I just hope Rider #1 is enjoying Gavv right now

I'm sure he hates it! Biological modifications instead of mechanical augmentations?! ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Now, Shin Kamen Rider, on the other hand...

originally posted on December 6th, 2021, as part of “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Legend Rider projects (and more!)”

OOO, DEN-O, ALL RIDERS: LET’S GO KAMEN RIDERS

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That’s the one thing I remembered from this movie.

I love that shot of Our Heroes (well, Our Heroes And Also Ankh) getting crucified in Kamen Rider Plaza. (Not to be confused with Kamen Rider Aubrey Plaza.) It’s… I was very new to Kamen Rider when I saw this movie, and the gigantic thematic swings a Kamen Rider movie could take hadn’t really been made clear to me yet. So seeing a public execution steeped in Western religious iconography was… I did not see that coming! It’s a pretty shocking image!

No pun intended! I dimly recalled that this was one of those Phase 2 movies where Shocker takes over everything, and it’s definitely that. (I think the other one is Kamen Rider 3?) There’s not really much to this movie outside of Kamen Riders and Shocker, though. It’s a 40th anniversary celebration of Kamen Rider, and boy do they never let you forget it.

Like, the story or moral or lesson or whatever, it’s paper-thin: Kamen Rider -- much like Wu-Tang -- is for the children. We see a world without Kamen Riders, and we see children with nothing to look to for examples of bravery and dedication and sacrifice and sweet-ass bike tricks. It’s a very good lesson! I find it hard to complain about a movie whose text and subtext is Thank Goodness For Kamen Rider.

But, man, this movie eventually just becomes a parade of Kamen Riders, with all the story inherent in, y’know, parades. It’s an entire final third that’s just introduction after introduction, and that’s in a movie that already spends a ton of its runtime introducing Kamen Riders!

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Like this guy! It’s the return of New Den-O, now with (I want to say) lighter hair. This was my first ever Den-O experience, and I don’t know that I got even half of the premise. I definitely didn’t get why Momotaros could just become a Den-O despite being one of the monster guys, and I think I sort of get it now. I guess those Decade episodes where he became a real boy are Den-O canon? Maybe?

This was a fairly middle-of-the-road outing for New Den-O. He doesn’t really have an arc. (None of the superheroes do in this movie. Hell, not even Ankh learns a lesson, and he’s the one instigating the plot!) He’s put through another brief demise of Teddy, which I think now accounts for half of all Teddy stories to date? Him dying and Kotaro feeling distraught until Teddy just shows back up? But the Imagin are all very fun, and Kotaro doesn’t drag anything down. He’s fine, and Den-O’s always at least fun. Nice to see that cast again.

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And then it’s just a million Showa guys. I don’t truck with Showa, so all them old guys flipping through the air was not what I wanted in an OOO/Den-O film. They’re just there, which is pretty much how the entire final third of the film felt to me. I like Kamen Rider suits and all, but these guys were interchangeable for the plot. It was just more and more dudes, without anything for them to do or say.

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Except, of course, for the returning W team! It’s a cameo, at most, but I love seeing them. (And, what the hell, did Philip’s voice change between Movie War Core and this?! He’s got a relatively husky voice when he’s saying his two or three lines! He’s all grown up now!) Shotaro and Philip are maybe my favorite duo in all of Kamen Rider, so I’m going to be a hypocrite and applaud this movie for bringing them back for maybe thirty whole seconds.

Beyond that… god, I don’t know what there even is to talk about. It’s a million hero suits fighting a million villain suits, and the only real theme is that Kamen Rider is an awesome franchise. It’s nothing I disagree with, but I don’t know that I needed it shouted at me for ninety minutes.

Still, that crucifixion shot! Very cool.

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—

40 MONTHS LATER

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It’s really the prototype for the Taisen movies, isn’t it?

There’s the requisite Nighttime Showdown at Kamen Rider Quarry, preceded by an entire third of the film spent introducing conspicuously silent and glaringly interchangeable Legend Riders, preceded by a plot that asks more questions than it answers, preceded by an emotional story that actually engages with its audience in a smart way. Read another way, it’s a good story that gets progressively dumber the more it leans into spectacle.

Like, I think all of the Rider Scouts stuff in this movie is great? Really great? I gloss over it above – to almost the same degree the movie eventually abandons it to spend more time burnishing the legend of, like, ZX – but the way this movie talks about how Kamen Rider’s gift to the children of Japan for 40 years is that it taught multiple generations to believe in things like hope and kindness… that’s so cool. Creating an alternate non-Rider world whose tragedy is that kids are meaner and more selfish and scared? Very smart, and genuinely affecting for all of its nonsense in worldbuilding. (I like that Shocker kept building inspiring buildings and making fun fashion for people throughout Showa and Heisei, despite being a malevolent kleptocracy.) I like when these movies get at something sweet, rather than just something awesome. That’s such a nice thing to celebrate for a major anniversary.

And then the movie basically forgets about it for over 20 minutes.

The spectacle is what we’re nominally here for, if you believe the filmmakers, and I find it a fairly mixed bag. There’s an effort to get everyone and everything onscreen in some capacity, logic and/or history be damned. (Kind of surprised #1 and #2 invited, like, Scissors to the big brawl at the end. I feel like being a serial killer would be disqualifying, but maybe being Shocker henchmen for 40 years blurred their red lines some.) The bikes all can fly now because Why Not, everyone's just back because of belief so there's zero consequences, and the scale eventually dwarfs the humanity. It’s Quantity over Quality, which is basically the formula for every upcoming Taisen film. It’s a big party at Kamen Rider Quarry, and everyone is invited except for compelling storytelling.

But the beginning! Kind of a fun story, right up until the movie decided it didn’t need one anymore! A shame this all begat the Taisen series!

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edited to add OH RIGHT THE OOO GUYS. Incredibly funny that Eiji and Ankh go on a literal journey without going on any sort of emotional journey -- they travel through time and alternate realities, but the only lessons they come away with are Fighting Harder (Eiji) and I Wasn't Listening To The Question (Ankh). Absolutely just along for a celebratory extravaganza, and they didn't even get to share the screen with the two Riders they actually knew already. Amazing. YONEMURA!!!

