The DVD special is... well, it's interesting. For a start, it was definitely made closer to the midpoint of the show than the end. Second, it's mostly just some quiet character stuff that's really good but developed in definitely odd ways. It's a lot of fun, but definitely a tonal shift when watched right after the finale.

I...

Wha...

This episode sent me to another plane of existence.

I almost don't even wanna talk about it, because legit, this episode is a friggen experience. You NEED to watch it as raw and cold as possible.

Like, just when you think it can't possibly go any farther than it has, it does. And yet it somehow manages to still have an emotional core at the end? I don't know if this episode is insane or an actual masterpiece.

Just... just go watch it. You cannot possibly be expecting this to go the way it does after an entire show like what GARO was.

Switchblade's description is apt.

But yeah, just watch it. I didn't even rate it on my media thread properly. Just ?/10 because yeah

Yep. All of this is why I frickin' love this episode.

I honestly have to give it to you Switchblade. You managed to describe it perfectly without giving way just how wild it actually gets.

And yeah, this is easily one of the most memorable episodes across the franchise. I feel like when I get old and describe this episode to someone they'll just assume I've gone senile. Which, ya know, granted, but like...


Also! There'll be a slight delay on me covering Beast of the Demon Night as I'd ideally like to watch that on a night where I don't have work. So hopefully it'll just be an extra day or two.

I remember it. I was also impressed at the time. I did not expect that GARO could go into comedy so much and still remain himself. Plus, the jewelry actors were given a chance to show their faces.

The voice actors for Zaruba and Silva getting to show up was a definite treat to be sure!

Also, as this experience through GARO is winding down, I want to ask all of you for your input on any other non-Big Three Toku you feel I should check out. I already have a few in mind, but if enough people recommend anything specific I'll most likely prioritize watching those over some others.

When Kenji Matsuda and Masahiro Inoue turned into Makai Knights tho…

I will always be the one who advocates for and will say

"Watch Dogengers!"

It's 3 Seasons deep with a 4th on the way this year.

I'll always recommend Daimajin Kanon, especially if you liked Kamen Rider Hibiki. It was made by the same creators and is very much its spiritual successor.

Noted!

I actually watched Daimajin Kanon right after watching Hibiki. It was a great time.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon from 2003. Just because Hibiki was mentioned, the actor Ibuki plays Tuxedo Kamen there.

I've actually seen that one! I remember rather liking it, though it's been years now and I only remember a few key details. Might be due for a rewatch at some point.

Hey, so, today is my birthday, and I wanna give a big shout out to three friends of mine, because when they found out I was watching GARO, they all pitched in to get me this.

https://i.imgur.com/9CZw2IX.jpg

That's the Seihou Zero, and he's a wonderful figure. Whoever had him last took really good care of him too, because the figure looks and feels brand new. Happy to have him alongside my Seihou 2nd Garo.

Oh nice! Zero is the best!

Also I will just recommend the Live Action Cutie Honey series.

But nobody roast me if reviewing such a show turns into a disaster!

I'm kinda interested in that one actually. Now, I only have very basic knowledge of Cutie Honey, having seen the original anime ages ago(I barely remember it by now), but I'm always up for more Go Nagai.

You can definitely tell that this was two specials edited together into one movie.

That said, I did rather enjoy it, and felt that it made for a very nice epilogue to the first season of the show.

There's alot of smart decisions made here in that it showcases alot of things that the show didn't, or otherwise answers some questions people probably had by the time things wrapped up.

Such as bringing Jabi back after she got dealt a bad hand, showing us who Koga's' mother is, showing that Silva was indeed repaired, and probably most importantly, focusing a heck of alot of the plot on a tribe of Makai Alchemists to showcase more of what they can do and what their culture can be like.

That being said, I do feel as though the movie makes one rather critical error.

Given how everything plays out, and the emotional stakes at play during the climax, it really should've been Dan who was at the forefront of the final battle.

Speaking of our gleaming new White Knight, I got a kick out of him not just for his arc, but because, while I'm not intimately familiar with Amemiya's' other works, I did immediately recognize Tsubasa as an expy of Gren from Iria: Zeiram. It's that iconic earring flick. Also Kilik from Soul Calibur, but that's not as important.

