List of horrors (excluding those from novels)

http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps8ebbee17.png

Come to think of it these things can't be destroyed, and keeps on coming back after regeneration. Tough game for the human side.

Can't imagine nobody likes the fishy Kaoru.
Give it time and it can do more than just stalking.

http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/a...psf8b58dcb.jpg

Yeah, even killing Meshia won't stop them. As long as human exist there will always be negative emotion, they'll just keep coming back. It's pretty much those "As long as there is evil" thing.

GARO 08.

As has become fairly the norm with this show by this point, the episode had all of its potential wasted by its running time. There were loads of cool ideas here, if not totally original ones, but trying to tell it in twenty minutes is hard enough but it becomes harder when you have characters to focus on, action to tick off etc etc I wish the show would slow down a bit honestly, focus on less things for longer, it'd be so much better for it.

Where's the picture from?

The fish?
http://garo777.me/reach/r-daigouryu.html

I apologize if this has already been asked but I'm trying to avoid having things spoiled by reading through the thread. Do I need to start at GARO and then move on to GARO Makai Senki and then the latest series? I tend to watch Sentai and KR out of order a bit but I'm not sure if that approach would work here. Thanks!

Garo and Garo Makai Senki need to be watched in order yes. With the latest series there would be a few bits that make less sense to you, but its otherwise detached from the previous seasons and could be watched on its own.

To be honest, you may as well watch them in order :lol

I will watch them in order then. Thanks for the info! Now to disappear out of this thread until I get some of the show under my belt. :D

Now Teen Wolf is all caught up with, back to GARO and I'm on episode nine!

Kaoru is cute and all, but I don't see why so much of this episode should be focused on her character, I don't care about her at all. And sure she is important to the story, but in a forced fashion, they should be using this time to have her sharing scenes with Kouga, so we can see why he'd go down the same path as his father for her.

As of right now, their entire relationship is defined by Kouga going 'she's a bit fit' and Kaoru being a sort of less agonising tsundere, that doesn't make for a fun character dynamic or an engaging romance. What is it with these shows and their reluctancy to express romance on screen? Even toku 'couples' aren't even shown to share a hand hold, let alone anything else, and it makes it completely unconvincing.

The fight with his inner Garo was a lot of fun, largely because it minimised the quantity of CGI used and concentrated more on practical stunts, and wirework, and looked absolutely fantastic for it. It was also nice to see Kouga knocked down a peg. I didn't really get the resolution of this battle though, all along he had to...self harm or something? And he overcame a fear he didn't address? And that was important apparently. And the sword was iron because his shadow isn't a Horror and that is important and surprising because of some reasons?

The other battle this week, with Humpty, was less impressive. Humpty himself looked fine, but the battles with him were almost entirely done with poor CGI. Kouga's new upgrade, with the horse and buster sword was pretty neat though.

GARO 10.

The clown and his puppets weren't even creepy, they just look stupid. I guess that is part of why it is fucked up, but he certainly was no Joker, that is for sure. The Goblin King clown thing that he turned into was pretty awesome though, even with the so so CGI.

I can't get over the similarities between this and Wizard. Kouga practically looks, sounds and acts like Haruto, and they basically are exactly the same character. Then there is Zero, transforming and crying, "it's show time!", before charging into battle. Wizard really did rip this show off blind, didn't it? Then just made it slightly more kid friendly.

It's amazing how every character in toku shows has dead parents. They do realise that if you kill off everyone's parents, the effect you are trying to convey loses meaning? I don't see that as a dramatic thing any more, I see it as something you just assume in toku shows.

Kaoru is in another job?! Jesus.

GARO 11.

Man this episode had some really great visuals, I love how the Shadow Realm was depicted. Both statically, and when Kouga was taking part in the games. It looked deliberately artificial, but convincingly alive at the same time. Alive with motion and colour. It's odd though that some of the other real world sets looked so incredibly cheap, but I guess the money usually spent on those were used for the Shadow Realm instead. It's just a shame that the actual Horror himself, looked so immensely goofy. Why was Kouga able to summon his armour in the Shadow Realm? It's been shown before that when a Horror controls a space, they can stop him summoning it.

A human soul is 21 grams? Well that is different.

This was my favourite part of the episode: http://i.imgur.com/Et4VHOp.jpg. Thanks TVN.

GARO 12.