This is maybe the most quintessentially early-10s Rider movie: a modern remake of a Showa general, Den-O, Shotaro and Philip, Black and Black RX being treated as separate characters, random other Ishinomori heroes, that one quarry, and - of course - Stock Yonemura Plot #1 (of 1).

It's not my favorite of those movies, but... actually, that's pretty much all I've got. It is a film that exists.

(if I had directed this, the scene where everyone chants the Showa Riders' names would have continued past Black RX and included the crowd going "Um... this guy!" for Shin)

I could spend an hour talking about this, which is longer than Yonemura spent thinking about it, but: Rider 1 and Rider 2 seriously spent F O R T Y Y E A R S subjugating humanity in the name of Shocker as a long con?! Just so they could, what, eventually impress a plaza full of civilians when people's residual alternate-reality memories of Kamen Riders as good guys magically reincarnated a couple dozen Riders who never existed in this reality? This does not seem like either a great plan or a fair trade-off!

(It's still infinitely more plausible and heroic than the plot of Super Hero Taisen, though.)

So this was another early watch for me, and having seen Super Hero Taisen GP as my intro to Kamen Rider, before and after I became more familiar with Rider, I felt that did this plot better.

And like other OOO-featuring movies, this one is a slight continuity nightmare, in that the 1971 scenes are basically the theme park version of the original Kamen Rider. While everything presented existed, General Black and the Rider Scouts weren’t around until 1972 (and the latter was, like most real scout groups, boys only, so there were no girls like the one that appears here) and Ichigou and Nigou never had the Batman and Robin dynamic they have here (they tended to rotate who was guarding Japan and who was destroying Shocker’s other evil plans offscreen, only coming together against monsters that were supposed to be really tough). But funnily enough, the two kids Mitsuru and Naoki who are surprisingly relevant to this plot share their names with two of the original series’ Rider Scouts, so they’ve got that going for them.

And speaking of those kids…

Rider-lert!

In addition to a whole crap ton of returning VAs, not all of them reprisals (King Dark gets the standard stock Showa big bad voice rather than his original VA, while Apollo Geist is voiced by the guy from Decade), and some making their final appearances prior to death or retirement (The Great Leader, General Jark and General Shadow being the standouts there), we’ve also got the older version of Naoki, who is played by Isao Sasaki. Who is basically Japan’s answer to Elvis (don’t let his youthful looks fool you, he was in his old age when he did this movie), and the original Super Sentai theme singer. But in Rider, he performed the theme to the movie “8 Riders vs Galaxy King” and played a similar mad scientist dad role in Kamen Rider ZO.

And to close off… man is the theme cover at the end pretty terrible.

I didn't get a chance to mention it before, but kudos to the Kougami Foundation's production department, because the Shocker HQ they built for their Kamen Rider movie looks exactly like the actual Shocker HQ that the heroes travel back to in this movie. How did they get it so right?!

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 29 - “A SISTER, A DOCTOR, AND THE TRUTH ABOUT ANKH”

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After what felt like a million years of watching all of the various 40th Anniversary celebration media – two episodes, 49 Net Movies, and one lackluster feature film – we are now back to the serialized storytelling that we love.

It’s an episode that acts as a minor amount of recap, in that we’re hitting nearly every single viable subplot that was left hanging at the end of 26. We’re checking in with Eiji’s concerns, Maki’s backstory, Kazari’s casual endgame, Kougami’s warnings, Gotou’s new Status Quotou, and the duality of Ankh. I think the only thing that goes unremarked upon is Date’s mysterious backstory? Short of that, we’re catching up with the many, many gears that are turning inside this show’s season plot.

In a series that’s often explicitly about how desires don’t exist in a vacuum – how they interact with one another, oppose one another, and beget new desires by the reaction – it’s crucial that there be a lot of antagonists (and protagonists!) who all want slightly different things. That’s just good thematic storytelling, where the shape of the story is helping to tell the story. But it also means this show never lacks for an inciting incident, or a new quandary to vex our heroes.

Like, Birth and OOO basically accomplish nothing this episode? Birth, in general, is a reactive force, but even Team OOO is running around like a Chicken Yummy with its head cut off, flung from one Greeed sighting to the next. It’s an episode all about how the villains are not just sitting around waiting to spring a scheme on the heroes – Kazari, Maki, and Ankh Lost are pursuing their own goals around the actions of the heroes, not because of or in spite of them. There’re a million threads in this one episode, and they’re all pretty compelling.

It’s really the best second-half storytelling in the franchise. There’re any number of shows that need to find a new level when the show comes back from a movie break, or need to introduce new threats to be vanquished. While this episode nominally does that – Ankh Lost is, for all intents and purposes, the big new threat for the quarter – it never feels like it comes out of thin air, and it never feels like the totality of the storytelling options. This thing could’ve just been about Kazari’s reluctance to finish his form, or Maki’s fight against his own Yummy, or Gotou scarfing down a birthday cake as Satonaka's new assistant (!!!), and the episode would’ve felt no worse off for it. Adding in Ankh Lost feels motivated by 26 episodes of Ankh’s backstory, not some weird new menace that dropped out of the sky. This is a show that spent so much time creating a nice stew of different plot ingredients, and now it can ladle them out in whatever portions it wants.

That said! A stuffed episode of a half-dozen barely-intersecting plot threads doesn’t exactly allow any one of them to feel like a lot to talk about. They each get a scene, maybe a scene and a half, and then we’re off to the next thing. It makes for a fun episode of non-stop intrigue, but not much that feels especially evocative. It’s hard to find much to relate to in this episode, but it’s enormously fun to have watched it. Very happy to be back in a mode where plot and character matter again!

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A two part in which we learn slightly more about Dr. Maki, who up until now has been defined by three things. 1. He carries a doll around with him at all times, 2. He has an obsession with endings and 3. Chiyoko looks exactly like his dead sister. Though the fact his Yummy is a rather beaten up looking panda that goes around hugging people… that probably says a lot about him without saying it.