Still, that aside, I did have a good time with the film thanks to its overall likable cast and slick action that the show made itself known for. Certainly made for a great send off to the original show, in my eyes.

Yeah, I'm not sure if it was always the original intention, but it definitely feels like they're like "Well shit we got rid of Jabi... maybe we shouldn't have?" when it comes to the first half of the movie/first special. Very much a course correction which I'm honestly fine with.

We also get introduced to Dan, and he's pretty cool as well even if he is a rough dude to be around at the start.

That being said, I knew it was happening soon! So now I can talk about Episode's 24, 25 and this movie in regards to Rei and Silva.

I think it's real clever that Silva nearly gives her life for Rei, Rei witnesses Zaruba's sacrifice, and not long after she's repaired he immediately ditches Silva as a necklace and has her just attached to the glove he wears. It's subtle storytelling but it's real nice to see that little sort of arc take place.

But yes, nice little epilogue for the original series, and for good reason. As since Garo isn't exactly the biggest budget of series, it would go to sleep for a good 4 years before it hit the big screen with the next special or rather actual big movie, released.

And for once... I can finally utter the words. Thank you Pachinko!

Feels weird saying that name without sort of feeling meh or bad about it given all the times pachinko spurns fans with cool stuff that never happens. In this case Pachinko would be the lifeblood that Garo needed to continue strong for a good while once we hit the 2010's.

Oh wow! I did not know it came back because of pachinko machines. Dang!

I have always wondered about the people who play those games. Like, do they actually like the cute or cool characters that show up on the machine that has given them a gambling addiction and stolen all their money? Especially with the stereotype that pachinko parlors are filled with elderly people. They are getting a kick out of Garo?

I guess they are.

Or maybe we Tokusatsu fans have just robbed the elderly and addicted and used that money to pay for more great Tokusatsu shows. (EDIT: I’m being sarcastic it is not our fault how the evil companies make money)

I also approve of bringing Jabi back! Great little bridge movie they made there.

Yeah that was a great touch. And the new necklace he has instead is pretty snazzy too.

I am by no means an expert on pachinko, but if I had to guess based on what my friends who like to gamble say, the people who play them don't particularly care about what exactly is displayed on the machine as long as it's pretty to look at/attention grabbing. And given GARO's' over the top action, I can see it working.

My favorite era of Kamen Rider is Phase 1 Heisei. The earlier stuff especially.

There are many reasons why, but I think the biggest factor of it all comes from its overall atmosphere and how the shows of the time tended to carry themselves.

They all felt genuine. Having confidence in their material and ability to draw you into a world which, on a surface level, would look rather ridiculous to the "common" person. They wanted the viewer to care just as much if not more than they did.

There was no need for any sort of tongue-in-cheek, self-referential humor to undercut its own story, no winking at the audience calling out how "stupid" something is in a real world setting. They had a story they wanted to tell and they stuck to their guns about it.

I tell you all of this because in the world we currently live in, where the biggest superhero property around is entirely predicated on characters making self-aware one-liners practically every two minutes, thus making the stories border on self parody, GARO absolutely stands out as to one of many reasons why superhero stories can resonate with audiences while taking itself seriously.

That's not to say there's anything wrong with having humor in your story; GARO has a good handful of levity, even in its final episode. But if you have nearly every character constantly talk about how outlandish or dumb the overall plot, visuals, and characters are, then why should we as an audience at all care about what's going on in terms of events or character? Constantly saying "we're in on the joke!" infact kills said joke, and that's me putting it lightly.

All throughout its run, GARO never once felt the need to talk down to itself or those watching it, and infact did everything in its power to tell a compelling story. Whether it be the personal stakes for every character involved, the incredibly well choreographed action scenes, the absolutely stellar directing, or, perhaps most importantly for me, the wonderfully thick and encompassing atmosphere that drew me into this world of horror and mysterious intrigue that had me hooked from the very first episode.

Now, I could easily be wrong here, but all throughout the show it really felt like there was a serious passion behind every aspect of the show. Never at any point, even during the episodes that I felt were a bit weaker than others, did I feel as though the people behind the scenes were just phoning things in or assuming that their audience would just roll with whatever was handed to them. None of the plot details felt out of nowhere or made up, none of the character arcs felt bungled, and while not a show that focused on lessons or morals, what few it did have to showcase never felt like a double-standard.

