Hibiki: Wow!
 

Lately, I've been watching SuperHero Time 2005 for the first time. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, although my plan to watch the shows in pairs is being jeopardized by Hibiki being really good.

So far, I'm on episode 18 or so. We've been introduced to four Riders (and we've seen a fifth), and none of them have a forced rivalry. ZERO pointless battles between them. I'm floored by how different this is from every Rider series I've seen so far.

The notion of Douji and Hime shepherding giant Makamou is great, as is reversing their voices. (It also occurs to me that this must've been great for the budget; there have been only a few distinct humanoid monsters so far. I'm not wholly clear on how the Makamou are rendered.) The nature of the threat, too, is very different. Most Rider shows I've seen have been about a temporary but finite threat, but the Oni in Hibiki have been operating for generations, and will apparently continue to do so, as the demons they fight appear limitless.

Wow, there's a lot more death here than in any of the more recent Sentai or Rider shows I've seen since Kiva. Bystanders are killed right and left. (Hibiki shares this with Magiranger, on which something dreadful regularly happens to an innocent bystander just before the show cuts to its sugary-happy opening theme.)

I'm fascinated by how much better the toys are integrated into this show than most Rider series I've seen. The disc animals are an essential element of how the Oni operate. I'm used to seeing ring animals, foodroids, etc. mostly forgotten within a few episodes.

What impresses me most about Hibiki is its dedication to small moments and complex feelings. So far, the story has been as much about Asumu as it's been about our titular hero, and although Asumu is starting to integrate into the rest of the cast, it's been a slow process. I just watched an episode in which an Oni puts himself at great personal risk apparently mostly to impress a woman who's just not into him. (I assume they're building very slowly to the possibility of Asumu eventually becoming an Oni. With Zanki and Todorokei, they've established that the Oni's seconds sometimes become Oni as well, and we've established why Hibiki might someday retire relatively young.) What other shows focus a couple of episodes on appendicitis?

All of this is meant in the way of praise. I love a lot of these elements. (The constantly-changing opening theme is just neat.) What I don't love is that Hibiki doesn't look good. It's often blurry; I mean like RuPaul's-Drag-Race-Season-1 blurry. I assume it's a stylistic choice, but it's one of the riskiest things the show does, and I'm not sure it works. I watched Ryuki last year, and Hibiki looks like an older series than Ryuki. My suspicion is that it's about setting a context in which the giant Makamou work better on-screen. The show sounds older, too; is that a xylophone I'm hearing?

What other Kamen Rider shows largely ignore the main Rider for weeks at a time? I really like this idea that certain Oni are better-suited to battling certain Makamou, and I'm just a little surprised that the show actually runs with it, centering the action of whole episodes around secondary Riders rather than Hibiki.

I'd read a lot about how different Hibiki is, and I get it, now. I do miss our riders saying "henshin" when they transform. It's harder to discern nods to Kamen Rider 1 in the design. The antennae abstracted as horns? The oni face instead of a jewel? Are there any nods at all, and I'm making it up?

I'm also aware that I should prepare to have my heart mostly-broken later in the series, as I read that it gets pretty seriously derailed and rendered generic. I'm sure I'll likely watch the rest anyway, but I'm prepping myself for a partial train wreck. I mean, when a show's actors are willing to go on the record as being incensed...

(Meanwhile, I'm enjoying Magiranger more as it goes. It's a lot of good things, but so far, it's not daring, and daring is certainly what defines Hibiki.)

Which video files/ subs do you watch? If you're comparing TV-Nihon's versions, it might be because Ryuki's video encodes are newer than those they used for Hibiki. While it still is supposed to be somewhat blurred, the subs look mostly that extreme because the video quality is so low.

Hibiki is definitely a wonderful show; one of my favorites. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

The theme song is definitely great. I love the different variations, and I'mm a bit disappointed that the full version doesn't include all of them.

There is a noticeable shift in the tone and feel of the show, but it's not entirely horrible. There are a couple parts in the latter half that I think were really handled well, but a lot of the story is pretty lackluster. (And sometimes infuriating...maybe it is as bad as everyone says. :lol )

And that's what I love about the show. It feels unique, and that's what makes it great.

As a huge Hibiki fan, this post makes me very happy. It was such a fun and unique series with a great cast of characters and fantastic cinematography. I can't sing it's praises highly enough. It's not a conventional Rider series, but I think that's a big part of its charm.

If you're enjoying Hibiki, I recommend watching Daimajin Kanon next. It has the same head producer and writer and is very much a spiritual sequel to Hibiki (and arguably an allegory for its production woes).