And we also get to see what happened to the rest of Ankh in full, complete with it getting a personality and voice of its own.

Ultra-lert

The voice of the new Ankh is provided by Miyu Furuno (who like with Mezool, is not the actor who portrays the human form), whose prior Tokusatsu experience consists of a child character in Ultraman Gaia the Movie and the voice of Jean-Nine in the Ultraman Zero sub-franchise.

Yeah, his Yummy is not subtle.

It's perhaps misleading too that there's Ichigo and Nigo fighting OOO which made the kids confused, and the earlier conflict for the Rider Scouts is kind of similar too to think they're enemies. Dunno if Ichigo and Nigo attacking other Riders wouldn't sit well for some fans due to them being the golden standard of Riders to them yet they're doing the Ryuki thing (something deviative from some for Kamen Rider values) temporarily there.

It's unknown who was behind the suit of Scissors there. Because Kamen Rider user isn't the same as the suit/abilities, like how it was displayed in Faiz, where Delta user can range from Saya to Kitazaki. Like even in Ryuki, for 13 Riders special, it was unknown who used the Tiger and Imperer suit. RT Ryuki also has different users for existing Riders. And Sudo's actor has retired too if Scissors' original identity should be retrained. It's common for the movies to just add any of the previous Riders, likely except the main antagonist ones, for the fight.

I mean, yeah, it could be anyone in the Scissors suit -- super excited for Zanki to get to TATAKAE as a crab-themed Rider -- but there's no reason to think that it's not Actual Murderer Scissors. Don't let Rider 1 and Rider 2 off the hook by doing their explanations for them!

Not like Birth and OOO doesn't try. It's just that Lost Ankh is something powerful enough to generally gain an upper hand against OOO's currently strongest form TaJaDor. It's lucky that for now, Maki has someone who cares for him who comes to his rescue, Date, despite being a depraved bastard otherwise. It's unknown if this is part of Maki's plan, but so far, in Maki and Kazari's divide, Kazari has the upper hand now, halting Maki's plan to make Kazari go out of control, but indeed as I thought, Kazari working with Maki would just have him being planned to be used as a pawn, so dunno if working with another deranged individual is an inherently smart move, unless they can anticipate this.

Kougami is actually being menacing here to threaten to eliminate anything that is against what he personally wants. It's something healthy for one to prioritize one's own desire over others, but perhaps this is what increases suspicion about Kougami. Not exactly about Kougami, but villainy is also often about imposing one's desire over others regardless of how much damage is done. Lost Ankh was the part of the red herring in ep. 25-26 two-parter though that Ankh didn't actually spawn the Yummy. As Lost Ankh is clearly villainous, and is the rest part of Ankh's body, this may be an indicator of what Ankh would do if he's not limited to a left hand that is dependent on Eiji and is bossed around by Hina, that the sinister stuff Ankh planned like spawning a Yummy or getting rid of Hina aren't just talk.

I don't know that I'd call Ankh Lost "villainous" at this point? It's a wounded creature looking to keep itself alive and make itself strong, even if that means destroying the other part of itself. That sounds exactly like what Ankh is doing?

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 30 - “THE KING, A PANDA, AND BURNING MEMORIES”

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I am not normally one for exposition episodes – especially DOUBLE exposition episodes – but I think this one worked as well for me as it possibly could. There’re still a few flaws, namely a Shark Panda Yummy climax that feels completely irrelevant to what’s actually going on in this story, but I liked how this episode worked to reveal a couple of its major mysteries.

Like, we are definitely moving into a new phase of the show’s conflicts, and you need to lay a couple cards on the table to better understand exactly how screwed our heroes really are, and in which precise direction the screwing is coming from. It’s all well and good to have Maki and Kazari plotting while Ankh Lost exists in the shadows, but the only way the conflict can move forward is by understanding what’s at stake, and what’s at risk.

The Ankh backstory exposition does a nice job of filling in blanks via Ankh’s confession and Kougami’s research, but the real value is less about the past and more about how it informs the present. (That said, I like the reveal that the snarky and selfish Ankh of today was actually betrayed by an OOO it trusted 800 years in the past. Fun subversion, and great way to give Ankh’s modern day guarded nature a tragic backstory.) While we needed a couple details to confirm what we basically knew already about the two Ankhs, the bigger deal is what Date and Gotou have been trying to learn via their corporate subterfuge – namely, that Eiji’s increased power as OOO is maybe prelude to insanity and petrification.

I feel like every good Kamen Rider show should treat its hero’s power with wariness. It’s the core (or Core) theme within this particular show, that wanting something – anything – too much is what destroys people, so it’s crucial that Eiji’s seemingly benevolent usage of incredibly powerful and dangerous Medals has imminent and terrifying consequences. The trade-off to using combos to defeat evil is that he’s now at risk of becoming evil... or at least of becoming a monster, which is maybe worse. That’s a more thrilling potential story than the somewhat predictable and standard problem of Ankh being an inevitably selfish jerk, even if that story also sounds pretty fun.

But a show like this needs more conflict than just the existential dilemma of maintaining equilibrium with our desires, so it’s also time to figure out exactly how bad Maki is.

Pretty bad, as it turns out! While his origin is rooted in abuse and trauma, he’s still a guy who murdered his sister rather than lose her to marriage, and then used that murder to rewrite her personality in his memories. It’s a cool twist on his whole thing about Endings Mattering, because it allows for a complication where the Ending offers not finality or completion, but interpretation. Maki’s sister being dead means he can create whatever version he wants of her in his mind, to flatter whatever version of himself he wanted there to have been. That’s a more nuanced motivation than just wanting everyone to be dead, and it gets me more excited to see where this is all heading.

And it’s for sure heading somewhere, as this episode’s concluding shot has the trio of Kazari, Ankh Lost, and the now officially evil Dr. Maki heading off with an army of Candroids and one Hieronymus Bosch-esque Greeed painting to go enact some villainy. Great way to establish a new status quo!

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In which Ancient OOO gets his first brief appearance. He was only a hidden sound in the original CSM, but thanks to making quite a few appearances in post show media (the novel being the first prominent example, in which he is characterised as Kougami as a medieval tyrant), the 2.0 added a whole second more with an appropriately deepened voice for the OOO Driver.