The short version of all of this is that I feel like GARO as a show is something special, and I liked it a whole lot.

I'll admit, I was a bit nervous going in, given that my intro to the franchise as a whole was its first anime. But, to my absolute delight and surprise, everything that made the anime so good was also done here, but still in a very distinct way as to not at all be repetitive. The action was just as over the top as ever, the characters were equally as well written, the overall tone was preserved, and unlike The Animation, this show didn't have an absolutely forced romance at the end of it!

It's to the point that it was honestly really hard for me to pick any sort of favorite episode out of this season. There are a bunch of ones that stand out for one reason or another, and it made me actually have to use my brain and think it over, as rare as that is.

In the end though, I think I'm gonna give it to episode 5: Moonlight. Because sure, it's not the most plot important or one which progresses the character arcs in any super big way, but it's the episode where I knew was sure that GARO was a show for me, as it immediately captivated me with its incredibly well done directorial style which drew from different sorts of horror films. That opening scene is probably one of my favorite opening scenes in any toku show ever. And I do not say that lightly.

But characters are always the biggest draw for me, and while I love the cast as a whole, I surprisingly found myself most drawn to Kaoru more than anyone else. Her personal journey of coming to terms with her parents while also being a struggling artist whose time was unfairly cut short, along with a strong personality that made her very likable just really sold her to me. I felt for her every step of the way, and I honestly consider her the real main character of the show despite Koga being the title character and the guy who gets into all of the big battles.

Sure, the show isn't perfect. A few episodes are a bit uneven in their execution, and Rei, much as I like him, does feel a bit less developed than practically everyone else in the cast, but really, I find those lesser aspects to be incredibly minor in the grand scheme of things. Some people like to judge a show based on every individual piece, some like to think about how well it showcases its overall message or theme, but me, I primarily look at stories based upon my own enjoyment while experiencing them as a whole, with a bit of reflection to help sort my own thoughts out, especially if I had a rather strong feeling one way or another. And looking back at my previous posts on the show while thinking about all of the things that really stood out to me...

I dunno if I'm confident in saying that GARO is one of my favorite toku ever(who am I kidding, it most likely is), but it is a show that I ended up having a rather big fondness for, and in terms of GARO as a franchise I'd easily put it on par with Carved Seal of Flames, if not slightly better. And I liked that show alot!

In the end, I feel like GARO is a great show for people who feel like Power Rangers needs to be dark in order to survive, or who feel that a show can't feel complete unless it has 50 episodes, or many other common claims I've seen people make about the Big Three. It's easy to see why this became 4th place amongst Toku! I really loved a vast majority of it, and I'm so glad I chose it as the show to watch as I approached my 30th year on this Earth.

I give GARO a 5/6. Not perfect, but there's alot to love, and I really struggle to think of ways to make it any more special.

Congratulations on finishing your viewing! Glad you enjoyed this show so much.

Okay, all caught up on those little extras! (Although now that you've teased me with that screencap of behind-the-scenes retrospective stuff, I might have to go watch that at some point too.)

I really really really liked this thing. Very broadly speaking, it's sort of like "what if GARO did a Hyper Battle Video?", but the dang thing just elevates itself so much throughout. When it wants to be wacky and fun, it's incredible at it. When it wants to maintain the usual strong atmosphere with the whole theatrical theming (i.e. literally the entire time), it never misses a step, and when it wants to deliver some inward-driven, emotionally resonant storytelling about what it means to be an artist, it just totally lands the material. Utter delight from start to finish, this thing.

This thing, though, holy s***, I think this is like a straight masterpiece? It's sort of hard to say, since I'm writing this shortly after watching it, but, *because* that's when I'm writing this, I can still feel that slightly faster than normal pounding of my heart that's telling me in no uncertain terms that I was supremely enthralled by this special.

It's at once a perfect encapsulation of everything that made me enjoy the series, a slick and successful expansion of that series that does something totally different and new, and, beyond that, just a real darn good movie.

