Watched Blade episodes 7-10 last night and I am really enjoying the stories of these main characters; I'm intrigued and enjoying Garren's overcoming fear storyline, and just love Hajime and Kenzaki too.

Just saw the first Den-O movie. Pretty good, glad to have the craziness that was episodes 26 and 27 sorted out :lol

So I just finished the Fourze portion of Movie War Ultimatum...this is gonna be a long one and I'm gonna need a break before I watch the rest of this film.

What started as an epilogue for the series, which I was hoping to be of similar quality to what OOO got in the cross over with Fourze quickly descended into something written like a really bad piece of fan fiction. It's hard to articulate why I hated this, not because I myself am confused, but I can just tell I'm going to have a hard time convincing why it was a problem.

Fourze is childlike, it's part of what it is, it exists in this parallel fantasy universe where even being murdered is something one can shrug off and smile and laugh about later and it really didn't fucking work and that was in a fifty episode series. This idealism smashed into fifty minutes just makes for the most awful awful viewing experience.

I kept waiting for Gen and Sakuta to fuck the way the whole thing played out like some thirteen year old girls fantasy ending for the series, deciding that wish fulfilment makes for better writing than actually trying to wrap up the series or provide any kind of satisfying conclusions for...anything.

Just no, no to everything. Sakuta wouldn't have teamed up with Inga and become an Interpol agent in five years. Gen is physically too thick to become a teacher in the first place, but it'd take him hell of a lot longer than five years to have his own class, I'm not even sure you can become a professional football player in five years, oops (whose name I'm too angry to remember right now) seemingly only became a model so the director can continue to creepily drool on the female cast members, reducing her and 'the psychic girl' to close ups of their skirts for an entire action sequence, while also dressing Yuuki like a weird parallel whore version of herself for a space mission for no apparent reason.

Why is it that the films paint the entire Fourze cast in such a disgusting and unflattering light? If I had watched these films, without watching the show, I'd be in for a real shock to find that they are nothing like these poor imitations. Hell the head writer for the fucking show has a credit on this, so how do you misunderstand your own characters this much? I kept waiting for it to end with Gen waking up from a daydream in class, but nope, this is the epilogue Fourze gets, what a fucking pile of bilge.

And for moments, the Fourze segments seems to have some form of clarity in just how dumb this all is, but then those moments quickly pass and the film carries on taking this ridiculous and ill fitting epilogue seriously.

And don't even ask me why Gen suddenly threw the Fourze Driver away and destroyed it, I have no fucking idea what he was thinking or why anyone would allow him to do that but I guess this stops him coming back for any more films... What the fuck is going on?!

Also, the fuck was well...everything else? It seemed like it got padded by someone's margin doodles just chucking random half formed ideas in there like fucking psychic mutant Inuzaman or whatever the fuck his name was and a new appearance from Kamen Rider Goo. It's pointless, and wastes my time, and this whole segment is fucking garbage.

Even the action wasn't that great, as it presented us with some of the crappiest wirework I've seen for about a decade. I do love that Fourze in the films whizzes through lots of Switches in rapid succession so he can embody what his powers are about but I'd still rather just watch the series than ever repeat these fifty minutes of my life again.

Just to correct a minor point, but if Wizard occurs directly after Fourze, that means Fourze has 4 more years before he canonically destroys the belt.
Perhaps in that time we'll get the epilogue Fourze deserves.

What point are you correcting?

That one.
Like I said, it's minor, but that means we have Gaimu and the next 3 Riders for Fourze to team up with before the belt gets destroyed.

Oh I see, yeah I didn't think of it like that, but that makes it an even more pointless story beat. Fuck.

:lol

Man, Fourze seems like he gets it rough. It's like OOO's portion of War Core.

Well I believe Kengo said that the Fourze Driver is Gentarou's friend and will come back to him. So it might not be as destroyed as we think it is.