I’d talk a bit more about Dr. Maki’s backstory reveal (it’s basically the ASDF Movie gag about child murderers played seriously), but I think I’ll have more to say about it come 32.

Neat! Thanks!

I wonder if Maki was rewritten to become the main Villain at the time that they decided against making Ankh outright evil? Like no doubts he was always intended to be a villain considering the earlier draft of the show that Inoue had based Core off of had him as a villain. Could be possible an earlier dradt had Maki’s memories of his sister be true to have him die protecting Chiyo to further clear the board for Ankh’s reveal?

It's possible! Maki's too perfect of a rival for Eiji from the start for him to be eliminated at an earlier stage of the show, though, so I gotta assume he was always a long-term plan for the producers.

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 31 - “RETURNING A FAVOR, A PLOT, AND PURPLE MEDALS”

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It’s a very Part 1 Of 2 episode, with a whole bunch of interesting ideas that don’t really add up to much more than that. It’s solidly done, for an episode that reintroduces Uva, debuts the Purple Medals, spends some time with Team Greeed, and wraps it all up in a Yummy Dilemma that’s directly commenting on Eiji’s potentially apocalyptic helpfulness, but it all feels a little too much like the setup for next episode’s statement.

And I’m not sure how disappointed in that I want to be? There’s nothing really wrong in this episode; to the contrary, it’s a brisk installment that deftly balances foreshadowing with a present-tense conundrum, while never losing sight on how this all affects our core cast. But it still has that problem of not really being fully about its topic or theme yet. We’re given some truly enticing things – Maki and the Purple Medals, Uva’s payday loan scheme (?), Sakata’s desire to help out someone who once helped him – but it's all stopped at the point where this would maybe cohere into something resonant, instead of just entertaining. Every plot is an ellipsis, rather than a period or an exclamation mark.

Which is, y’know, the Kamen Rider template, especially in this era. They’re almost all two-parters, and Part 1 is usually chock-a-block with cliffhangers. I’m not sure why this one hit me so weirdly. It’s maybe exhaustion with this type of format? You see enough of this scheme and you start to ache for the deviations. It maybe feels more exhausting for how many parts of this episode are tantalizing teases of things we’ll discover later, rather than a complete statement on anything. I want something to talk about, to think about, but everything here feels like the discussion comes tomorrow.

Yeah, man, I don’t know! Despite an episode of weird mysteries and a fun couple of kids caught up in a pleasantly absurd scheme of bafflingly unpredictable consequences (Sakata gave Suzuka’s family money anonymously, and it drove them to ruin???) that accurately describes Eiji’s main personality flaw -slash- deepest fear, I just… I feel like there’s nothing here to talk about yet? Is it just me? Did you guys get something out of this episode?

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I think the "OOO memory wipe" effect you mentioned at the beginning has hit me, Die, because I also have no memory of this episode and I just watched it maybe 2 weeks ago. Maybe there'll be more I remember next time? I don't think OOO really shines with its episodic arc, unfortunately. I really enjoyed W for its fun and varied episodes, are there others that really knock it out of the park in that regard?

Now about episode 30, I am also quite curious about how big a role Dr. Maki originally played in the script. I'm not sure if I really pegged him as a major villain until this episode. After the show is over I would love for someone to post any original script ideas if there are any in the wild! I also wanted to highlight the one scene from the episode where Dr. Maki opens the door to his sister's room to see flames, that was a really cool effect and fantastic performance from his actor. It's a kind of experimentation I wish we saw more of in OOO!

Also, this episode surprised me with how dark the revelation about his sister was. Y'know, aside from the girl from Eiji's flashback, I don't think there's been any civilian death in this series so far? It's a surprising change of pace from the other shows I've seen! (Which is kind of odd for a show aimed at young kids...)

Finally, I have just recently polished off nearly all of the relevant OOO content, and I must say it was great! Excited to share my thoughts in the future episodes. Die, will you be covering the OOO 10th anniversary movie? I must say, I have some opinions about it, and I doubt I'm alone in that regard.

I think Fourze is one of my favorites in Heisei Phase 2 for how strong the individual Monster Mystery stuff is. There's a way the template works to the strengths of the premise, and it's aided by a ridiculously large cast of heroes that helps make every little story feel weird and unique. We'll see if I feel the same way when I rewatch it!

There's a bunch of incredibly cool camera work in 30 that I didn't get around to highlighting. I think my favorite is the use of Maki's glasses to reflect different things. It was a neat way to visualize his preoccupations, especially in light of an episode all about how we see things that aren't necessarily there, or focus on the things that most flatter our sense of self.

That's the plan! We've got 17 more TV episodes, an HBV, another batch of pre-movie promotional videos, the summer movie, the Final Stage, the OOO/Fourze crossover, and then we'll hit all four of the 10th Anniversary content. I've only ever watched the Anniversary movie itself, so the rest of it should be interesting to experience. I... also remember having opinions about the movie!

The other Greeeds also want to keep themselves alive and strong, and they do it by spawning Yummies to farm medals, where it can harm humans. I refer more to that for Lost Ankh's villainy, where Lost Ankh also spawned Yummies that threaten people, doing the same thing as the other Greeeds, in either their motivation and also how they'd accomplish their goals. Our Ankh also said that he'd spawn Yummies if he can (but he can't).

About him being selfish today, dunno about that compared to Ankh working for an evil overlord, the original OOO 800 years ago. Ankh being a victim for the original king can feel like the current Greeed battle royale like them betraying each other to get more Cores for themselves - villain infighting can happen. And the other Greeeds obviously won't help Ankh's guarded nature, which is why he chose to side with Eiji. About Kougami being the one to resurrect Lost Ankh, maybe it'd make him more suspicious too here where his primary motivation isn't to fight for good despite backing Eiji and Date, and he wouldn't mind seeing someone wreak havoc as he prioritizes one's birth (including celebrating Greeed's appearence) and desire.