So Kouga's origin story. I'll be honest, I really don't care for Kouga as a protagonist, he is basically everything the haters claim Haruto is and when I saw how clichéd his origin story, I rolled my eyes regularly. However, when it all came together, it was actually a really well done episode and really did a great job of explaining to the audience why Kouga is the way he is now, and gave me new found appreciation for his character. I can't say I exactly like him, because I don't, but it's surprisingly rare for a backstory to fit so perfectly into place to explain the way a character is.

Also, his Dad was seriously fucking cool.

GARO 13...was a clip show? Aw damn, there goes my before work entertainment then. I wonder if I can download and watch something in the twenty minutes I have left this morning. I doubt it.

GARO 14.

Yay an episode focused on Zero! It's just a shame it's all so limp wristed and rushed. Harut-...I mean Kouga's backstory was way better handled, and I think he is the weaker of the two characters.

Other stuff failed to impress as well. Seeing the two Knight's on their horses fighting like a thousand Horrors, was really cool, but ruined by being done almost entirely by very poor CGI. GARO's CGI is about that of the same quality of Faiz', which came out like three years before this show, and that says everything. It was like they went through a portal to a cutscene from a late PS2 game or very early PS3 one.

i heard from jefusion that the production committee will be making another miniseries exclusively for silver knight ZERO... that i be looking forward to!!!

A Zero focused show? Want.

Yeah, a six episode mini series. It was announced last week.

GARO 15.

So all of this IS taking part in a single location, but the city is split into East and West? I dunno if that is better, or worse.

Boobs and buttsex. That is really like the extent of what I have to say, on this episode, I didn't get the point of this Horror at all. He made clay statues, spent a long time perfecting them, just to break them to pieces to see the model die. Okay. Still, letting Zero destroy the monster on his own was fun.

Also, how dense is Kaoru, she knows her father is connected to the Horrors, she then finds a man who may be connected to her father...in an abandoned industrial park. Like, come on, I know you want to find out more about your father, but weren't your alarm bells screaming as you walked into this area? I mean mine would anyway, but yours should especially so.

And what was with all the first person cinematography? That was a weird device that had never been used in the show before.

That's just how the Horror ate. They don't just grab a person and kill them - they like to torture in very specific ways first. I think one of the early ones said that it's basically a way to add extra flavor to the soul before they eat it.

I know that but it just seemed a waste of time on screen. They did the torture scene twice, and both times they were long and gratitious providing no real substance to the episode at all.

GARO 16.

I'm never sure how to feel about episodes like this. Obviously story focused episodes are better than filler ones and it's nice that Kouga finally has a direct goal, plus I'm a huge urban fantasy fan, but so much of GARO's mythology makes absolutely no sense. Not even on some kind of internal logic. And the whole romance aspect of this series just completely fails. The questions I'm left with, is what is Makai? And what does a Makai Priest got out of said position?

I want a show focused on Taiga, is there one? I know we've only seen small glimpses of him, so it isn't really fair to judge, but from what we've seen he seems like a really great character and I'd love to see more of his adventures as a Makai Knight, training and protecting his son on the side.

Oh and hey look it's the bitch from Nexus, great.

GARO 17.

This was easily the most disturbing episode of GARO yet. It's been a damn while since we had a proper horror focused episode, like the early episodes were, so this was damn refreshing.

There was a cool revelation brought up in this episode to, I've never really thought about the crossover in toku shows before, as we rarely see the heroes do anything other than fight the monster of that week but to have Zaruba strictly tell Kouga not to get involved in human crimes was really interesting.

It goes even further than that, as the Watchdogs explain that Hunting Horrors is Kouga's only goal, not saving humans. But it's been pretty clear since the beginning that the Watchdogs are evil, and then last episode Amon practically spelt it out.

If a creepy dude appears and asks you to come home with him, to draw his pet, why would you go with him?! And then when he tries to kill her...she protects and defends him?! Fuck, Kouga isn't in love with you, because you're as annoying as you are dense.

Man, I love how little CGI there was this week, the hell mermaid, as pathetic and disgusting as it was, looked absolutely amazing.

That Mermaid horror is the thing of nightmares, even when its just flopping around dying. Easily Garo's most disturbing moment.

It was made even more disturbing thanks to the sociopath dude, like when he was kissing it in the tub, it wasn't that disturbing in itself but something about the context of it all just made my skin crawl. And then even when its true form has been revealed, he's hugging it and telling it how beautiful it is and *shudder*

So now I'm getting towards the final leg of GARO, what comes next? I know there is like three other series, and a whole pile of movies, but what is required viewing, what is worth viewing and what goes before what?

The Mermaid Horror appears again in the Yoseki no Wana novel, IINM. This time, she's no longer trapped in the water tank and is able to fight. As Zaruba put it: "Before she get out from the water tank she's weak, but after getting out of the water tank she's a troublesome opponent."