The thing I noticed about it right away, that drew me in more than anything, was how it takes the more relaxed pacing scenes are allowed to have with a feature-length runtime, and meshes that with a narrative that's focused on nostalgic remembrance of the past, giving the basic change in style a level of thematic purpose it so did not need to have. We're mostly leaving the city behind for more rustic locations steeped in tradition, we've got old characters returning, lots more exploration of legacy, and Kouga's reward in the end, rather than deep personal growth, is simply the warmth of being able to recall a precious moment from his childhood.

It's just so dang rock solid, and there's a million smaller things I adore about this script beyond that too. Just as an example, I'm glad I did give it that bit of space from the show, because reintroducing both Kouga and Rei in that sort "day on the job" context where we get some hero action from them right away is a smart move for something that is acting as a sort of comeback for these characters and their world after some time away. All around, the sense of setup and payoff is crazy strong too, with it really feeling like there's nothing wasted in the narrative at all. Everything has its role to play, and loads and loads of things established early on take on a greater purpose of some sort by the end. Like, how cool was it when Kouga has Rin help him fly to her rescue by doing that trick with her brush?

Which brings me to the next, very obvious point, which is that the action sequences are insanely well thought out, to the point where I almost sort of hope other film and television people see this stuff and feel shame, for not going this all out? The creativity in the setpieces and the execution of those ideas never disappoints. I recall seeing Switchblade mention how higher resolutions don't do the CG in GARO any favors when recommending fansubs to DreamSword, and having seen this stuff now, it's like -- when your grasp on the craft is this strong, that doesn't matter at all. The *real* details, the way shots are framed and edited and all that, it's always going to hold up. GARO can look as fake as it wants to and still look incredible. Getting compared to a video game is usually a cheap insult for something live-action, but when I'm saying it about GARO, it's the greatest compliment I can think to pay to it, because it bursts with that same level of unrestrained imagination you don't usually find on TV or in movies.

So, uh, yeah, man, I freakin' loved this one, if you can't tell. Very glad to be leaving GARO off on yet another amazing note for a while.

I'll say it again, but GARO really pulled me in immediately, for pretty similar reasons to what DreamSword described in his final thoughts post. There was this biased part of me that kind of expected a series like this to pick that adult audience and suddenly get all these funny ideas in its head about how it has to be super edgy, or subversive, or winkingly self-aware, or whatever else. Essentially, something that would make me want to call it "pretentious". But GARO ain't that! It sticks to the fundamentals, with very straightforward, traditional storytelling, and instead worries about just doing that to the full extent of its ability.

I don't know too much about Amemiya's influences, but the overwhelming vibe I got from this series is that it's simply him very honestly trying to make the tokusatsu hero show he wanted to see himself. Like, half the reason it's an adult tokusatsu show is probably just because he wanted the monsters to actually be as scary as toku baddies felt to a small child, and the other half was just to do something outside the usual constraints that come with how heavily merchandise-focused these things have to be.

The results speak for themselves. I'm going on a pretty long ramble here because I do that when I'm excited, but nothing I can say here is ever going to be as well constructed as the show I've spent the last month watching is. The smartest thing I've probably said about GARO in this whole thread was right at the start, when I implored everyone to avoid making the mistake I did by sleeping on it for so long.

Really happy to see that our Garo newbies had a good time. It's long been one of my favorite tokusatsu shows and it's nice to see others discovering it for the first time.

Thanks! Not exactly sure what I'll watch next, but I do look forward to whenever I'm in the mood to return to GARO again.

The clip TV-N subbed mentioned audio commentary over select episodes by the cast and crew, and man, if a company like, say, Discotek ever revived GARO and translated those extras? I'd be all over it.

You put it all far more eloquently than I ever could've. It's just such a unique beast for GARO as a whole, and you can tell the cast and crew had alot of fun making it.

Yeah, speaking as a "gamer" myself, comparing stuff to video games has this real stigma attached to it, with not alot of people realizing just why the various genres of games has only grown over time. The stigma from outsiders looking in has also unfortunately affected how said games are written and directed, with many of them trying their hardest to emulate big name movies, but in that alot of them lose alot of what made videogames fun in the first place.

To put it simply, if GARO is to be compared to a PlayStation 1 era JRPG, then it encapsulates all of the best aspects of that subgenre. I favorably compared the first anime to The Legend of Dragoon for a reason!