This was the same problem of Yuusuke in Kuuga, where his problem is about the consequences of him potentially becoming evil. But of course, Yuusuke prevails by not succumbing to Ultimate Kuuga's black-eyed mode thanks to their nobility. A heroic thing is also not letting one succumb to corruption, as villains can be also created by once good or normal people letting their darker impulses or tragedy consume them and harm others based on that. This is perhaps something that can challenge Maki's worldview of anything in the world inevitably getting corrupted, where Eiji'd show that he'd preserve and remain virtuous and heroic no matter what. Then again, Rider form going berserk may be something that is already overdone for recent Rider series to the point that some'd be sick seeing this.

Maki's problem seems to be not only about losing Hitomi to a marriage, but about how Hitomi in actuality was cruel. Feels that his backstory has elements from both two of the major villains of Kobayashi's previous series Ryuki, Shiro and Asakura, the former's abusive relative, and the latter's sibling murder in childhood by burning them. Trauma can make one unconsciously repress their memories rather than intentionally doing it though regardless of their preference, where he only remembered Hitomi's true nature after interacting with Chiyoko. Though obviously, his worldview of applying "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" to the entire world as his omnicidal motivation is still purposely done by himself, and he already had this goal since the beginning of the series long ago. Dunno though if the act of murdering a twisted relative would be instead supported by the audience, being viewed like Gou killing Banno, where it should be encouraged to fight back against someone toxic, and the bad thing is if these kind of family gets forgiven or accepted back rather than being given treatment like Maki does.

I think episode 31 cemented Uva as my favourite among the Greeed (really thought it was Mezool beforehand), aside from having the simplest design, purely for how ingenious his long term “medal farm” plan was and the fact it actually worked because he kept a low profile.

Next episode: Final Form Time: O-O-O-OOO!*


*citation needed

Again, not to belabor the point, but I think chalking Ankh Lost's actions up to "villainy" sort of misses the difference between his actions and the rest of the Greeed. As we see in 31, he's basically just a child. He doesn't know who he is, what's happened to him, or what's going on. He makes Yummies as an almost autonomic process; there's no intention to what Ankh Lost is doing, and that's what keeps it from being villainy.

I actually found it hilarious that it kind of didn't work? Uva's been farming Cell Medals for weeks, declares that their collective power is the same as Core Medals, and then immediately gets walloped by Tajador. The only reason he survived was that Team OOO got distracted by a Deus Ex Medals!

Maybe I missed something on my watch through, but I frequently thought of Uva as the one that always got the short end of the stick in every appearance he's in. I honestly found it kind of hilarious how everything really turns against him! It seemed to me like he just couldn't catch a break. But I think I see what you mean about his plan if the later episodes are concerned.

Some of the shows are better at this than others, but it's definitely an issue with this era of Kamen Rider and a big part of why Gaim was such a breath of fresh air when it came out. I think the format worked best with W and Fourze; the former was a detective show and the latter usually centered around relationships between Gentarou and/or the KRC and this week's... I'm blanking on the name of the monsters... Zodiart? OOO is a lot of Eiji and co. just inserting themselves into the story of some complete rando who got misfortunate enough to wander by a Greed and that leads to lower stakes for the show's A-plots, which in turn can make them feel more padded when they have to fill out two episodes.

(I still think Drive had the worst version of the monster-of-the-fortnight plots, with so many first parts ending with Machine Chaser showing up to keep Shinnosuke from resolving the story in a single episode)

I think the versions of these stories I bounce off of the hardest -- like I did with 31 -- is where the monster stuff is just happening around the victims, rather than being a specific problem that the heroes need to solve. The shows that make the victims in some way culpable for what's going on (using a Switch, buying a Gaia Memory, eating Dark Candy, probably some other Addiction metaphors I can't remember right this second) are way more interesting to me than the ones where a Boss Bad Guy just points at someone and decides to ruin their lives this fortnight.

On the one hand, I can sort of point at Wizard as a show that's the nadir of that concept for me, where it's just the Phantoms emotionally torturing some new guest star (short a few Phantom spotlight stories that are perfect), but it's weirdly also the same template for Ex-Aid, which is the show that made me fall in love with Kamen Rider as a franchise. (Like, OOO is 100% the same format that Ex-Aid would eventually rip off for its Monster Mystery template! I kind of can't believe I never put that together before!)

So, yeah, not sure where I fall on this whole thing, other than finding 31 to be both a brisk installment of OOO, and a hookless installment of OOO.

There's something smart about Uva's schemes here that, to have the Trash Yummies emerge from all of the workers, spitting out one Medal each, building up their greed for their day. Uva actually thinks about maximizing Medal profits, but this time, limiting the danger to themselves. The Trash Yummies are too weak to build up much, but one at a time, from a lot of people at once, over the course of time takes care of a lot. Uva seemingly has been running this operation for a while, without drawing any unwanted attention. This is probably why Uva can now go toe-to-toe with TaJaDor too, Uva has stepped up his game.

If Sakata is seen as somewhat culpable for unwittingly falling for a scam (probably also unknowingly helping a Greeed), dunno if this'd be the same to for example, the noble Rider unwittingly playing into the villain's hands by working for their secretly evil organization, such as the actually evil BOARD (Blade) or Fenix (Revice). Generally yes, someone wouldn't be held as culpable if they didn't know at all about the truth of them being unwitting pawns, where people like Kenzaki or Hiromi would be still viewed as a noble hero that has clean hands and did nothing wrong. Hina also points out Sakata's desire backfiring isn't his fault, there's a difference between someone unwittingly causing misfortune, to one deliberately and knowingly doing bad things and convincing others that it's for the greater good (e.g. well-intentioned extremist villains).

Yet W, OOO, and Fourze are shows that no one criticizes or says anything bad for. I'm someone who prefers serialized stuff to MOTW stuff, which is primarily why I follow KR for toku. But it can seem that two-parters format is just safer for a show to be done, as these show's flaws are seemingly more ignored to have the fanbase deem the shows as perfect, if the flaws relate to the MOTW stuff like Tsukuba's plot twist. Den-O's the one show that is well-received and have the fans acknowledge their flaws, but it seems KR simply only needs the main cast dynamic alone. Though it doesn't really come out often that the fans want KR to be back to the two-parters format so that they can relieve the W, OOO, and Fourze era again, for those thinking they're still way above anything until now.