Yeah, TV-Nihon's 2005-era tv rips are really bad; it's like watching the entire thing with Vaseline smeared over the screen. With Blade finally redone I can only hope that Hibiki finally gets a complete scrub at some point.

I'm pretty much committed at this point, and they've got so many ongoing projects I can't really see them redoing Hibiki any time soon. (Before I decided on Magiranger/Hibiki, I'd considered SHT 2006 featuring Boukenger/Kabuto. TV-Nihon put out the first few episodes of Kabuto in super-high quality, then paused, so I actually switched to the 2005 stuff to wait for more Blu-ray Kabuto subs.

Suzu is probably right that the sub source quality is a factor (I hadn't considered it), but I get the sense that some of the blurriness in Hibiki is a stylistic choice.

Last night, I got a masochistic urge to check out the post-revamp Hibiki opening. Oh, man. I'd always at least sorta-liked Rider opening themes, but... Yeah, no. I'm sure someone likes it, but to me, it felt like they weren't even trying.

I absolutely love both Hibiki and MagiRanger. I haven't finished MagiRanger but Hibiki is a total favorite of mine. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Update: I watched episode 30 today, and it was heartbreaking. Partly, it was unexpected, since I'd mistakenly thought the production change didn't happen until episode 34.

It wasn't so much the loss of the natural setting that jarred me as it was the loss of what a lot of the character relationships meant. Asumu and Hibiki have a fairly honest, straightforward conversation at the beginning of episode, and that's just not something they do. Characterizations all around seemed more broad to me.

The actor who later played Den-O's Yuuto shows up and more or less dominates the episode. (I found this annoying, but also puzzling because I'm predisposed to like that actor.) The mystery inherent in the villains' scheming is just ripped away: "Yep, we're in a lab, makin' a makamou." Which just happens to be a standard-issue Rider kaijin to be fought in a city. I appreciated that they tried to make it marginally more interesting with the flaming hoop gimmick.

I read a bit about the production changes, so apparently, the show just outright drops two Riders at this point? One of the things I'd enjoyed about the show is how it casually introduced cameos of oni Riders many episodes before we'd learn anything substantial about them. We'd JUST learned about Eiki, and I seem to recall another oni a few episodes ago, and they were just... dropped?

I haven't experienced this form of disappointment before. This episode felt more like all the neo-Heisei series I've seen before. I like those shows, so it's not like I object to those tropes and characterizations on their merits. It's just that I was enjoying Kamen Rider Hibiki, and I'm technically still watching a show with that same name, cast, and (mostly) characters, but it's not the show I was enjoying. That show just ended with no fanfare.

I'm still pairing it with Magiranger, a series I enjoy far more than when it started. I still die a little inside every time Houka refers to herself in the third person, though.

RIP, the Hibiki ending that could have been. I'll watch the rest to see whether there's anything I'll enjoy, and so if I'm given reason to gripe, I can do it from an informed perspective.

No Riders get dropped, they continue the same formula they always used: Oni Riders show up every now and then and don't really get a lot of focus. They're just there to show the size of the Takeshi organization. You'll see some more of them later. Eiki's voice actor is an anime guy so he was never meant to be more than another one off Rider. In fact, you actually get a new cameo Rider when Hibiki gets his power up.

The Hibiki staff change is a bit of a struggle but I think people sometimes exaggerate it. Like, it doesn't instantly become this terrible show (IMO) and it has a fairly solid consistency with what the new guys are setting up, it just doesn't always gel with what we've seen. I think the worst of it is in those first few episodes after the staff change, the new writer and producer clearly do not have a firm idea of who these characters are. It starts to become more of a solid watch after a while, probably by the time Shuki's arc is finished.

Also, it's a huge shame we lost all of those beautiful forest fights. I can see why Toei cut them though - they were expensive. This is the reason you don't see them a lot in most shows and why battles have to take place in cities or parks more often than not. It's easier to film in a city at like 5 AM before it gets crowded than it is to take your cast and crew out to to a forest and film there. I've read this is one of the key reasons the change happened - the producer was so set against changing the filming locations because he saw them as vital to the show. The idea was that the Oni stopped the Makamou from interacting with areas that have large human populations as often as they could and that's something he didn't want to change.

Also things were just running behind schedule a lot, he never gave in to Toei demands, and was supposedly hard to work with because he knew what he wanted to do and nothing could sway him from there. It's a HUGE loss to Toei - this is the guy that created gems like Carranger and Kamen Rider Kuuga, to fire him so unceremoniously and sever that working relationship with a very creative mind set back Kamen Rider and Super Sentai quite a bit.

