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05-10-2020, 08:48 PM | #101 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
OH NO!
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05-10-2020, 10:36 PM | #102 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Sep 2019
Posts: 104
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One of my first few posts here was gushing about the first few episodes of Faiz, and while I didn't articulate them as well as you, 90% of your impression was what I felt too. Love the tragicomedy vibe, the insanely cool way the suit and henshin sequence come together, and the playful deconstruction of hero/villain archetypes (good news: more of that coming!).
At the risk of exposing myself as a pure sucker to melodramatic bait, I truly feel the Yuka/Keitaro bit. OTT moments of Unholy Family and Classmate Alliance aside (although yeah, the girls-to-girl bullying depicted here wasn't really that far from the reality I've seen), it's genuinely heart-breaking how much of a complete doormat she is, and how she felt the need to invent a fanfiction of her life just to keep up with Keitaro's sincere enthusiasm and endlessly positive vibe. As for Keitaro, he initially felt like a caricature/parody of a Kamen Rider persona, but he quickly won me over. Dude really walks the talk, and just look at how crushed he was, to find out he can't get the power to do what he really wants. Just an excellent foil to Takkun and Mari, and show's got an absolute mileage early on milking the way the three bounce off of each other; I really wouldn't mind watching a sit-com series about just the three of them running a laundry service. That was me, and yeah, I think I now have a good idea on what Amazons' like! Love your description of Faiz; four episodes in, and we've got two selfish jerks, a sucker, a doormat, and a luckless loser. This really is Kamen Rider: Jerks and Losers, but what can I say, they're my kind of jerks and losers. |
05-10-2020, 11:09 PM | #103 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
One of my first few posts here was gushing about the first few episodes of Faiz, and while I didn't articulate them as well as you, 90% of your impression was what I felt too. Love the tragicomedy vibe, the insanely cool way the suit and henshin sequence come together, and the playful deconstruction of hero/villain archetypes (good news: more of that coming!).
Quote:
At the risk of exposing myself as a pure sucker to melodramatic bait, I truly feel the Yuka/Keitaro bit. OTT moments of Unholy Family and Classmate Alliance aside (although yeah, the girls-to-girl bullying depicted here wasn't really that far from the reality I've seen), it's genuinely heart-breaking how much of a complete doormat she is, and how she felt the need to invent a fanfiction of her life just to keep up with Keitaro's sincere enthusiasm and endlessly positive vibe.
Quote:
As for Keitaro, he initially felt like a caricature/parody of a Kamen Rider persona, but he quickly won me over. Dude really walks the talk, and just look at how crushed he was, to find out he can't get the power to do what he really wants. Just an excellent foil to Takkun and Mari, and show's got an absolute mileage early on milking the way the three bounce off of each other; I really wouldn't mind watching a sit-com series about just the three of them running a laundry service.
Quote:
That was me, and yeah, I think I now have a good idea on what Amazons' like! Love your description of Faiz; four episodes in, and we've got two selfish jerks, a sucker, a doormat, and a luckless loser. This really is Kamen Rider: Jerks and Losers, but what can I say, they're my kind of jerks and losers.
I like "Kamen Rider: Jerks and Losers"! It's very accurate! Part of me thinks, and it's something I thought of during the exchange in Episode 4 I screencapped, when Keitaro asks Takumi for help and Takumi rolls his eyes, that the show and hero should be called "Kamen Rider FINE.", all resentment and aggravation on the "FINE.", period as part of the title. Everything I love about the show is balled up in Takumi eyerolls, how theatrical they are, how he could not give two shits about trying to protect people's feelings, let alone their smiles. I'm also partial to Kamen Rider I Didn't Come Here To Make Friends. (Oh! And Amazons is worth checking out at some point! I enjoyed the first season, at least. Some folks really seem to loathe it, and it's probably not for everyone, but I thought it had some really solid ideas in the first season.)
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05-11-2020, 12:40 AM | #104 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Sep 2019
Posts: 104
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Quote:
It just... it feels so personal, so auteur in the story it's telling and how it's telling it. Nothing in this show, from the heroes to the villains to the belt to the pacing, none of it feels safe. Like, the most sympathetic people on this show are the literal monstrous killers. Making this show, they are flying on wings of God They're All Terrible People, and if they run the risk of those wings melting from flying too close to the sun, well, innovation sometimes isn't pretty.
(I dig that you're mentioning the belt, by the way, it has such a noticeably strong presence throughout the series it might as well be a character in its own right. A thematic axis, if you will). Quote:
There's something here I didn't touch on before, and it's the neat Romeo and Juliet-style Doomed Romance the show's got brewing. Keitaro is a pure-hearted good guy who wants to protect smiles and stop monsters, while Yuka is someone who just massacred a gym class. Star-crossed lovers, man! It's a big emotion, and I'm sure this show is going to do something suitably memorable with it.
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Like, it's a testament to how much the show wants to dig into these characters that Keitaro is both a parody of a Kamen Rider AND a full-formed character. As the heroes are slowly won over by his Aw Shucks heroism and, uh, basic human decency, we get permission to see his over-enthusiasm less as a laughable handicap, and more as an innate empathy striving for a way to help others from a dude who unfortunately has zero chill. There's some effort in the early Faiz episodes to emphasize channeling your energy effectively, and Keitaro's a great example of someone who doesn't yet know how to channel his energy.