Watched Blade 11-14 man this is a really emotional series, and I'm loving the characters even more. I forsaw what happened to Sayoko sadly though. I am intrigued to see Leangle soon. Blade, Garren and Chalice are amazing so far though.

Okay, time to calm down and move onto the Wizard portion... My main question is, what the fuck was this trying to say? Much like the show, this isn't really Haruto's gig but the Gate's. Our Gate is a girl so disillusioned by the mundanity of reality, that she'd happily escape to an Underworld that repeats the same day infinitum, where she gets to be a superhero and save the world. What is more interesting, what is more confusing, is that this is presented in a negative light, Haruto and the gang are trying to get her to wake up from this and face reality.

This is a great moral message, "wake up and smell the coffee!" But wait...don't we turn to the repetitive, formulaic toku and its superheroes to escape the mundanity of our own realities? We know that near enough every toku episode is going to be the same, like groundhog day, and yet we happily tune in every week because it presents a black and white world, where things go right more than they go wrong, unlike our own lives. Aren't we all Poitrine? Is being an adult Toku fan the same as being in her Underworld? Is Wizard trying to tell the adults in the audience to move on and grow up? To stop criticising something made for children and just get on with their own lives? I'm probably over thinking this - giving it to much credit but I couldn't quite tell if I was meant to be offended by all this.

It was better than Fourze's portion though, either way. probably because Wizard is so consistently flawed that it is so much harder to fuck up. Haruto was as great as ever, but I wish this badass gunslinging version of Rinko would turn up in the show sometime. She was sexier than anything we were supposed to dribble over in the Fourze part.

Wizard is an insanely cool Rider but his powers are a lot more basic than Fourze's, so I appreciated how they made every moment exaggerated and stylish so he could complete visually, I had so much more fun watching Wizard than I did Fourze in the end because it seemed they put way more effort into his fights to balance it out.

The only thing that lets Wizard's portion down in the action is it seems they just found a load of old monster suits from Fourze and OOO and threw them in there. Bamba was pretty shit, to be fair, but at least he wasn't just an old dusted off costume. Plus even though this assumedly had a bigger budget, the giant CGI monster fights look just as awful here as they do in the show.

Wait for the big shocking surprise at the end of the movie

Sounds more like the Wizard portion just has a really confused, dumb message, since it's ultimately speaking to the children. It'd almost be like it's telling the kids to stop watching Wizard itself.

A noble message but still...

Also, I don't believe the crossover movies get that big of a budget increase. I think only the summer movies did.

Watched eps 25 and 26 of Fourze. It's prom time!

It was a very emotional storyline, (specially shun decision at the end), but honestly I'm more excited about the next one, Gentaro's grandpa! Continuing meteor storyline!

The Shogun Medal movie has been the only Rider movie I've properly enjoyed so far, I LOVED that movie and would gladly watch it again. I'd rather watch that again than the series.

Yeah, the summer movies are usually better. W's movie was awesome and had higher production values and better effects as well as being a good story.

Have you seen Fourze's summer flick? I think it's called "Everybody, it's space time" or something.

Yeah remember I said it made a better second half of Fourze than Fourze's actual second half? :p

Oh right.

Anyway, back to Ryuki: I'm kind of getting sick of hearing "Oneechan." Yes I know it's a real word, but has Japan never heard of synonyms? It's just such an annoying thing to hear every five seconds. I hear it more than "Henshin" it feels like. I also generally dislike plots revolving around siblings, as it's such an easy out. Parental issues are difficult to write and "best friends" is also hard to handle with gravitas, so let's just make them brothers/sisters/brother and sister. Boom, instant connection because one will always be the caregiver of the other because EVERYONE'S PARENTS ARE DEAD. All she does is whine about her brother but has ceased doing anything about it. She did some snooping for, like, three episodes.