(also, remember, most of these monster suits are made months in advance, whether or not the staff changed, they were always going to be there)

If it makes you feel any better, the writer himself had no idea where the series was going. He didn't actually plan out an ending for the show.

I don't think the staff change was as bad as most people think, but this is what bothers me the most. I think (not sure how true it is) that Eiki and Shouki were going to be featured more, but they got dropped. I would have loved to see more Oni have more appearances in the show. Oh well. :/ At least Eiki is pretty cool.

I don't remember that; which one are you talking about? The only ones I can think of would be Danki or Sabaki, and they both showed up early in the show. To me, it felt like the number of new Oni appearances lessened (if not outright stopped) after the production change.

Shouki. He appears in episode 32. He's one of the Oni Riders who lost the power to transform due to using the Armed Saber prematurely.

Sabaki appears in 36 and 39 while Danki also appears in 32. Sabaki only appeared three times before the staff change, so he's about on par. Danki appeared twice before the change and once after, again, not a lot but not far off from happened before. I think the biggest problem with Danki appearing more is that he's played out of suit by Hibiki's suit actor. Sabaki and Danki also share the same suit actor, so I'm sure that tied into the issue as well.

I'm more upset by the idea that Toei created what? Seven more suits or something like that just to use them for a half second shot in the second opening. I remember watching it as it aired and the tokusatsu community at the time thought we were in for this fantastic series end battle featuring this army of Oni Riders.

It's many months later, and I finally just finished Hibiki. I slowed down dramatically on Super Hero Time 2005, probably because those first few episodes after the Hibiki production team changed were so rough.

Prior to the final episode, my comment would've been, "Wow, the show eventually became enjoyable again." However, as of a few minutes ago, I watched the final episode and thought, "What the hell was that train wreck?"

I knew the ending wasn't necessarily beloved, but I'd assumed its problems would be due to it failing to gel with what happened before the production team changed. I had no idea that it would be due to the new writers apparently having forgotten what they'd written.

SPOILERS for the ending follow:

The show had gone on at length about how Kiriya was completely unsuited to become an Oni. The show was really explicit about this: he froze up in dangerous situations, he gave up easily, he was portrayed as thin-skinned and physically weak. At the same time, the show had Asumu excel at Oni training. He lacked only a clear desire to become an Oni.

I understand that the writers tried to establish that being an Oni was about surpassing one's self, but the show didn't do this legwork for Kiriya. The series jumped a year ahead for the final episode, and we're clearly supposed to assume that Kiriya overcame his many, many character flaws to become an Oni.

It was frustrating for me to watch. From the introduction of Kiriya onward, it was clear he was supposed to be a character threatening to assume Asumu's future for himself, both at school and in terms of the Oni. He was portrayed as cartoonishly awful: an arrogant jerk with few redeeming qualities. As a viewer, I assumed the Kiriya was an obstacle that Asumu had to overcome in order to come of age.

I really didn't expect him to succeed.

The opening episode of Hibiki goes into what's effectively a musical number that establishes that music is part of who Asumu is. Given that this is the series about music-powered Riders, this seemed to make him a perfect Rider candidate. The new production team appeared to just completely forget this: now, he's putting on plays! No, wait; he actually wanted to be a doctor all along!

While I'm on the topic of stuff that didn't feel thought-through: the "real" Douji and Hime turning out to have been copies of what I guess were Victorian versions.... There's a nugget of a cool idea there, but it leaves us without any resolution about the show's villains or their motivations. They were just mysterious and seemingly-random.

I get what the episode was going for: Asumu didn't have to become a Rider to have a fulfilling future. And that'd make sense on any other show, but this is Kamen Rider, wherein character growth is typically marked by becoming a Rider or getting a power-up. It was tremendously unsatisfying to watch him essentially fail at the point of being a Kamen Rider protagonist. Kiriya becoming a taiko Rider was just kind of salt in the wound. This episode was trying to be a wistful meditation on growing up (with hero battles!), but I think it failed.

I've read the Riderwiki page on Hibiki, so I understand the context of rewrites, etc. I also read Aoi Kurenai's comment above about how the original writer didn't have a firm ending in mind. Clearly, the later writers weren't clear on where they wanted the show to go, either.

It's not like the second half of the series had been relentlessly awful. The first several episodes after the production change were pretty bad, but the arcs about Shuki, Akira, Todoroki, and Zanki were well-done. Until the ending, I thought the show had regained its footing to some extent.