Quote:
I like "Kamen Rider: Jerks and Losers"! It's very accurate! Part of me thinks, and it's something I thought of during the exchange in Episode 4 I screencapped, when Keitaro asks Takumi for help and Takumi rolls his eyes, that the show and hero should be called "Kamen Rider FINE.", all resentment and aggravation on the "FINE.", period as part of the title. Everything I love about the show is balled up in Takumi eyerolls, how theatrical they are, how he could not give two shits about trying to protect people's feelings, let alone their smiles.
Last edited by Magnugiga; 05-11-2020 at 12:44 AM.. |
05-11-2020, 06:30 AM | #105 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2,550
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If you think the noise during the Exceed Charge sequence is noisy, then it’s probably for the best you’re not trucking with Showa for the moment. The show I’m currently working through has an accordion at the end of his transformation (and the start of the OP), and it kind of gets irritating after 4 episodes (since that’s where I’m at).
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05-11-2020, 06:59 AM | #106 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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Personally, I love that winding tech noise Faiz's gear does. RIP to your ears though, Die.
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05-11-2020, 08:47 AM | #107 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,512
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The Faiz Driver voice is just SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH as butter.
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05-11-2020, 08:52 AM | #108 |
Standing By
Join Date: Feb 2020
Location: USA
Posts: 2,092
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Quote:
Yeah, it's weird how universal it is to have had a not-great high school experience. Maybe it says something about my upbringing, but the horrible mistreatment Yuka suffers at home feels impossibly terrible, so as to be absurdly funny, while when I watch the high school stuff it's just Yeah I Can See That. I didn't have it particularly rough as a teenage boy, nothing that really stuck with me, but everything that happens to Yuka in school feels like what could happen to a teenage girl. They got it real bad in life!
I think you need to have the narrative counterweight of Keitaro. You always need someone in the cast to push against the other characters' assumptions and strategies. What I love about Faiz is that in any other show, Keitaro would be the hero character and Takumi would be the disgruntled anti-hero. Keitaro would be the voice of the plot, the focal point for the story, and Takumi would be the one acting in opposition. Here, they switch it, and Keitaro is the contrarian, asking terrible people to be slightly-less terrible, while Takumi is the Only If I Have To spirit of the show. It's such a fun inversion of the Kamen Rider formula. Keitarou acts a lot like a typical heroic Kamen Rider and his name even has the first 3 kana of "keitai" which makes it even more ironic that he can't become the cellphone Rider. He plays an important role in the Faiz trio as an equivalent to Kiba in the Orphenoch trio, being the moral center of the dynamic that keeps Takumi from being too apathetic and unmotivated. He may not be Faiz, but he's as much a part of what Faiz is as Takumi. There are "Kamen Riders" and then there are Kamen Riders and that's the ideal that he wants to imprint on Takumi.
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05-11-2020, 09:33 AM | #109 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
Yuka and Yuuji finally meeting up at the end of Ep 4 gave me chills for multiple reasons. At this point, the show had put a lot of effort to make them sympathetic figures and justify their actions, but it's also made clear that these two have cold, deep-seated anger, for the rest of the world (Yuka moreso than Yuuji) and they've basically reached a point of no return in terms of what they've did. It's a brilliant set-up for the eventual collision with our dorky group of 'heroes', and at the time I was watching, I got simultaneously excited and scared for what's going to happen next.
The other 20%, it's the super smart way the episode leaves out Yuuji until that final moment. It's half Hell Yes and half Oh Shit, and I love it. Quote:
If you think the noise during the Exceed Charge sequence is noisy, then it’s probably for the best you’re not trucking with Showa for the moment. The show I’m currently working through has an accordion at the end of his transformation (and the start of the OP), and it kind of gets irritating after 4 episodes (since that’s where I’m at).
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Unfortunately, while it's a little contrived how all the terrible abuse Yuka suffered is compressed in to 2 days, that abuse could totally happen in real life to a person with no friends or popularity. This is an introductory arc in a superhero show rather than a school drama so I guess Inoue wanted to make it as dramatic as possible. I talked about how it brings back bad memories, but when I first watched it in 2015, I was still in high school. It's a totally different experience rewatching it now since I can identify with not just who she is at the start but who she's going to become as the show progresses.
Quote:
Keitarou acts a lot like a typical heroic Kamen Rider and his name even has the first 3 kana of "keitai" which makes it even more ironic that he can't become the cellphone Rider. He plays an important role in the Faiz trio as an equivalent to Kiba in the Orphenoch trio, being the moral center of the dynamic that keeps Takumi from being too apathetic and unmotivated. He may not be Faiz, but he's as much a part of what Faiz is as Takumi. There are "Kamen Riders" and then there are Kamen Riders and that's the ideal that he wants to imprint on Takumi.
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05-11-2020, 10:23 AM | #110 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,412
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Quote:
It's weird, because Keitaro has some of the same mannerisms as Shunpei from Wizard, who I really hated (clingy, pushy, desperate to prove himself, barely tolerated by the hero)... but I really like Keitaro. I think the difference is that, with Shunpei it was all hero worship, while with Keitaro you can see him trying to fix Takumi and Mari. He realizes almost immediately that they are terrible people, which is why he takes the burden of Faiz on himself. But at the end, he's trying to make the best of a bad situation, and trying to harness their skills and goals towards justice. He's got a real clear purpose on this show!
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