Also, BIG plothole. Right now, without their contract monsters they can't transform. That's BS, because Ryuki transformed before making a contract. He was in his blank form, but his suit still protected him and gave him shitty weapons. Why don't he and Ren transform into blanks to fight? And why do they need to transform? The monster's in the real world. They've fought monsters in the real world before. Why don't they force/lead it back into the mirror world, then turn into blanks to fight it?

Now let's move on to the final portion, the Ultimatum portion where Fourze, Meteor and Goo get to meet Wizard and the gang and fight with them and man, who knew this'd turn out to be so good?!

It wraps the movie together fantastically and comes with quite a few surprises that will have everyone in the audience screaming and jumping around. I almost broke my bed in the fit of excitement. I just wish Eiji was around longer. His appearance was short but sweet.

Also, all the Riders just seem to come together much more cohesively than they have in the other films I have seen, the chemistry between the Riders was just fantastic and watching them fight together was just awesome. Even the modern Riders get to make use of their bikes for once! This war is a spectacular one, which makes the pretty shitty first half an hour almost seem worth it. Almost.

Really the only disappointing thing is that it is all so spectacular, when it comes down to taking down our main trio of villains it just doesn't end up competing or comparing and comes off a little flat. They turned out to be largely pointless and the whole thing didn't really have any plot, which spoilt this final but ultimately enjoyable segment.

Huhjeez, now Ouja has Evildiver, and can make Genocider. Why, how, when? These are questions Ryuki does not answer. Ouja is the very deffinition of a terrible villain. Utterly unfounded in his cruelty, irredeemable, one-track, implausibly powerful and always pulling out new evil abilities just because. It's just so bad when he's around. I really thought, when I saw his design, he'd be an awesome villain. But no, he's a child's idea of a villain. A ruthless killer with no personality or goals who is super powered just because.

And Shiro, he's just as bad. It's almost like they're sort of making us sympathetic to him, but he's just as big a monster as Ouja for given someone this awful the tools to kill mindlessly.

So far there's only been two well rounded characters in this show, and one is dead and another is only just now getting back into the game. Also, the rules about contract monsters has been thrown to the wind, (they almost never fight mirror monsters to feed their own anymore) and the whole thing about them losing their monsters was utterly pointless. (we never saw Dragredder or Darkwing ONCE when that happened. So much for the risk of them eating Ryuki and Knight)

Ryuki is REALLY hard to watch right now. Can anyone tell me when it improves? I won't skip but I'd like to know when the light at the end of the tunnel is coming.

27 and 28 are done for "Let it rip!"

Seriously! a Beyblade! I haven't made up my mind on whether that's ridiculous or ridiculously awesome :lol

More Meteor is always a good thing, we see some more of tachibana's personality and Gentaro's background.

But Meteor Storm... wtf were they thinking?

Meteor Storm is probably my least favourite upgrade after Beast Hyper.

Beast Hyper wasn't bad. The tassles on his forearms has weapons were a little silly. But Meteor Storm.. As awesome as Meteor was that's exactly how lame Meteor Storm was. Him and his Beyblade.

Hyper isn't as bad as Storm. At least imo.

Okay, the fight with Ryuki and Zolda was pretty great, but highlights the "problem" with this show. The rider stuff, i.e. the actual suit fights, are the best part. But they're BARELY in it. The suit actor for Ryuki has way more personality and energy than Kido, and seeing him and Zolda work together to compensate for Zolda's arm was brilliant, especially Ryuki using Zold's cards and getting his hopes for big guns dashed when they still go to Zolda. I especially love the incredibly small but funny slapstick of Zolda knocking Ryuki in the face with his guns. It wasn't overdone, there were no cartoon sound effects. He hit him by accident and it was funny. And Ryuki using Magnugiga as a sheild to use his strike vent was funny with his Jesus "no, YOU'RE awesome" pose.