While said by someone considered rather controversial nowadays, a critic of whom I used to have alot of respect for summed it up best, I think: "Sometimes the best twist is no twist." There's this idea in US superhero media nowadays that in order to succeed you have to deliberately try to skew away from what made superhero stories resonate with people in the first place. Either via being incredibly dark or by acting as if you're "above it all" so to speak. But the thing is, people fell in love with those traditionally straightforward stories for a reason.

On its surface, is GARO some revolutionary tale that flipped the genre on its head forever? No, but it knew what it was and what it wanted to be, and did its best to execute things in the best way possible, and I have alot more respect for that than the alternative which can very easily come across as pretentious if not condescending at worst.

I can easily see why it's a big favorite! There's alot to love, even just on the production side of things. Like, the show started off as a reboot of Golden Bat before Amemiya realized he'd strayed so far off course that he just made an original IP instead. With reboots that barely resemble what they're rebooting running rampant nowadays, I have a huge amount of respect for that.

And so, just as the GARO franchise would sleep for awhile after Beast of the Demon Night, so too shall I on continuing my journey through the franchise for a little bit. I'll likely just revive this thread when getting to season 2, given that from what little I know about, it still seems to be in the Koga Era, so it only makes sense to keep it all in one thread to me.

But yeah, for now, I gotta think over what exactly I wanna do next. I have a few ideas in mind, but nothing's concrete as of right now. Regardless, a big thanks to everyone who came on this journey with me, and I hope that some of you will continue on, either whenever the next season of GARO gets covered or whatever other show I decide to check out next.

BONUS DLC

Hey all, I record stuff sometimes, and I recently felt like sitting down recording commentary over my favorite episode of GARO as my own little way of capping off the show. As said before, it's episode 5, and rewatching it made me fall in love with the episode all over again.

If you're interested in listening to me just kinda be drawn into the episode while talking a bit about what it's like to look back with the whole picture in mind, you can find the audio to overlay over your own copy of the episode HERE. Thanks again!

Next week, Koga will return...

I am waiting. :thumb:

Man, that might be the best Kamen Rider Ryuki movie that I've seen!

Joking aside, I actually did really dig this movie, and it was a great way to return to the world of GARO after having been gone for a year.

I don't really know what I can say other than that I felt pretty much everything was pulled off great. The action scenes were as great as always, Rekka's' arc was pulled off really well ontop of the nice way it connected to Koga, the atmosphere was on point the whole time, and best of all, the music all throughout the film was top notch.

To my surprise, the film also worked pretty well as a standalone, I felt. Sure, certain specific details of the world aren't explained, but I felt that those things weren't really necessary in order to not only get a handle on how things worked, but also not at needed to any emotional investment in these characters.

If I had to nitpick anything, I guess I'd just express confusion as to why exactly it's called Red Requiem? But whatever, the important part is that I felt this whole film was just a really fun time all around. No real complaints here.

I suppose because the finale involves past fallen Knights coming to aid everyone in a red dimension? That's the best I've got and even I only just now sort of came up with it.

But yeah, after Beast of the Demon Night, it took about four years for us to receive the next installment in Garo, Red Requiem. And man what a way to return via a feature length film.

It's a pretty solid one-off adventure overall that gives us a new Horror to slay, some killer action sequences, and some fun new characters that we'll likely get to see return in the future. It's a cool return for GARO both back in the day and now for you since you had a similar gap in watch time. Not much to left to say, just that I look forward to keeping up with the thread once more.

With such a gap between releases, I could definitely see diehard GARO fans shouting to the heavens in excitement upon announcement of the film. GARO itself really had all the signs of just being a one off, ya know? But pachinko brought us what is looking to be a great franchise.

Still so weird that I can unironically say that.

This... this was a major misfire.

Look, I'm not saying having an entire movie based off of Kiba is outright impossible or anything, but this movie was such a slog.

Like, the overall visual style is nice, but outside of that it's full of exposition that amounts to basically nothing, introduces a new character in Elda who is unimportant and just vanishes, and worst of all, the whole thing is boring.

And given how a couple of scenes are just straight up repeated throughout this, I think even the writers had no idea what they even wanted to do with Kiba and the very small window that this movie takes place in. This whole thing could be cut down to 20 minutes and just be a bonus episode of the original GARO.