Man, I'm not sure there's any Rider series that no one criticizes or says anything bad for. (I have criticized both W and OOO! Frequently! Like, yesterday!) Every show's going to have people finding fault with it, for any reason you can imagine.

As for two-parter Monster Mystery stuff, I definitely think they have their place. They can be a great way to explore the themes of a series in more compact and compelling way, and it can allow for some tonal differences that you couldn't really get away with in the midst of a massive character arc for one of the leads. One of my all-time favorite Kamen Rider stories full stop is a two-part Monster Mystery story that arguably suffers from a need to support the lead characters in a narrative that doesn't require their presence. I got nothing against a good two-parter, and they don't connote simpler or safer storytelling to me.

But, like, I don't love 'em when it feels like six things are half happening in one episode. That sort of drags!

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 32 - “A NEW GREEED, THE VOID, AND THE UNSTOPPABLE COMBO”

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In retrospect, the whole Sakata/Suzuka plot was a real I Told You That Story So I Could Tell You This Story sort of situation. Suzuka never shows up again after her single appearance last episode, there are no more Ankh Yummies after the one that got detonated at the end of 31, and Sakata’s only around for a single scene with Eiji and the gang. It’s Sakata being like Welp Guess Helping People Is Bad, which prompts Eiji to talk more about his own experiences with trying to solve things with money, and how it can have horrifyingly unintended consequences. That’s the extent of the Sakata story’s use: giving Eiji a reason to talk about money being the wrong way to help people.

(It’s… I feel like I’m sort of diminishing what Eiji’s saying, or even potentially misconstruing it. It’s just a very weird way to apply Eiji’s intended lesson of trying to do good for the people in front of you, rather than trying to do massive societal good that you can’t control – basically a lot of the same friction Eiji used to have with Gotou – because that’s kind of already what Sakata was doing? He wasn’t randomly dispensing money to the world or throwing it from the atmosphere like a Yummy, he was just giving a bit of cash to a family who lost a major provider. He kind of was doing exactly what Eiji was saying, in reaching out to a single family that he knew needed help. The idea of anonymous money being worse than going to them and seeing if they needed help with, like, their laundry or whatever… it’s weird. It’s weird that this family got money in the mail and it made some woman go into debt and quit her job! I don’t think Sakata was misguided! This is like buying someone a sandwich and then they used it to burn down an orphanage – I think you were still okay to buy them a sandwich!)

But now that we’ve got Eiji’s tragic backstory of accidentally funding a civil war – who among us, etc etc – we can also get Eiji’s tragic backstory of having his failure and guilt turned into political capital by his dad and touted as heroism. It’s the sort of thing that could definitely sour you on not just money and privilege, but also wanting anything more than what you can grab with your own hands. Eiji’s lack of desire isn’t nihilism exactly, nor is it guilt, but it’s some weirder amalgam of the two that creates a drive outside of wanting something for yourself and into wanting to reduce the world down to a manageable psychological radius – a new kind of anti-desire.

Which is why half of the Purple Medals chose him, as explained in the THIRD consecutive exposition scene. (No wonder Suzuka didn’t get to show up again, she probably couldn’t explain anything new about either Eiji’s history or mechanics of hidden Core Medals!) Eiji’s ability to control OOO combos is based on the same thing that attracted the Purple Medals: he’s a hollowed out being, and they needed somewhere to live. The idea of Eiji’s ambivalence toward his own life and reluctance to prioritize himself in any situation becoming an apocalyptic scenario that the entire cast has to confront and contain? Very cool. (It’s so bad and such a threat that even Ankh expresses some brief, minor concern over Eiji. This is some endgame shit!!!) It’s sort of exactly the right metaphor in an episode all about reducing your actions to what’s right in front of you; the apocalypse as a friend who needs looking out for. When you can save the world by letting the guy who never puts himself first know that someone is putting him first, you are on the right track with your season-long plot.

I thought this episode was a huge step up over 31, but it could only really be. The Sakata Yummy stuff probably could’ve been jettisoned from that episode and replaced with a different way into Eiji’s story without really missing anything. (I mean, maybe you need the Purple Yummies to be in both episodes instead? So there’s a monster fight?) But when the show finally divests itself of a plot that was mostly taking up space -slash- being really weird (I don’t get why the mom quit her job!!!), it nicely centers Eiji’s sacrificial heroism as probably the most dangerous threat this show has ever faced. Not bad!

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I feel that about Sakata stuff, for helping the people in front of you, Sakata also tries to help the entire family of which, he seemingly never met the wife or daughter of said family, of which yes, it's not known how they'd respond to said help. Guess the entire family is what's unreachable, rather than only a single person. Eiji's also helping the people he seemingly never met like the corrupt people who used the money to fund wars by just sending money to a group of which Eiji doesn't seem to know the full extent of their members or how they operate. By this, likely an example of trying to do good for the people in front of you is like, saving people from monster attacks, or helping someone who you see is feeling down, and focus on only them rather than thinking about the people around them too for the help. And for the civil war, likely for Eiji, rather than leaving the group with the money, the help should be done perhaps by Eiji getting directly involved and using the money himself to ensure it's used right. Though yes, it's something outside of their control on how the people you help will act next, but likely this can be used to reduce the risk of the help instead bringing misfortune.

This should be a lesson for Eiji, but likely the fanbase would just expect the main Rider or similar type of characters as the ones who are already paragon of virtue and doesn't need any development or lesson, and only the worse other people around them need to learn from them. That true heroes/Kamen Rider should be always self-sacrificing and put others first, and Date needs to learn from Eiji, if one isn't self-sacrificing then they're "fakes". If Date isn't so endearing for being happy-go-lucky, dunno if he'd be viewed as negative influence to try to prevent Eiji from taking action and helping the people who got attacked, despite that Date too, clearly shows care for others, pointing out that you can't save anyone if you're dead as a doctor (what I wished for Sachika to say to Shoma in ep. 24 when stopping him). I've seen characters got demonized for stopping their allies to immediately help someone to think about the situation first in a fandom by having them accused as not caring about said someone. Though this also can seem that Eiji will not learn, rather it's what other people are supposed to do for him (still portraying Eiji as not needing to improve), as his ally, like Hina vowing to be on Eiji's side, stopping PuToTyra's rampage.

