Blade 23

So...these mini-werewolf Halloween Mask things aren't Undead, but their zombie servants. Huh. That's the first time these undead have acted like stereotypical undead... And where the hell were these undead hunters in the past 22 episodes?!

Cool seeing Blade, Garren, and LEangle all fightign together, though. Even if it was for all of five seconds. Also interesting seeing what appears to be a rather docile Undead.

Even though it's sort of annoying, I kind of find amusement in the fact that Mutsuki just wants to hoard up on really powerful Undead cards. The part where Tachibana called him out on it and he just ran away was hilarious. Just goes to show you don't fake responsibility when Tachibana's around.

Black Fang does indeed look cool. Those Undead Hunter guys still haven't bothered to explain where they got their shit from, leading Tachibana to rightfully distrust them. Somewhat. Not enough to not help them out anyway. Kenzaki seems to be too excited over the prospect of cool new gadgets and potential allies to care.

Hmm. Of course the wolf(?) Undead would get his hands on Black And I really like Elphant Undead and his chill personality.

You know the most frustrating thing about the Fourze movie? It actually serves as a fantastic expansion of the series.

Ryusei gets the growth he needs that he never got in the show, it returns Gen back to when he was actually a good character, it gives the Kamen Rider Club a purpose like it never had in the series, gives great moments to largely forgotten characters and...none of this has any impact on the show at all, I don't even know if it counts as canon with the way none of it is ever mentioned or has any impact on the show and that is just a damn shame as it makes better use of the characters than anything featured in the second half of the series.

I'd honestly say I think people should just watch Fourze until Meteor is introduced, then just watch the movie and you'd actually probably have a better experience.

Should I ever watch Fourze, I may just do that.

Though I don't think I will for a while.

One part of the Fourze movie that I loved was that it gave the entirety of the KRC something to do. It was great to see them kick ass and have a presence beyond standing behind a pillar watching the fight (Which even Shun devolved into once Meteor showed up and made the Power Dizer pointless).

You probably could count it as canon. It's not like pre-Den-O movies, which practically told audiences that they were alternate universes (And, if any consolation, Inga shows up in Movie War Ultimatum, which make it somewhat canon).

Anyway, what were your thoughts on the Switch distribution scene? That scene seems to split a lot of opinions between "Endearing and nice" or "Dragged out and boring."

Blade 25

So the Elphant Undead plans on ruling the Earth by being pacifistic and lettign the other Riders and Undead kill eachother. Solid plan. Elephant's a cool dude. But damn it, Kotaro! Why help Miyuki? Something tells me that won't end up going too well for you...And it would've if Hajime hadn't shown up!.


In hindsight...Shinmei being the Wolf Undead should've been REALLY obvious to me last episode. As soon as I heard that Black Fang powered up Undead in this one, it all came together for me. Gotta hand it to wolf dude for going through such elaborate measures, though.

Double rider kicks are always awesome. And not sure if I've mentioned this before, but Tachibana's probably my favorite of the four now. I really like his reasoning for blowing up the Fang. They were meant to use that technology to protect humanity, a goal dear to the BOARD members hearts. But now that it's use had been perverted for an evil Undead to cause havok, it's purpose became lost and twisted and thus, had to be destroyed. Even if it did look pretty fucking cool.

Blade 26

Weird intro for this new character,Shima. He seems cool though, especially for an Undead. Tachibana gave him the most distrusting glare ever when he first saw him, but I'm starting to think that's how he greets everyone.


Damn it Mustuki, I thought you had this shit under control! Every time he starts acting like a whiny tool, the fucking Spider Undead takes over again. I see Tachibana essentially had the same reaction when he saw him.


Hmm. Elephant had an 'oh shit' reaction when fighting Hajime, right before Hajime suffered another random pain attack. Kinda foreboding. Hajime's not just the odd one out among humans, but Undead as well, it seems. Looks like it got Elephant a little too arrogant, though...

Sweet, new form for Blade! Looks pretty strong, though I'm sorry to see Elephant go because of it.

Yeah. Mutsuki's entire story seems to drag on way too long than it needs...Makes it tedious since it plays out the exact same way every time.

Ugh. I really liked the way it was solved previously too.

It's Mika Hijii. I'd do anything for her, too.

I tend to assume this was the one big casualty of the writing staff switch mid-series. Everything else just got more awesome, but Mutsuki's story totally stalled. Although at least the Tiger Undead is cool.

The main reason I question its canon...ness...is not only does it have no impact on the series but I have no idea where the hell it fits into the series, lots of aspects kinda contradict and confuse its place in the timeline. Libra is alive, Gamou has all the switches, Ryusei is still reluctant to reveal his identity, the Rabbit Hatch is okay etc etc etc if we assume this happened like between the episode where Gamou opens the dark nebula for the first time and the episode before it, it just seems like this film went on too long (in fourze world time) to logically just slide in there.

The only scene I felt like it dragged was the Apostle scene, I know that was there to introduce Wizard (and what a cool introduction!) but the scene had no wider purpose, it was just self indulgence and it just went on and on and on and just completely overstayed its welcome.

In many senses you could say that a lot about the first half of the film as huge action sequences exploded from nowhere but Black Knight was fucking awesome so I don't care :p

If I was to have any criticisms of the switch distribution scene, I got fed up of the damn blubbering all the way through the film. Gen cried more over that fucking space station than he did of Kengo's "death", and Yuuki's whining and the shots of Tomoko blubbering were repeated over and over for like ten minutes. It was just sappy and annoying.

