Definitely more action this week, including some good aerial stuff with Crow. I liked the monster design and the idea behind it, but I again think this would have worked a lot better if the show had ever bothered to explain what exactly the fuck Mayuri is.

I enjoyed the episode - I agree it felt out of place. I expected more out of it.


Starting ep 13 now - new intro / song

Is it just me, or does it seem like there is a serious lack of development from Crow? The show just gives me no reason to like him at all other than him being a nice guy and his cool Femto armor.

And while episode 13 was good, I have to say that overall, these last 4 episodes have been quite weak.

It's not just Crow; none of the characters are getting development. I'm loving a lot of the individual episodes, but the show is focusing on the Horror of the week so much that the main cast often feel like guest stars.

Good episode this week, only thing I can really complain about is that I'll miss the old ending theme as I prefer it over the new one.

I tend to always prefer the first openings/endings over the new ones in every Garo series and this is no different. The first opening songs are always unique, sound great, have a great video to go with them. The second openings sound like every anime opening ever.

Flowers 13. The camera loves Mayuri, shame the story isn't interested.

I personally found this episode pretty frustrating. To me, one of the most rewarding parts of any story is continuity, especially a long running one. Continuity provides rewards for sticking around, I absolutely hate shows that cater to those who poke their heads in for one episode half way through, as if somehow someone whose stuck around from the start is valued equally to them as a floater drifting past.

Sadly...especially when it comes to power levels...GARO has no real continuity. I get Raiga is GARO, the best of the best, which may explain why he never needs to be in his armour for longer than like fifteen seconds but GARO also makes a big deal out of how few Knights there are, so each one is special.

Despite this, the majority of the Knights we meet have practically no defined characterisation and are no better really than your average sentai footsoldier. We were introduced to about six Knights this episode, five of them were dead by about the second minute in and none of them bar one is named. Hell none of them had any on screen armour, and they added practically a fat pile of fuck all to the episode minus a few contrived moments of contrivance.

If that wasn't bad enough though, the ones with defined personality are so rare that they practically feel like plotholes in themselves. Why do Knights like Zero and Dan have their own unique armours and weapons, when it was shown the vast majority of Knights all fight with the same weapon and armour? Surely if there are so few Knights, none of them would be weak and the difference in power between Zero and Makai Knight A should be relatively small?

But to further throw a cog in the works remember that Knight in the Zero special? Despite not even getting a design on his coat, the sheer laziness around his characterisation actually made him come across much stronger than Raiga as he was able to go toe to toe with Ring without even transforming. What was the deal with that?

And I know most people are forgiving of stuff like this, for reasons I can't really understand, but it really frustrates me that Japan make these long running franchises but then seem to care very little, to not at all, as to how all the pieces are supposed to fit together. Even if cross franchise continuity ala Marvel is not something that interests them, each individual series at least should make sense and adhere to its own rules.

Speaking more specifically of the episode itself, it had some of the best CG I've seen from a tokusatsu production and the aerial battle was breathtaking. With so many brief armour action sequences this series, that aerial sequence was a real hark back to all those epic comicbook like moments from the first two seasons.

But I dunno, in a way, that sequence - and this episode in general - really made me realise what a weak season it's been overall, it's still better than Makai Senki but not a touch on the original GARO season or TOWSITD but I guess we might not be too late yet for the show to turn it around.

Good episode this week; we finally got some answers about Mayuri that really did explain quite a bit of what her deal is. At the same time, though, I've officially given up on ever expecting Crow to have a personality.

On a side note, the actress who played the Horror this week was the main character's friend on Shougeki Gouraigan: Haruka Ando. She has the prettiest eyes. :o

This week was the requisite clip show. It was still kind of enjoyable, though, and the cinematography was kind of neat. Next week's episode looks awesome.

A ****ing clip show!!!!!!!

I fast forwarded through 90% of it, but the fight with the camera was kind of cool.

Nevertheless, haven't they already wasted enough time fooling around this season? They had three or four bad episodes in a row, took a week off, came back with an okay episode, then we finally get a really good episode, only to have a cheap clip show next.

Yeah, I'm really beginning to lose steam with this show which is a massive shame because its had some of the best standalone episodes of the entire franchise.