After the first series you have the Kiba Side Story, Demon Beast of the Midnight Sun and Red Requiem. After that watch the second season (Makai Senki) and then there's the recently released Tougen No Fue side story. Finally there's the latest movie, Soukoku no Maryu, but that hasn't been subbed yet. For now that rounds off Kouga's story.

The latest season, The One Who Shines in the Darkness, is set sometime after with an all new cast and (currently) has little relating the two other than Zaruba.

Thanks for the info guys!

GARO 18.

Kodama turned out to be really cool, it was nice to see him finally fight, after they hinted at him being a badass for the whole series. The whole episode had great fights, GARO does them so well, when it isn't relying on CGI. Although Zero and Kouga's fight was a little more CGI heavy, and didn't involve a free fall down the side of a building this time, seeing them two just lay into each other was just awesome, it really convinced just how badly they wanted to kill each other.

It's nice to know that the bitch from Nexus isn't quite as much of a bitch this time around, but it's only by a little. She is certainly a lot more leggy in this though, whoa Jesus.

Priest Amon has been murdered? It's almost like he was only a thinly veiled plot device and not actually a character!

GARO 19.

Although the clash between Knights wasn't quite as epic as it was the first time around, the fact they did it almost entirely practically, made it worthwhile in itself. Although it wasn't quite as amazing as the fight with Kodama, who is fucking awesome, and he hasn't said a word. Or the introduction of a brand new Knight, that Wizard also ripped off.

I really like Jabi's effect on Kouga, up until this point, Kouga has been infuriatingly arrogant, but she practically full on pushes him off of his high horse and it's damn refreshing to see him on the left foot. And then she died. And he seemed to care for about thirty seconds then seemed to forget it happened. Great.

You're not quite done with Jabi yet. ;)

Exciting!

GARO 20.

I really like the way they've set up Kouga's character arc, spending most of the show as your typical unfailable hero, only for everything to suddenly start to wildly slip from his hands, until everything is crumbling around him and he has no idea what to do because he's never been at a point of no control.

I don't just mean that in the deaths, either, Kaoru is a point of chaos in his life, summoning feelings he doesn't know how to face or comprehend. There is a reason to fight, beyond destroying Horrors? A sword can be used to protect? Kouga has had these ideas, all along, but never had a face to place to the words.

Suddenly he's all huge bursts of anger, wild declarations even he can't confirm he can actually live up to, and a few jokes and smiles, and this creates an emotional resonance on us as they bothered to set up Kouga in control, so for us the gravity of the situation is all the more real in Kouga's dramatically shifted mannerisms. I just wish the romance was better handled, and much more convincing.

And as far as CGI abominations go in toku, I thought Grou Dragon was really really cool.

Zetsuro Zero Black Blood

http://p.twpl.jp/show/large/5n94x

http://p.twpl.jp/show/orig/mbkw9

That is a very... unfortunate goatee.

Dat pube chin.

GARO 21.

This was a great episode, in a lot of ways. I loved the continuity and world building, it shows hell of a lot more thought has been placed into this than your usual toku, and goes to deep, darker more thought provoking places while it is at it.

I love how Kouga has retained a sense of control again in his life, but is no longer simply streamrolling through his fights, and I loved the little critique of a genre and culture that centres around placing the old in the modern.

Plus, the Gun Horror looked insanely cool and the action was great fun. And I gotta admit, the little romantic walk between him and Kaoru was so cute.

Random question: Are there any design differences between Kouga and Ryuga's Garo armour?

I'm just wondering out loud how easy it would be to repurpose a Garo figuart into the Ryuga version, since it'll probably never get made in that line.

Man there is a Kouga GARO Figuart? I need that shit.

Yup. They did Garo, Taiga and Zero. The only differences between Garo and Taiga being the eye colour and Taiga coming with the bigass sword I've forgotten the name of.

Zero and Taiga were web exclusives too. Not sure how much Taiga runs for but I have a Zero on the way to me that was about 4000 yen.

Oooo I'd love a Zero even more!

Garo 22.

So Kaoru goes from Horror bait, to being the gate for the ultimate Horror? Poor girl, is this like a reverse Mary Sue? Although I think her backstory was probably the weakest part of the episode, 'oh yeah lol I just remembered...' I do like that her and Kouga are more openly romantic now.

Beast sure has a complicated backstory in this show, especially for something that turns out to be so simple, but I'd still rather too much explaining than none at all like in Wizard. Barago was fucking awesome from the start though, which Beast couldn't say the same.