I need to get Zolda. I mean, I need to get Zolda and Magnugiga, but Magnugiga is expensive. (Also he's a pretty chill guy, just kind of stands there and shoots. Maybe he's a dumb monster? Huh? You're not to smart, are you boy? Yeah, who's a big dummy? I'm gonna mush up his face and roll him around)

Also, I guess I knew it from Dragredder not getting beheaded each time Strike is used, but Riders wepons are made of parts of their monsters, but their monsters can still show up intact? Interesting, makes me wish the Figuarts did this so Dragredder doesn't lose his tail when I give Ryuki his sword.

But Hyper did the same, it took a base form with an imaginative and fun fighting style and replaced it with a singular and boring weapon. Storm got a beyblade and a curtain rail and Hyper got a makeup mirror and nerf gun.

Again, that's why I like Trial. Accel was strickly a sword fighter, but Trial didn't use the sword all that often (if at all) so he was strickling martial arts and 500-kicks-per-second. Slashing a big "A" into an enemy is cool and all, but nothing beats super-speed kicking them over and over until you've literally kicked a giant "T" onto their body before doing the always awesome "attack name AFTER the fact" move.

Is it just me or am I obsessed with Mirror Monsters despite not having watched Ryuki?

They're pretty cool. The rules to them are quite unique, even if the show kind of ignores them and the rules most of the time.

I find it hard to take Accel seriously. The suggestive driver, the fact he gets riden. It just.. it's just to.. that.

As if Kamen Rider Double wasn't suggestive enough *wink wink*

It was mildly. But Accel..

Again why I like Trial better. No bike mode, and the Trial Maximum Drive involves no weiner-revving.

Episode fifteen of Black... I kept waiting for a Zodiart to turn up. Now I really wanna see Gamou work with Golgom.

Although Black feels really primitive, coming right off the back of Ultimatum, I have to say the monster designs and suits hold up really, really well, honestly I think I kinda like them better than the modern suits, something about them looks more real. I dunno, it's like the modern monsters suits are so well made, so glossy and new and expensive that it only highlights how fake they are.

Plus although the show is very very goofy, largely because of how dated it is, I kinda wish more modern shows had action like Black's. So much Toku action these days is done on wires or with CGI that I don't even see the point of suit actors any more, and sure maybe it isn't as superheroic as Black isn't like flying through the air or whatever, but his fights with his enemies usually either leave the enemy with one less limb or two or level the set around them which to me is a much better visual treat than seeing the Rider's yanked through the air.

Even when the show does neither of those things, Black still manages to make the physical hits feel like they have actual impact whereas shows like Blade make a fist fight look like the toku version of a Newton's Cradle without the sense of motion.

Jesus, was Kido dropped as a child? He just put his deck on the table and let the kid take it?

Are you, like, I can't... I don't know if I can...

...


Jesus take the wheel...

EDIT: Also I was kind of confused why everyone was holding the kid's hand before I remembered that only those who hold a deck can see into the mirror world.

Den-O 29

Man Climax form is gonna be great. :lolol

Just finished Ryuki 27: So this is Odin, huh? Would be pretty cool if it weren't for his speech.

"The Rider who beats me will PROBABLY gain great power..."

Probably? As in, not for sure? You're just guessing? Your name is Odin and you speak probabilities?

Dude, you kind of have to sell us more on the great power thing. You don't sound fully committed.


Oh boy, I forgot about that.

I think the Mirror Monsters are, hands down, the most horrifying monsters in the history of Kamen Rider. Just look around you right now and count how many reflective surfaces are in your immediate vicinity. Now imagine that, behind any single one of them, a monster could suddenly jump out and devour you.

I remember those episodes. I kinda liked them. The kid who wants to be a hero is a pretty standard trope in tokusatsu and I like how Ryuki handled it.

"Okay, you want to be a Kamen Rider? Cool, look at what we have to do."

Thirty seconds later and the little bastard is scarred for life. :lol

The episode itself was fine, quite good. Just that little mishap and Odin being not as badass as he should be since he apparently isn't sure about his own rules.

I googled Trial, and that looks so much better than regular freaking Accel.