Yeah, while I thought it was far superior to Red Requiem, it served absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Even the girl was entirely pointless.

Seeing as how it hasn't even hit theaters yet, probably not until the end of the year, if that. I mean, look at the other Garo movie. That came out in what, August and has yet to hit video? It also took Super Hero Taisen 8 months to hit video as that came out in April in theaters and video in Dec.

The Kiba special did also set up the idea of Ganon and its corpse being stolen, which went on to be a major plot point in Makai Senki.

Yes, but it isn't like Ganon was mentioned beforehand anyway. If anything, Kiba set up Makai. That still does not make it important, especially since that fortune teller lady was never heard from again.

I wish corn syrup would stop popping in my head when I see this topic.
KARO corn syrup.

By the way, is this a "teamwork and giant robot" Sentai-esque series or a "full armored character devolpment" Rider-esque series?

By those narrow definitions it's definitely closer to the latter. Garo's a pretty dark and mature series about a knight who battles demons that try to invade our world. It's got a lot of good character moments and, while the hero does have armor, most of the fighting is done untransformed with a lot of wire work. The visual designs are amazing and the show has a really rich mythology. Watch it.

Just not at work. :p

Just watched the first episode of GARO again, now I have someone to talk about it with.

The episode constantly bordered between being fucking awesome and trying way too fucking hard. The awesome bits certainly outweighed the forced and naffer bits, but it's a shame there even were those naffer bits.

It certainly would have helped if the show didn't feel so dated, but you forget this is nearly ten years old already. What certainly helps the show is how it feels like a much more hardcore Wizard - a series I fucking love, and uses so many urban fantasy tropes, my favourite genre.

Wizard did get compared to Garo a lot when it started airing.If urban fantasy is your thing, you're going to love the hell out of Garo.

Garo 02.

Man Kaoru is annoying. So fucking beautiful though. I guess at least they've given her an in story reason to be in direct danger every episode. Not that that makes it any better.

Everything else? Eh. The action sequences sure are flashy, but the overuse of bad CGI is a disappointment, as are the goofy cartoon like sound effects that feel out of place. Still, fighting in actual urban environments is refreshing, rather than jump cutting to the cheapest location they could find. And it is nice that Kouga is a badass, that the show doesn't feel the need to drip in explanations.

Plus, the CGI at least allows them to add little details that I really enjoy. I love the way the ground cracks beneath their feet, the way things break as they collide into them, the speed people move and the weight behind their punches. It sounds daft, but these are things that are often oddly omitted from toku fight scenes. I think Garo is one of Toku's best representations of two super powered beings clashing.

The only real issue I have with this, is Kouga is so fucking powerful in his civ form, I have no idea why he really needs to transform at all. I mean I know like once he transforms he takes them down in like a single hit, but I'm pretty sure he could defeat the Horrors so far without transforming. Plus, the tired old question, if he can defeat the Horrors in a single attack when he transforms, why prolong the fight so much by fighting in his civ form?

In terms of plot, it is nice to see toku approach an episode about money without immediately connecting it to greed. I've always hated that irony, toku, franchises built around selling plastic to children, condemning anyone who needs or likes to have money. Hypocrites. Here, the show recognises how useful money is to people, and that necessity of it in day to day life.

Out of story, it's because that suit is so damn heavy that they can't use it for very long. It's either have it for those brief moments of awesome or go all-out CGI like the third season has done, and Garo doesn't really have the budget to do that very convincingly unfortunately.

Plotwise, I tend to just put it down to summoning the armour when he really needs to. He's on a limited time frame as it is (what is it, 2 minutes or so? They've pretty much dropped it from later seasons so I don't remember) so better to wear the Horror down using his own skills than jumping straight into the armour.

There's a very good reason why the armor isn't used much - they do explain that. And there will be some fights that involve much longer armored sequences.

I guess that makes sense as to why so much effort is put into the umorphed fights. It's sorta like super sentai but shifted along, where the Henshin Hero bit is like the tacked on part like the Megazord bits usually are. And the civ fight that usually opens the fight, is the main event.