Stylistically its leaps and bounds ahead of The One Who Shines in the Darkness, but never with that show did I really feel it losing direction. Half this show has just been aimlessly muddling about.

I've not even watched the latest two episodes because I just have no motivation with this series at all. It has had some great standalone episodes, but most of it has been incredibly slow and boring. Especially as with each new GARO season they became more and more focused and story driven, only to then get this with lots of healthy mysteries to draw plot from but instead we get a season even more aimless than the first GARO season.

The first season is still the best Garo season. Hana is still better than Makai and most certainly light years superior to the Ryuga show.

For me it's GARO > Towsitd > Makai Senki and then this.

yeah, no. I might have my issues with this series, but TOWSID did not even have a plot or any character development. Not to mention it did not even have any big in armor fight scenes, and when they did, it all looked fake.

TOWSITD was the most story focused of all GARO seasons, to say it didn't have a plot makes me assume you never even watched it. Yeah the fights were disappointing, especially after Makai Senki but it picked up the slack from that show which failed majorly in the story and character departments.

I guess it might have had a plot if you actually cared about the characters, none of which I did. I did not find any enjoyment in any of the characters from it outside of the priestess. Even Zaruba was unlikable.

I'm not sure where I'd rank Makai no Hana. I don't mind the return of standalone episodes, but the characters are all really underdeveloped. I want to like Raiga and Mayuri, but the show would rather spend time developing the monster of the week than the main characters.

That said, the cinematography and art design on this show are beautiful; everything TOWSITD was lacking and more. And a lot of the standalone plots are good, too. In a lot of ways it actually feels the most like the original series of all the later shows. It just lacks a strong thread to tie together the episodes and the characters need a lot more work. The show really needs a Kaoru-type character for Raiga to bounce off of instead of the slightly mobile mannequin that is Mayuri.

Still, it's Garo and I love it.

Especially after the mess that was Black Blood.

The weird thing about any GARO sequel is it always improves on the previous season in the most key, obvious area but then leaves everything that worked about that season behind. What this means is every GARO season is massively flawed to the same degree, just always in different areas. It's really frustrating, four seasons and they still can't get it right. Why can't we get a show with the characters like in GARO, with a story like in TOWSITD and action like in Makai Senki?

I don't know. But for me, at least, even subpar Garo is still better than anything Super Hero Time is doing.

I can probably answer some of the questions.
Garo, unlike SHT, has no fixed teams to film the story.
Other than the chief director and the chief backstory writer there is no consistency while filming the episodes. Directors and script writers don't sit down to chat about how things should be filmed and what should be heavily emphasized after the last episode. There can be time-frames between episodes, with last episodes being filmed months before the early episodes by completely new crews.
Garo is a nursing school for new directors and staff, who are friends of Amemiya. As the chief director Amemiya sits there to watch, but never interferes the filming. Episode directors are free do whatever they like to the episodes, and later becomes their portfolio for more jobs in their later career.

And wasn't TOWSITD a case of Amemiya trusting one of these other directors with a whole series, which is what led to it having a tighter overall plot?

Actually there aren't much of a change like the previous series, except of having a different chief director. Time scheduling was about the same (Nagasawa Nao and a couple others filmed their part 9 months after they wrapped up the final episode). Plot-wise Amemiya left everything to the backstory crew to have fun with, so not much sudden new 'ideas' popped up and disappeared from time to time.
I say TOWSITD is probably the only Garo series which chief director actually worked closely with the backstory team (according the the numbers of tweets about private messages).

I think it is better to treat Garo as a stage show.
Some directors prefers to have if filmed like heros on attraction sites stage, while some made it more like a regular TV show with some stage acting elements.

Solid "Horror of the week" episode this time. Not the most creative in terms of visuals or plot, but very solid and decent overall. We had another Shougeki Gouraigan actress as the Horror this week and she did well. I'm not sure if I found all her giggling cute or annoying, but at least she got stabbed in the end. I was hoping for that so much during the last few Gouraigan episodes. :lol

I liked the scene with Raiga, Crow, and Mayuri at the end. It almost felt like the cast had chemistry for a minute. Almost.