So I mentioned the time before last that I’d have more to talk about Dr. Maki’s story here, and I do. We learn here that like him, Eiji was also thrown to the wolves by their relatives - Maki’s sister planned to abandon him to fend for himself, while Eiji’s father and siblings basically used his failed humanitarian work to get political brownie points - and that left them dead to desire, even if they express it differently. And I’m not sure whether it’s mentioned in the episode, but the novel states that Eiji’s donations for what was supposedly a charity to fix the village’s problems were actually going to the group that destroyed it. (Though I know for sure the novel revealed the dead girl’s name was Lou) It stands out because they don’t really resolve Eiji’s psychological issues here, like more standard final form episodes would do for at least one character (Fourze did it for Ryusei, Saber did it for Kento and Gotchard did it for Nijigon, to give examples where the main Rider isn’t the one going through development), which is… interesting to say the least.

And although he was only in the movie, I can finally reveal the etymology behind Gil now that we see the Dino Yummies disintegrate the object used to create them, along with any associated desires. Giru means “destroy”.

And all I’ll say on PuToTyra and the needless debates it spawned is that I remember this comment from someone unfamiliar with the series who was told about the debate: “If (PuToTyra)’s the final form, they should’ve kept going”.

I think this is where the show comes down on it, and it absolutely fits Eiji's reduced vision on how best to do good in the world. It's still just sort of weird to me that some guy gave a family what looks to be a couple hundred bucks and it sped them towards ruin? Eiji's right that giving money can make things worse! (Just don't bring up his plot in Movie War Core!)

It did get mentioned here in passing by Eiji when he's talking to Sakata, yeah. "I tried to give a bunch of money to a poor country, and it ended up in the hands of the bad guys..." It's the first thing he says in his story, which makes everyone go "A Bunch Of Money?!"

Hypothetically, yeah. Hard to think of examples for this though. Dan Kuroto doesn't seem to have attachments to main characters other than Asuna.

Except that unlike Dr. Maki, I also celebrate life, which death is a part of. So unless the sufferer is so ill that they cannot fight to the death, then I cannot condone suicide.

No way, the OOO edition was much better!

:thumb:

Welcome! I am also a fan of the movie you're named after.

Looks like a mix of both. Dente and Nyelve are definitely working with mechanical augmentations.

When you put it like that, it sounds way more ridiculous than I remember! Maybe I've become so accustomed to Yonemura's nonsense that this actually feels mild by comparison. How would you compare it to Pretty Den-O, which had a similar plot twist?

I recall that scene at the end where they stand menacingly on a bridge (at sunset?) looking down at Eiji and Ankh. I thought it was pretty memorable for how it emphasized their villainous appearance in an ominous way.

Can confirm that I also have opinions about it and I totally look forward to resurrecting them when the time comes!

I think Uva got the last laugh though, since he got away with Ankh's one and only Condol Medal, thus preventing OOO from using Tajadol. You can tell that Ankh was ticked off about losing that Medal, in contrast to Uva's nonchalance about the exchange.

Maybe not as much as some others, but it does still happen. There's no such thing as a perfect show and anybody who claims otherwise is using hyperbole, even if they don't realize it.

Other than Latorartar, Putotyra is my favorite Combo for sure! I love the use of dinosaur motifs, the purple on white and the ice element! While it comes at the cost of compatibility with other Medals, I think this results in a suit that looks awesome and complete on its own.

Was it even a debate at this point in the show though? As I understand, the argument for Tajadol over Putotyra was spawned by something that occurs in the finale, which is more familiar these days due to ALMIGHTY Saber and Gotchard SteamHopper Ultima. Putotyra's debut here actually seems pretty expected for a Final Form.

How dare you! The Igarashis killed themselves making that movie!

Having absolutely no recollection of Pretty Den-O, I can only read through my write-up on it and conclude that I didn't have a big problem with it.

It's a very cool suit! I think the decision to jettison the traditional OOO undersuit marks it as being unlike the other designs, and therefore mysterious/dangerous/awesome.

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 33 - “FRIENDSHIP, RAMPAGE, AND THE BELT LEFT BEHIND”

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After a story that hinged on how difficult it is to support Eiji, when all he ever wants to do is support other people, here’s that story again, but with "(derogatory)" at the end this time.

Kitamura! What an insanely, compellingly weird dude he is. An underclassman of Eiji’s from high school who convinced himself that Eiji was his best friend in the world, a guy that only Kitamura understood, while Eiji’s like I Think We Maybe Went To School Together. It’s a completely lopsided… I mean, I wasn’t even going to say “friendship”, I was going to say “relationship”, but even that feels like it flatters Kitamura too much. Eiji genuinely doesn’t remember anything this guy is talking about, to a level that would make even the rampant amnesia sufferers of Revice be like No Wait This Rings A Bell. Kitamura’s a hero worshipping weirdo, and clearly the villain of this piece.

The thing that makes it sort of perfect, though, is that he’s also saying all of the Frank Grimes-esque stuff about the cast that anyone not steeped in the heroic sacrifice endemic to tokusatsu would say: Ankh is absolutely bad news; Eiji’s friends are dangerous to him; Eiji is squandering his potential by hiding from his desires; it’s weird that Date just assumed that any random bag of groceries should contain the correct ingredients to make oden. (Okay, Kitamura didn’t say that one out loud, but you could tell he was thinking it.) Kitamura is a pushy, sociopathic creep who clearly thinks that he and Eiji are the only real people in the world, but he does want Eiji to be happy and safe. The things he’s doing are in service of what he views as friendship.

