shitty drawing!) and the advice he gets is so relentlessly bad (shut up about your problems and be happy, idiot, because Godai is suffering for you) that I really, really love it. I mean, sure, I wish it had some nuance or made any kind of sense, but if it can't then I'd rather the show err on the side of Insane. You know? The rest of it, eh. We finally, after five episodes, get an answer for why Godai can power up. It's what the show hinted at, that the defibrillation unlocked something in the Amadam, but it's still frustrating that they couldn't just tell us that back when it first happened. Waiting this long, it feels like someone finally watched episode 24 and went, "Holy shit, did we not explain this onscreen at all? Shit. Shit. Okay, uh, right away in #29, then. Second scene. Oh god, how did no one catch this?!" The Grongi plot has some neat potential, with the roulette wheel and the three Grongi in the gang, but it comes down to the same "catch them mid-Murder Spree and explode them" as the show used to do, which I'd hoped they'd outgrown. Tsubaki and Sakurako fret about what Kuuga's power is doing to Godai, but it's all theoretical at this point. The police get better bullets. A new bike is under construction. Pole Pole exists. It's a lot of checking in and setting up, but without adding up to much. Not a great story, and they could absolutely lay off of It Is Impossible To Live In Tokyo as a theme for a couple episodes, but it was okay enough to breeze through. A decent Kuuga.
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12-15-2019, 09:43 PM | #127 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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MASKED RIDER KUUGA - SUPER SECRET VIDEO
Okay, there's no story here, really: Godai remembers form changes, then fights a Grongi, blowing it up in a minute. Not worth discussing for any of that. But this video addresses something that's been bugging me for the last, like, 30 episodes of Kuuga. Where are all the cool names? As someone who entered Kamen Rider through the Neo Heisei series, I expect people to be shouting out finishing moves, for monsters to have awesome names, for drivers to not shut up ever. Kuuga skips all of that. The belt never announces form changes or upgrades. The monsters are only, like, #6 or #14. I don't think Godai's referred to his Rider Kick as a Rider Kick, let alone explained what his other moves are called. (I did love when he was like, "Ichijou, what if I shout out SUPER TRANSFORMATION when I change forms," and Ichijou's like "Uh, sure." At least Godai was trying!) Worst of all, I have to keep calling them Red Kuuga and Purple Kuuga because no one calls them anything else on the show. Well, Christmas has come early, because here's a Super Secret Video to give me everything I've been missing. Mighty Form! Pegasus Form! Dragon Form! Titan Form! Splash Dragon! Calamity Titan! A finishing move called Calamity Titan, and they didn't say that on the show. They hid it away. Y'know, I'm retracting any and all praise I bestowed on Masked Rider Kuuga. They had Calamity Titan, and they didn't say it. Sinful! An abject failure, suitable only for disobedient children and enhanced interrogation.
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12-15-2019, 10:09 PM | #128 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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I wish I could change into purple Kuuga for my birthday.
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12-15-2019, 11:43 PM | #129 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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So, okay, real talk.
Would getting an upgrade feel like a good birthday? Or would the fact that you needed a cool new form because otherwise you'd be monster-murdered mean that, actually, it's a pretty shitty birthday? I'm not sure Titan Form would make up for the potential violent demise, but maybe other folks feel differently?
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12-16-2019, 01:09 AM | #130 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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Quote:
So, okay, real talk.
Would getting an upgrade feel like a good birthday? Or would the fact that you needed a cool new form because otherwise you'd be monster-murdered mean that, actually, it's a pretty shitty birthday? I'm not sure Titan Form would make up for the potential violent demise, but maybe other folks feel differently? But when the new form hits, I'll be riding the high so strong that I'll probably forget all about the earlier woes. |
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