I'm not looking forward to those third season action sequences...

Yeah, reminiscing on some of your earlier posts about Kamen Rider I know for a fact you won't like it :lol

I dunno man. Watching a show like Dairanger, I kinda appreciate what crazy shit CGI allows you to do and even if it looks bad, I can appreciate it on that level. What annoys me more is when stuff that can easily be done practically, and often is, is done with CGI and really shit CGI at that.

Take Garo 2 for example. The Horror's main attack was her bladed chain things, and the whole episode flip flopped between practical stunts with real chains (or at least plastic panted to look like chains or whatever) and CGI flips with CGI chains. Now not only were the CGI chains unnecessary and shit looking but it only made it look even worse that just a second later you were doing it practically just fine.

For the third season, there's a reason why they changed to all CG
Togen no Fue, Soukoku no Maryu and Yami wo Terasu Mono were all filmed together last year, believe it or not. So when episode 1 was aired it had already finished filming all episodes. This is probably why the action is reduced, they probably had to spread the budget to all three projects. Considering how they film a the same time, the original suit was probably used for Soukoku no Maryu.

There's also this to consider: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/wo...nted=all&_r=2&

Read the article before, didn't really care. Considering how Gouraigan still used actual suits, I don't think Keita Amemiya would approved using total CG without any reason. Even if he was not involved in Yami O Terasu Mono as he was busy doing Soukoku no Maryu and Tougen no Fue, they would still consult to him for this kind of things.

Also, episode 23 of Yami o Terasu Mono, they finally used a the real GARO suit, the original one no the new Ryuga version. Soukoku no Maryu also used the real GARO suit and it and Yami o Terasu Mono was shot at the same time. I think that's the more likely reason. Then again, most Tokusatsu fans seems to prefer the "production doesn't care and just want the easy way" reasons rather than some logistical reasons in which they have to resort to doing cost cutting measure.

Actually the suit wasn't being used for filming (except for episode 23 of Yami wo Terasu Mono before it got shipped out) last year. It was on its world tour all year long.
It showed up in Taiwan and then France afterwards, doing promotion for the DVD box outside Japan. Fujita Rei was with the suit in France at the time.

Amemiya is a digital game freak. He visualizes his work digitally at the very beginning, and when Takeya has time (which he doesn't. He got his work exbition to prepare) it will be made into an actually "thing".
Otherwise all work will stay digital for the rest of its life.

Wow, I know about the tour in France, but I definitely didn't know it was the actual suit for filming, I thought it was some spare suit use for promotions. So, how many suits are there? Soukoku no Maryu definitely used a real suit except for the Blue Dragon form.

Using digital to visualize work is not uncommon, digital per-visualization is used everywhere even in Hollywood. It can be more useful than ordinary storyboard. Just because he used digital visualization doesn't mean that production team can only use CG after the visualization is done. Then again, in the end, it's the time available for making the actual suit or props that is crucial. Keita Amemiya is just the illustrator and designer not suit maker, IIRC. In film production, if you don't have time to make the deadline, then you have to make do with what is available. I'm studying film production, this kind of things are pretty basic

There is one overweight "shiny" suit, and one slightly-overweight "action" suit. There is no spare. Zero, and Dan got the light-weighted suits only. The gold chromed suit used to be displayed at the Garo-shop, but the display section has been minimized lately. I don't think they are going to re-display the suit there anymore.

Takeya is the actual designer of the suits. Amemiya did the rough sketches, and Takeya got the actual form and details finished. There is this "Team Amemiya" thing. If it is not Takeya's design things will not be accepted by fans. This is the reason why the armors in Yami wo Terasu Mono has so much problem among garo fans (designer hasn't been announced).

I see.