It’s just, y’know, not friendship. Kitamura isn’t asking Eiji what he wants, he’s dictating what Eiji needs. Friendship isn’t saying you know what will make someone happy and refusing to be swayed, it’s reaching out to someone and letting them tell you how you can help them. Ankh’s a manipulative jerk who is furious that Eiji’s possession by heretofore unknown Core Medals isn’t immediately benefitting him and only him right this second, but he’s also someone who understands that the Purple Medals 100% cannot stay inside Eiji indefinitely. Viewing Ankh as the thing standing in the way of Eiji’s happiness misses that friendship isn’t about forcing someone to live the way you want them to, even when it’d make them safer – even Ankh waits until a fight to trick Eiji into popping out the Purple Medals.

Having a ridiculous-yet-normal creep like Kitamura front and center – kidnapping Hina for a minute and trapping Ankh in a net and inviting Team OOO to play around in an unstaffed amusement park that probably violates any number of safety regulations – fits a story where a Bird Yummy somehow feels like the least weird thing in it. It’s an episode that feels unnerved from the start, with kinetic camerawork and unique dolly shots (not Maki; like, a camera on a track) giving even a semi-standard pre-credit Yummy fight a frisson of tension: That parallel shot as OOO and Birth attack the Dino Yummy! The profile shot as Kitamura walks Ankh over the net trap! Even as the show is grounding the story in a pre-OOO relationship from Eiji’s past, it’s letting the scenery and the cinematography elevate everything into the heated realms of melodrama.

I thought this one was excellent. Any story that transports all of Team OOO (sorry Chiyoko) to a new location, picks them off one by one, and has Eiji try to negotiate not just a series of off-season obstacle courses but also a parasocial relationship with a guy who’s just saying what we’re all thinking is going to be a winner. Marrying all of that to stellar direction and growing tension in the show’s core/Core partnership is what clinches it.

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Eiji potentially dooms others by hiding from his desires by being a primary target for the purple Core Medals. But previous episodes portray Eiji's friends as those who'd actually tamper Eiji's reckless habits, like Hina calming down PuToTyra's rampage, and ofc Birth helping directly in battle and Goto indirectly in their battles. Though Kitamura's a creep, it can still feel that Kitamura's telling a truth about Eiji helping him back then in school, as it'd be where his obsession with Eiji came from due to being the only one to reach out to him, making one so attached and needy against the one that helped him out of his funk with no one else to have, while Eiji wouldn't specifically prioritize Kitamura above others, as he cares about everyone, so there shouldn't be special treatments from him.

What Kitamura does to Eiji is what's done in an abusive relationship for being a yandere to him. He kidnaps Hina and uses Eiji's panic and sense of helplessness to fantasize himself helping Eiji, isolating Eiji from the rest of his friends so he relies on Kitamura alone. Kitamura's claims of doing what he did for Eiji's own good, including accusing Eiji's allies as only using him, is also what an abuser does to deflect responsibilities from them and gaslight/guilt trip their victim. And yes, he's villainous in this piece of actually doing something criminal by kidnapping someone. Kitamura doesn't know anyone, including Eiji, because if he actually knows Eiji, it should be expected for him to go look for Hina going by what he claims to be his personality of caring for everyone when Hina asked him.

The cast clearly doesn't know the difference between base form and upgrades if Eiji asks Date to stop him when he goes berserk as PuToTyra (my favorite OOO form, more than TaJaDor as a probable hot take, in design/color/still green-eyes), of which obviously base Birth can't stop a final form. Unless they bring back Birth Day form for a more even playing ground. Though yes Goto did a smart move to lure TaJaDor to an actual enemy so he'd save everyone from a menace. Unlike TaJaDor, PuToTyra actually beats Kazari and forces him to escape. Other than Hina and Ankh, Kitamura through his Yummy also kidnaps Date and later Goto, of which Goto is teased to become the next Birth here.

It seems to be your personal thoughts though to think that if a morally bankrupt person stays with the main cast generally means they should care about them in their own way, if you claim it's hard to think of examples of this and that cases that aren't this is hypothetical, in your eyes. Dunno if there'd be those who ship Kuroto with Kiriya due to Doctor Mighty XX stuff, and think that bromance is formed between them for that, unless they think Another Ending stuff means they're really not a thing, though there's a difference if a villain want to resume their evil plans but can't, or them no longer wanting that (redeemed or retired, but can still be an uncaring asshole).

About it being hyperbole... dunno if their perfect reputation is also helped by/about nostalgia, like them often being earlier shows a KR fan watched, it often happens that people put things that make them nostalgic on the pedestal. Not limited to KR, but I rather often see double standards from people between older stuff that make them nostalgic and newer recent stuff despite it being something similar, and often those that criticize said nostalgic stuff get backlash from them. Outside of nostalgic stuff, it also can happen that fans of something popular shut down any criticisms about said stuff, or that those who don't like said popular stuff accuse the fans as only following trend or sheep rabid fanboys for disagreeing with their criticism or such, which does sound like propping up these shows as perfect, unlike that when one admits to like a less popular show, they usually start with "yeah it's flawed, but...".

It's also an ungu Combo.

I mean, Kitamura does know that Eiji would go looking for Hina -- it's part of his plan! Helping Eiji look for Hina not only gives Kitamura time to poison Eiji against his friends, it lets Kitamura look like a hero by helping Eiji "find" Hina. Kitamura's thought this through! The only problem would be if something ludicrous happened, like multiple desire monsters attacking Team OOO at the same time as Kitamura is springing his trap, but, again: ludicrous.

For some reason, the abandoned park setting is one of my most concrete memories from this phase of OOO.

I definitely also remember that this was the episode where it really hit me that we're just going to be keeping Date around for pretty much the foreseeable future. For context: back when the show was airing we kept getting rumors every few weeks that Date was going to be killed off and Gotou would become Birth. Date may or may not then come back like the dude in Movie Wars Core. But then another month would go by and Date was still here. I don't have any behind-the-scenes insight, but from some of the cast photos (I'll talk about the bunny hate eventually) we got it just seemed like Hiroaki Iwanaga was a really fun guy to hang out with so the show just kept him around a lot longer than initially planned. This episode, though, with the scene where Gotou refuses to put on the Birth belt, is where it really felt like the show was fully committing to Date.