Hell, this overly complicated backstory even made Taiga come across as even more awesome, as one of his final actions was to mark Barago for death meaning even though Taiga would die, Barago would die as well a few days later. Where is my Taiga centred show?!

Kouga didn't half chat some shit tough, I'm pretty sure every episode his armour has been pierced and he's taken injuries through it.

GARO 23.

The Watchdogs killed the Western Makai Knight? But isn't that Zero? So Kodama is the son of the Watchdogs? I don't wanna know how that works, or why they gave birth to Black Bolt. But all I know is, Kodama is so damn fun to watch fight. Not sure how I feel about his armour though, the helmet looked kinda goofy. It's just a shame he was killed by Kouga, when Kouga became some ridiculous and cheap CGI abomination.

Although it looked like shit, I loved the CGI abomination from a story telling point of view. Remember that other post where I gushed about Kouga? Yeah. I love that now he's so desperate, he's willing to give his soul to the darkness, just to have the power to win. He would have spat at the idea in the first fifteen episodes, so it shows how much he has grown as a character but also the gravity of how dire his circumstances are right now.

So that is who the foppy haired guy was, Kaoru always addressed him as Sensei but they never once established who he was. Now we know. Minus the terrible haircut though, he is really fucking awesome, as I was watching this show alongside Dairanger, I can't tell you how much I missed the oh shit factor from my villains.

What is it with Kouga running everywhere? By the time he got to the scene, it was a night time, why not just get a cab?!

GARO 24.

So the Watchdogs were just slaves to Messiah this entire time? Why? I know they said something about them once being the Black Knight or some shit, but it's really confusing, none of their motivations make any sense, hell I'm not even sure what their motivations are. Her transformed form as well...err...what is with the torso bit? Is it juvenile that I was distracted by the fact that the only detail her torso had was erect nipples?

Barago was a massive disappointment as well, after all his hype, he ended up doing surprisingly little and felt like a real waste. A Dark Makai Knight was enough for a big bad of the season, without the need for the Mummy Horror Messiah or whatever else. I mean at least when they ripped him off in Wizard, the White Wizard actually got a few awesome fights before he died, Barago's fights were exclusively brief curb stomps which were badass but didn't give us many details of his powers.

Despite being crucial to the set up, both Barago and the Watchdogs became remarkably unimportant by the end which may well be the point. But they spent so much time on Barago, and remarkably little time on Messiah that it just feels really poorly handled. Especially as just as Barago and the Watchdogs finally stepped out of the shadows and got directly involved, they were either killed or immediately dropped down a handful of pegs in the importance scale.

The fighting was kinda meh for me in this episode. I mean the action was still great, but Zero has already been slashed and beaten by Barago, Kouga and Echo and then proceeded to fall down a building. Some of those injuries carried over for a while, like the limp, but then one by one they all vanished and he seemed fine again. This distracted me from the fight at hand, because he was supposed to be getting all these grave injuries and all I could think is he's already shrugged off a fall from a building, this dude will be fine.

Kouga did the same, I can't count the amount of times he sprayed blood all over the place or was rolling around nursing a broken limb, only to stand back up and be totally fine minus a bit of sweat on his brow. It takes the tension out of a scene, if every injury is completely superficial. And yes, I know Sentai and Rider does this as well, but it's kind of an unspoken rule that wounds work differently when transformed. They don't bleed, they burn and spark which allows me to accept that a fatal sword slash is something that can be taken on the chin. But Zero and Kouga spent the whole episode untranformed, so there was no logic as to why their injuries kept vanishing or simply being shrugged off.

Messiah Kaoru was fucking hot though. And then she becomes...a giant naked woman. I like this villain.

Time for the final episode of the first season of GARO!

Winged Kouga looked pretty fucking awesome, they really stepped up the CGI for this episode. Just a shame that Messiah was defeated so easily. I could say the same about the Watchdogs, but I love the way Gonza saved the day. Also wasn't Zero transforming just fine in that room just a moment ago? So why suddenly, couldn't they?

In the end, much like the Watchdogs and Barago, Messiah was superfluous. Honestly, considering how important the Watchdogs and Barago were in getting us to the finale, Messiah was even more of a tacked on after thought and I'm honestly left wondering why they included her at all, beyond having Kouga fight a giant topless woman in a thong, of course. Instead our final villain is an entirely new character, Kiba the Dark Knight.