So I watched the Fourze movie and loved it, felt the same as an expansion to more.

Sadly I got 4 episodes into Fourze and I love the character of Fourze but most, not all, of the supporting cast as well as the school aspect I just hate.

I actually think they made good use of the setting, it never felt just like a novelty, which is why it's so disappointing that it's basically dropped half way through the series to make way for some awfully paced space opera.

I don't mind them using a school, I just feel it is too much American teen drama crap. Maybe I'll enjoy the space opera part of Fourze, but it has left a bad taste in my mouth so I am going to go try others.

I suppose it's more American to be in a high school dealing with students but it's a setting I appreciate that I think the show does well with. It does much better with that than any of the sci-fi stuff that is rushed to the point of meaninglessness in the second half of the series. I personally thought the first twenty or so high school drama episodes were near flawless and some of the best Kamen Rider stuff I've seen.

I felt bad for the bad guys, or well, in the first 4 episodes, the students who were not shining as much as other students. I felt the good guy helped out the bully but never really helped the students who needed the help that went down the "bad" path, at least not on screen.

Gen's impact on the school at large is something explored in the film but not explored in the series like...at all, it's really frustrating that such a key aspect is shafted to a film that basically may as well count as non canon.

All of the Blade TVN episodes I get of KRDL come down at some insanely funky aspect ratio for some reason, you can override it but it's a pain in the ass. Either way episode five was okay, it was establishing more plot than really exploring it but lots of glorious fighting between the Riders themselves made up for it.

Yeah, the TVN encodes are really bad. I've heard another group is going to take on Blade with some new raws made from the dvds, but I haven't heard much more about it.

I don't wanna complain about stuff for free, but what is the point if you release releases with horrid video quality, fucked aspect ratios and typos?

For the video quality, it's just a "Work with what you got" sort of thing. Not helped that Blade was released on DVD in a 'Volume' fashion, being released in 12 DVD volumes with 4-5 episodes per, and apparently DVDs are more expensive in Japan or something.

The typos aren't excusable, though.

The video quality and aspect ratio are entirely down to the subbers who released them, as that is not how the source footage would originally look unless that was edited from the beginning but I highly doubt DVDs would both be that compressed and in an aspect ratio that wrong.

I know the DVDs won't look like that.
But I thought the Blade subs were placed on the TV aired raws. I really have no idea why the quality is so bad (Blade aired in '04), though.

From the looks of it, the source was recorded on a VHS from another VHS which recorded it from the TV.

Blade was one of TVN's first releases and they probably didn't have as good of a source for raws as they have now.

May as well ask here as well, any of the Showa Rider series worth watching?

I've only seen Amazon, but I definitely enjoyed that.

Black's pretty good. :)

Got Black downloading now!

Also, just watched OOO 42 honestly although this show may have started bad, and stumbled many a time along the way, I don't think I've ever been so reluctant for a Rider series to be coming towards an end. It just has such great characters, great dialogue, great acting and a cast that have such incredible chemistry. Shit suit designs, bad effects, muddled mythology none of that ends up impacting on the series at all because every character moment is just so utterly fantastic.

One question though, why do Kamen Rider's never seem to wear cod pieces? The Driver draws attention to the crotch area and it's really distracting to see a bulging penis wobbling about right in your field of vision.

Yeah! Black is awesome! I really need to finish it.

Uhhh... I hadn't noticed?

I guess you mean why don't they have some kind of forward skirt armour, since a big ol' cup to me would just draw more attention. I don't think I've ever noticed any weiner surprises watching KR.

Well I assumed the Sentai heroes wore a cod piece to get that beautifully smooth, androgynous crotch area.

. . .will be the name of my retro-80's synth band. :)

Haha that is brilliant :lol

Right I checked out Black 01. Dat squeaky suit, haha.

Honestly overall it blew me away, I assumed that given Kuuga had such awful action sequences and special effects, Black would be even worse. But despite being almost thirty years old, it had better action, better effects, his suit looked better. It all felt like a much higher quality product. Really enjoyed it.

I'm also really glad I don't have epilepsy. If you do, DO NOT WATCH BLACK, there was more flashing images in this twenty minutes of Kamen Rider than I've seen in about ten years of my life.

is Dragon knight the Black sheep where it can feet in this Thread and the american toku thread

Black is a juggernaut. He's friend to all children and saver of puppies.

I mean sure whatever you want man.

i was only joking Due to the Fact it has the Name Kamen Rider as it Main title of the show and not the other one the show that shall not be named

King Stone Flash--Ticket to Epilepsy?

Black's great--it really feels like it has more of a consistent tone through the whole series in a way that doesn't happen now with KR shows (they tend to meander into the 30's and 40's, some more than others) and is really strong all the way through.

RX? Well . . .not so much.

This was a good time for Toei. Black for Kamen Rider and Liveman for Super Sentai? That's a high hand to beat. :)

Every time he used his Driver it was like a Rave, which is a real problem, it hurt my eyes even without the fit.

I think I'm gonna watch this alongside Blade!

Also Black uses stock footage transformations which boggled my mind.

Granted it looks awesome but still...

I was watching it in the dark on my laptop, so whenever he transformed or used the Rider Punch/Kick and the whole thing turned into a massive strobe I found myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grrADdmfrSI

Yes, all of them. But you picked very, very well with Black.