About the designer, yeah, Keita Amemiya is pretty much only design how it look on papers. That's why he's credited as character designer/illustrator, those guys usually make how the design is on paper, the rest of that, it's up to somebody else. It's like how an anime can have designs from a famous character designer during pre production but how they end up on screen can be quite different, due to the difference between the designer's style and the actual animator's style. I hope they won't have a a hectic schedule for the new GARO project so they can actually use all the resources available.

ZERO will have his own spin off
It will be 6 episode mini series and each episode will be 30 minutes

http://garo-project.jp/ZERO/


There's also going to be a new project for GARO, no word yet on what it is, will update when there's more news

http://garo-project.jp/event/2013-1123/

YES!


Also YES!

Just saw Garo Tougen no Fue movie and I love it a lot. I'm glad to see Zero getting his own series, but 6 episodes just aren't enough. Maybe (hopefully) they can have a series for Jibe and Rekka in the future, too.

Jibe?You mean Jabi right?

Over to GomenRider's Garo rips. Which were a massive disappointment. They didn't translate EVERYTHING like Overtime would, just more. And so since both translations are incomplete, I may as well go with TVN's fancy subs and DVDrips.

In terms of episode 3? Awful. Probably the worst episode of the show so far. The concept of Supernatural (or Buffy, or Dresden Files or...you get the idea), mixed with Toku action is a really great premise but with it only being a twenty minute TV show, as opposed to a forty minute one, and a TV show with much more emphasis on the action than the plot or mythos or whatever, it ends up underwhelming in a lot of crucial areas.

The action wasn't even that great this week either, I mean the set up was epic, but the CGI and greenscreens looked so fucking bad, and the fights end so briefly once he transforms it always feels like an anti-climax and never lives up to its own build up.

Meh.

If you don't like it, then you should stop watching it. Despite what some said, season 1 still has it flaws. Such as Kaoru being really annoying sometimes and the slow moving and rushed main plot. It's not until Rei/Zero appear in episode 6 that thing start heating up. Episode 7 has one of the best fight ever in Tokusatsu.

Three was the only episode I flat out didn't enjoy, so far. The other two had their flaws but were still enjoyable overall.

Garo 04. This is more like it! Fucked up imagery, gore, a creepy hospital. Did they change directors or something? This episode was so stylish, put so much effort into the build up and atmosphere, so everything else was much more satisfying.

If I was to have any complaints, I'd say that hospital really didn't look like one...

What, you've never been to a hospital that's built into an old house with no electric lights? :p

With only one surgeon, one operating theatre and about four nurses. Even the dude's office or whatever it was, was next door to a dining room, what the fuck...

And I understand that he was like controlling the hospital, but it's implied he's been there for quite some time, so did no one question any of this?

BlackJack's home minus a few walls has a similiar setup. :)

Only in Japan...

I thought the same thing when I saw this episode. It was bizarre to say the least.

I mean I appreciate that GARO isn't just 'fight in quarry' 'fight in warehouse' like pretty much every fight in Sentai and Kamen Rider that isn't in a public park or something. The fact he fights in actual urban locations adds to the show, I feel, but if all they had access too was a big house, and the grounds, couldn't they have just gone with a haunted house story or something? He could have been a shrink and did it from his home, if the whole Doctor thing was what you wanted.

All they did was leave the house the same and stuck a sign that said 'hospital' in the grass at the front. So naff.

GARO 05.

So wait...the legend of the Horrors is only just spreading now? Hasn't this stuff been going on for generations? I mean I know we have mobile phones, Twitter and Facebook now and I love a bit of world building, but come on, man.

It doesn't help that a lot of GARO's world is poorly handled, I still don't really understand any of the unique aspects to this series yet but the show treats them so casually by this point it seems to assume the audience knows what is going on. I certainly think that a big part of that is TVN's translation, but still.

Still, the shows shifting focus is a welcome one. The action in this show is largely terrible, there are lots of cool stunts, and lots of even cooler ideas but the CGI is awful and overused, even if you guys have explained - at least in places - why this is so, it doesn't make it any better to watch. Plus I'm really not a big fan of all powerful protagonists, I love watching Kouga fight as he seems on equal footing with the Horrors and gets smashed around as much as he smashes them around, but then he transforms and it's over instantly. Boooooring. So yeah, this greater focus on atmosphere, on horror, I'm liking it much better than those early episodes.