Although we have no real investment in Kiba as a villain, I will say I LOVED his battle with Kouga. Some of the special effects work was...iffy...at best, but it felt more like a climax of a movie, full of epic set pieces. There is nothing wrong with Rider and Sentai action, but I feel like their fights stand out less, once you've seen one battle in a rock quarry, you've pretty much watched the whole show until the Rider gets a new form, or the Rangers get a new weapon. GARO however seemed to strive to make its important battles much more memorable, and fights like this with Kiba or when Garo and Zero battled their way down the side of a building really are going to stick with me.

What certainly helped as well, is the locations. Locations were never really something I gave much thought too, until the Marvel cinematic universe, and I realised how naff it seems that the fate of the world is decided in abandoned factories or rock quarries, the stage of the battle of good and evil is as important as the fight itself, and those locations just don't live up. So I was so pleased to see how little of GARO took place in abandoned warehouses and I'm pretty sure there were no quarries at all. The use of office blocks, city streets and public locations gave me a much greater sense of immediacy to the battle, that this war against the Horrors really is happening around us. Overall, that is probably the reason I can't hate GARO.

Still, the greatest aspect of the show had to be Kouga, who is probably my new all time favourite protagonist. His character arc, and growth, across the show is probably the best I've ever seen in toku, ever. He starts out as your generic steamroller who is without fault and you yawn away, but this is brilliantly set up to truly show how high the stakes become by the end. The shot of him crying at the last page of the book, and all the spoken and unspoken meaning behind it gave me goosebumps, I've rarely seen a character handled this well. He was just wonderful.

GARO still frustrated me in a lot of ways though, mostly in how poorly it managed its time. A lot of toku seems stretched even after the first twenty episodes, let alone trying to fill fifty, so I was hoping with GARO being only twenty five episodes it would be much more streamlined and focused. That seemed to be the case, but then in the last three or so episodes they totally fucked it up as a revolving door of villains without motivation or purpose kept popping up, being swiftly offed and replaced by someone else.

I think I'd rate GARO 'great' if I just imagined Kouga and Zero died on that bridge, Kaoru became Messiah and the planet was destroyed. But with the ending we got, I'd say the show was good and highly entertaining but it ultimately promised more than it really delivered. But I guess the saving grace is they all survived, so we can have more glorious Kouga moments still.

So next up is the Kiba Gaiden, yeah?

Might as well be since it's a prequel. As long as you tackle that, Beast of the Midnight Sun and Red Requiem before Makai Senki, you're good to go.

What's the first Garo series called? I looked up Garo episode 1 on youtube and found a bunch of series with different Japanese words after it, so I'm presuming they're the sequels.

Just "Garo".

Thanks

The first two Garo shows tend to combine ongoing plots with a lot of standalone episodes. It does make the pacing kind of awkward, but a lot of the more memorable moments come from the standalones, where Amemiya and the writers just go nuts with crazy concepts.

There's also the bonus episode from the DVD, "Smile." It's a weird little 23 minutes of randomness, but there are some nice Kaoru moments in there. And Kodama's one speaking part always amuses me.

The standalone horror (as in the genre) episodes were great, I wasn't that hot on the standalone episodes which basically just involved Kouga fighting for twenty minutes. As fun as the action was, these episodes were a waste of time in the long run.

And the revolving door of villains at the end annoyed me more, because they spent pretty much three whole episodes establishing Barago as the main villain, only for him to be killed after barely doing anything, only to be replaced by two more villains who would also die moments later without achieving anything and also lacked the build up Barago had.

That isn't even mentioned Echo and his Momma, who were there for the entire show and were a slowly unwrapping mystery, only to serve absolutely no purpose by the time they died and to never have their motivations revealed.

Oh yeah, that was quite fun.

Did TVN sub that?

Yeah, its on KRDL under "[T-N]Garo_Gaiden[9015045B]DVDver2.avi"

You may like The One Who Shines in the Darkness more in that regard. It's much more serialized than Makai Senki and OG Garo.

Cheers bro!

I don't mind episodic, if it stays that way, but a common annoyance with toku is that they're episodic for 35 episodes and then suddenly decide they want to be serialized for the last run of the show. That was a big reason why Fourze failed so hard in the final ten or so episodes.

So I just finished the Kiba Gaiden and....meh.

It was actually a great film, it added a lot of new and interesting stuff to the mix while also providing better context for Messiah and Kiba (although still nothing for Echo and his Momma) but knowing how little to no impact any of this new stuff has on the show itself, and how crap Barago's story ends, it was hard to care about any of this. Especially as so much of it was told as a cheap motion comic. I hope the other two films are better.