Will they show Kouga & Kaoru in the series?

Amemiya has said he has no intention for them to appear.

This week Raiga's teacher shows up.
Yeah the guy in sliver who wields double sword.

Watched episode 16 today and it was probably the best episode since episode 9. Not to mention it has the coolest looking Horror since the horror movie one. And the fight scene was pretty awesome. However, is it just me, or do the Horrors of this season seem pretty weak? They all seem to be killed quite easily.

This week's episode brought a rather large smile to my face :D

So every season of Garo has the childhood flashback episode; it's pretty much mandatory. Kouga had two, Ryuga had one, Rian had one, and now it's Raiga's turn. Usually these turn out to be above average episodes and some, like Makai Senki's, turn out to be series standouts. So how did Makai no Hana's turn out?

This was, hands down, not only the best episode of the series but also easily one of my favorite Garo episodes ever. I'm not going to say anything in detail, not even in spoiler text, for anyone who's reading this thread before seeing it. But I will say that I also had a huge smile on my face throughout this one and I even got a little misty eyed during the credits. This whole episode was fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

This series REALLY suffers from lack of a good soundtrack. Yami's was hands down fantastic, and that really helped the series along. This series... not too great anything-wise. This episode was above par, but still not fantastic by any stretch of the imagination. And was I the only one who noticed the color of the candles on Raiga's cake? Red, blue, green, yellow, and pink, coincidence?

Okay, first things first: not even Keita Amemiya can make armor nipples work. I was constantly distracted by Joel Schumacher flashbacks whenever Biku was on screen.

That said, I did like her as a character. I like that we're seeing more of the different circles of the Makai this year: first we got black ops Knights like Crow, now we get something like a Makai Internal Affairs officer dedicated to taking down Knights who fall into darkness. Very cool. Biku may not be as awesome as Jabi, but a) who is? and 2) she's still pretty cool. I really liked the fights this week, especially what I think was the most extended use of the Garo armor so far this season.

Theory time: the camera was focusing a lot on Crow when Biku was talking about tracking down whoever shattered the monolith. Like, suspiciously lingering on him. Might it turn out that he's really the villain? Will anyone care because he's barely even a character?

That breast breast-plate was too distracting. However, I thought she was a cool character. If Crow was the bad guy, that would be awesome!

This week was kind of a letdown after the last couple episodes. Just another random Horror of the Week (and a pretty obnoxious one, at that). The fight at the end with the orchestra was neat, but this one was pretty forgettable.

Okay episode this week. I liked the stuff with the dad and his daughter, even if it was just a couple of scenes. The big problem with this one, though, was that it was focused around Crow, whose character remains flatter than a pancake on Keira Knightley's chest in the middle of Kansas. Raiga was good, but the final fight was insanely anticlimactic.

We watched 18-20 tonight and while they were good episodes (well, the music one was down right phenomenal), the show has only 5 episodes left and we still know next to nothing about Crow, there has been nothing in the way of plot development, and there hasn't been a truly truly epic battle at all. In fact, the character development has suffered a lot this series. I was okay with it in the beginning, but we should have had some sort of back story for Crow by now.

Raiga's unstoppable rage beatdown in episode 21 reminds me of the one Kuuga did to Go-Jaraji-Da, kinda unnerving.

I guess I was wrong about Crow being the secret bad guy this time; I really thought the show was going there, though, especially during that short scene with him and Gonza. He does seem to have some connection to the real villain, though. Son, maybe? Student?

I really liked the Horror this week. It's a pity he was killed off, though, as I really wanted to know more about him and why he was wielding that sword and eating other Horrors. It seemed like there was a lot of untapped potential in him. He definitely had a way to get under Raiga's skin, too.

I'm 3 episodes behind right now, about to binge-watch and get caught up, but I have to admit that this series is single-handedly killing my enthusiasm for the franchise. The nods and winks to previous seasons were fun at first, but it feels like maybe that's all they have to offer; the storyline begun in the first episode has gone nowhere and the character development is the same. I'll concede there have been a handful of good to great stand alone horror-of-the-week episodes, but for the most part this has been a very disappointing series.