Now that I've seen the final episode, I just feel punked. I'm clearly not alone, given that it sounds like people were really unhappy at the time. Hibiki had been such a great show. As it is, I feel like it's maybe half of a great show.

Hibiki had devolved so badly by the end that they were literally rewriting the last episode as it was filming. By that point Toei really didn't seem to care and was just running down the clock until Kabuto started.

And right there you accidentally stumbled on why I love that part of the ending. Hibiki was conceived as a very atypical Rider show and Asumu not becoming an Oni was very in line with that. I don't think it was some brilliantly planned out conclusion but the series up to that point seemed to support the idea. It fits the coming of age theme in my mind to have him try a path out only to find it isn't really his thing.

I'm largely in agreement with everyone else about Hibiki's second half and especially the finale itself but I'll defend that element of it to the death. Especially the very last scene where Hibiki sums up the point of the whole show by telling Asumu "you don't have to be an Oni to be my student" with Shounen Yo playing for the first time in several dozen episodes.

Hibiki was the last of the Heisei Riders I played catch up on and while it was a bit of a bumpy ride that final scene felt straight out of the first half of the series and, for me personally, not only ended Hibiki on a good note, but my entire run of having whole Kamen Rider shows to binge at my leisure (excluding the Showa stuff obviously). With that kind of pressure I think it's impressive I liked it as much as I did.

I totally agree with this. The second half of Hibiki is pretty terrible but I liked that they didn't play the obvious route with Asumu and had him forge his own path in life instead. It was like the only thing it did right.

Though the process to get there was painstakingly cruel imo.
But again, I can understand why Toei kicked out Takadera given his auteur tendencies and alleged notorious budget management for visual wonders(i.e. Kuuga's burning chapel).
Plus, Inoue, hate him or love him, I heard is an industry favorite cause apparently he is willing to do filler eps and help out production.
If you factor this in Inoue is like a double-edged sword, he is resourceful and a godsend for production staff for such dire situations, but because he probably is not 100% on board the lore at times, the end result can be hit or miss.

It may surprise you, but I actually agree with you. The whole point of Asumu's story was gaining self-confidence; becoming an Oni wasn't necessarily an endpoint to that. I still consider the end of episode 29 to be the show's real ending, but I did like that aspect of the apocryphal episodes.

Hey, we agree on lots of stuff! Just as long as we're not talking Ghost. :lol

Ah Hibiki. I didn't get very far into it before I fell out of Toku, but it was wonderfully unique. And the costumes, Goddamn, they're excellent. SS Zanki/Todoroki/etc. please Bandai? Don't make me beg, bro...

I had to stop reading this awesome thread as it was getting into ep's I have yet to see but
Totally of a mind. It is excellent.

Haven't read the whole thread, but Hibiki is one of my top 3 so I had to chime in.

The first half is a masterwork of Tokusatsu. It was so different and refreshing and all those good things. I don't really want to just repeat what I'm sure others have already said in this thread.

The staff change is a bit overblown. Yes, some of the changes were awful, especially early into it. It really did lose much of its tone and style that made it special and unique. But honestly, it didn't ruin the show. While I do feel the first half is superior, some of the show's strongest moments come AFTER the change. Hibiki is also one of the only times I haven't bern pissed off at the ending of a toku season.

Fun fact, not sure if it was brought up, the different versions of the opening instrumental each corresponds to the rider the episode focuses on, at least if I remember right.

Hibiki is up there with Zolda and Bravo as my favorite rider. And Shonen Yo is probably my favorite song in toku alongside Alive A Life from Ryuki.

My issue with what they did with Asumu isn't that he didn't become an Oni, but that they jerked the audience around so much about it. Before the staff change, I was pretty sure Asumu wasn't going to become an Oni, so when the brought it up later, I was a bit irritated. I warmed to it eventually though but then it was like at the last second they changed their minds and Asumu became a doctor. There was very little buildup to that part and it gave me a lot of whiplash. Also Kirya becoming an Oni just threw salt in the wound since he was just such a little shit.

That's what I remembered, too. The recording I have of the extended Hibiki theme (basically the same theme reiterated five times) confused me, though, because it doesn't contain the clear trumpet/Ibuki theme I'd remembered. (It goes standard > vocal > guitar/Zanki > strings? huh? > partially-united, and I can't make out any electric guitar in the final version at all (yet it's got trumpet.) I'm about to go on a tear to confirm my memory of what the openings actually did. I didn't even notice that they were varying the theme (if they did so) until Ibuki showed up.

If the Riderwiki article is to be believed, it was literally that. Supposedly, there were major rewrites as the final episode was being shot.