So Kouga is basically Batman?

Garo world's setting is pretty loose since the beginning.
Amemiya keeps on adding stuff in his novels, even the writers for second season (and third, basically the same people) can't get a good grip on those.
Not to mention materials from TV has been omitted just for pachinco games (basically ideas from novels at early stages, but dropped for some odd reason), and later re-import back to later series.

Also Amemiya is from a very wealthy family.
Some of those filming locations are really friend's property, which is why he can do a better job in shutting out project information than Toei.

GARO 06.

What the hell is going on? I feel like I've missed an episode or something. The episode was so all over the place I could barely follow what was happening. They certainly balanced this with some great fight scenes, thankfully. There was a lot less obvious CGI, and more practical stunts, they also seemed to cut down on the shitty sound effects dramatically. This made the fights carry more weight, and feel much more visceral, which made them way more engaging. Plus seeing two Knight's fight side by side was so friggin' cool!

I dunno whether Kaoru is cute, or just annoying. With how annoying female characters normally are in Japan with all their tsunderes and fan service, my tolerance for irritating characters has been raised really high, so I'm no longer sure what actually counts as annoying any more.

I do also like how we've finally addressed the elephant in the room, as well. So the humans possessed by Horrors are bad people in the first place, the Horrors are attracted to that? Okay. And seemingly once possessed, they have no choice but to be destroyed. I guess that makes it easier for black and white lines to be drawn, but it does make me wonder about a lot of the victims. Like what could have the surgeon done? Or the many, many victims of that watch guy? Was the curators crime, liking women? And that business woman liking money? Because that is kinda shitty. Hell, the victim of this week just seemed to hate men, and how they don't appreciate her now she is old, which doesn't really seem fair to condemn her for, it's a valid complaint in our society. Meh.

I will at least be looking forward to them explaining how the Makai organisation works.

The woman from 6 used her looks to dominate and control men when she was younger so there was a bitter hatred in her because she couldn't manipulate or control them anymore. She wanted to have her beauty back so she could use it for personal gain, to control others. That sounds like a pretty good Horror nesting ground to me.

Fair shout. Doesn't really explain the others though.

I think the only one who has fair grasp of it is Yuji Kobayashi, considering he write most of the first season and Amemiya even choose him to write both novels. It's too bad he's too busy with his own career now. BTW, do you mind telling where do you find out infos like Keita Amemiya coming from a wealthy family and the likes?

GARO 07.

How much time has taken place between these episodes? I swear Kaoru either has, or is getting, a new job every episode. She looked sexy as a maid though, so I guess I'm not complaining.

Western Watchdogs? What are they? And why do they only have one Makai Knight? Zero made it sound like you have one Knight per city, but then everyone else makes it sound like there is one Knight for the whole of the west and one Knight for the whole of the East. Which ever way round it is, you would think considering how many horrors there are, and how tired these guys get very quickly, they'd have more. Also, the hell is a Garo?

So the Inga are the gates Horrors come through, which are solid objects? Is that right? This show is really hard to follow with all of TVNs not translated words, and the shows refusal to slow down.

Seeing two Knight's clash was insanely thrilling, though. Even the morphed fight, which I have grown to dread in this show, was like something straight out of a movie. Lots of Western shows have had very similar concepts, but they've seemingly never had the same imagination or creativity when it comes to the fight scenes. Remember how clunky it was to see two Slayer's clash, for example? Buffy and Faith ain't got nothing on these guys.

Like Saint Seiya Omega? :D

It's from one of the Nirasawa Yasushi interviews. It's one of those old ones from Zeiram era when they talked about school and stuff.

Well, he only wrote four episodes in that series. He's more busy as prose writer and to be honest, he seems to be better at them than as a screenwriter. The Gavan novel was much more positively received than the movie which he also write.