I can atleast give it this: It didn't go the route of 'Well actually, he was a super good person the whole time and no one but me, Elda, ever knew it." like what a certain V-Cin for Kamen Rider W did. But yeah man, this whole movie felt like two hours when in reality it's only like 40 minutes with a 10 minute credits sequence that isn't terrible.

Not a great look, this one.

Yeah Kiba's special is definitely one of the weakest GARO entries for me. While it's put above others purely because I enjoyed Kiba as a character? It's kind of just there for the most part.

There's some neat parts about it, but nothing too incredible. It's partially why I suggested against watching it around the Season 1 finale when it was brought up. While my reasons were mostly "there is like a thing brought up that come into play later", that was the nice way of putting it. Mostly because it would have just put the momentum of 2005's endgame to a screeching halt and probably would hurt more than help. A more isolated viewing like this? Not the best but probably not the worst it could've been either, in my opinion.

We did, I was there. The film and the original Figuart both came out around the same time and it was really exciting to see the whole thing take off and become the semi-ongoing franchise that it is now.

I kinda wish I remembered the movie itself better.I know it?s where Reika comes from and that it?s an entry in the long string of ?I?m a Makai Knight and/or Priestess with daddy issues? stories, but I don?t know if I?ve actually watched it again since it came out. I did enjoy it, but I definitely thought it needed more Kaoru.

Kiba had Kaoru, at least, but it always felt a) more like set-up for a future story and b) kinda confusing and pointless. I?m still not sure who that random woman was supposed to be.

Oh yeah, this for sure would've killed the pacing. Great call there.

Neither do I! She just vanishes once the last few minutes of the movie hits. I feel like she existed solely to pad for time.

If not for the very real world gap, this would feel like the first show didn't end.

By that I mean this episode kinda plays out like your typical GARO episode(though slightly more graphic than normal), up until the very end.

And in that regard, I liked it well enough. I was a little surprised at how long it actually took for Koga to be brought in, and even more surprised at how bad his hair looked in certain shots.

Like, for something that's ultimately sort of inconsequential, it was kinda weird to me how long we focused on the Horror of this one, though I imagine with some of the things he says as he's getting hunted by Koga, his dialogue is meant to be a sort of set up for the rest of the season.

The best part of it all was easily seeing that Koga, Kaoru, and Gonza were all back, and in show it felt like they never felt, which I imagine is the sort of feeling that was welcomed by those who waited for four long years for these characters to return and continue doing what they do best. A sort of "welcome home" sort of feel, if you will.

That all being said, the episode ends with a very interesting hook in that now, it appears as though Koga is the one who's now racing against the clock to stay alive as opposed to Kaoru in the first season. And all thanks to a brand put on him not by a Horror, but a human(perhaps a Makai Alchemist?). It's the sort of intrigue that I'm totally down for, and with the shot of the trio in the photo at the end, it'll be interesting to see how this influences the group dynamic.

Going back to the "welcome home" aspect I brought before ending this post off, I was so happy to see that the OP was more in line with the first OP of the first season, both in terms of song and visuals. Though on the flip side, I have no idea what's up with the new ED. The visuals match the ones done with the first ED in the first season, but the song does not go with those visuals like, at all. The song itself isn't bad though.

And that's about all I got. I don't think it was as strong a start as the first episode of the first season, but I suppose they figure that anyone watching this season would've already been familiar with the original show, and thus didn't feel the need to do nearly as much character and world setup. Which is understandable.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

Fun fact, it was like the early 2010's in which I saw the final fight of the episode via gif. Because around E3 time, it was when Xbox kind of flopped with their always online stuff and Sony took advantage of that to sweep them. Someone then proceeded to make a gif of the fight but with Xbox and Sony markings labeled over the Horror and Garo respectively.

I would be like "oh cool fight" not knowing that this would be my first actual exposure to GARO that I would receive before finally watching many years later.

Not much to say on this one, other than Edith from Ghost sure fell on hard times, lol though in this case this aired before Ghost so I'm not sure that works?

Also fun fact about the ED, do not skip the ED at all this season. Makai Senki is unique in the fact that instead of your usual ending graphics, you'll have Kaoru doing something different every episode while the credits roll. Only one other season does this, but I thought it was a neat way to shake up the EDs.

Huh, neat. I'll keep that in mind.