[ZeoRangerV]

Watched Kikaider REBOOT between last night and this morning (thanks to a minor crisis where the disc stopped working on my player and I thought it was faulty. Thankfully it worked when I changed the region on my old laptop) and was pretty impressed with it. Not many toku heroes can lend themselves to "gritty realistic remakes" but Kikaider is one of the few that can, and REBOOT runs with this and really makes it work.

The basics of the original Kikaider plot are in there, but its all been reworked in a very different way. DARK is very different from the typical toku evil organisation they were in the original.

The first 20 minutes are pretty rushed (and don't make complete sense in some instances) but the action is really slick. There's a fair bit of over the top wirework jumping and dodgy special effects, but really that's part of the package isn't it? Sometimes toku movies feel more like extended episodes rather than actual films, but this one did feel like a higher budget adaptation and I could really appreciate that.

Jingi Irie's Jiro is very different to the manga/anime/toku versions, coming across as more of a robot confused by his emotions than one conflicted by them. This bothered me in a few of the fight sequences, as it came across that the Conscience Circuit was automatically stopping him harm others rather than making him realise that he shouldn't do it. I was willing to chalk this simply up to a different interpretation, but the fact Jiro turns off his Conscience Circuit to defeat Hakaider goes against the whole point of Kikaider. He's able to turn his emotions off at any time, but he chooses not to because he'd instantly lose his memories and what makes him "human". Having Hakaider acknowledge that he's gone against his creator's intention makes it a little better, but really its something that shouldn't have happened in the first place.

The film puts an interesting spin on Professor Gill, taking him from the leader of an evil organisation to a brilliant scientist that's always lived in Komyoji's shadow. It'd have been nice if he could have been developed a bit more, but I liked how in becoming Hakaider he felt he'd surpassed both humans and machines. I'm not usually a fan of Gill Hakaider, but he worked really nicely in this film.

But my absolute favourite addition was Mari, who I was quite surprised to hear was going to be in this film. Disappointingly there's no Bijinder Reboot, but Maryjun Takahashi is superb in the role and definitely has the best fight sequence of the entire film.

With a surprisingly dower ending and a VERY interesting end credits scene (Saburo Hakaider might still be a thing?!?!) I do hope they're able to revisit this universe in some capacity. I mean if the Space Sheriffs can get V-cinemas after the mixed reception to Gavan, surely this can get a second outing too. It's certainly not a film that'll spawn a whole new franchise, but it'd be an utter shame for it not to get another opportunity to finish its story.