[Kiwami]

I must say, I low-key hated the very light-hearted and generic tone of this show at first, especially after such strong iterations in the franchise as Geed and Orb, but 5 episodes in... I kinda love it.

Like, the characters are so much flatter and boring than what we had before, but it’s still fun. And the action scenes - dear god, Tsuburaya Productions cannot be stopped. This stuff looks so gorgeous. Miniature-work, effects, suits - every single episode has amazing visuals and techniques.

And Makoto Aizen – he’s just too much, in a good way. I’m really glad that they play this character consistent, if he’s only be a fool like that in public but some kind of evil maniac in secret like many other villains in the past I’d be tired of his shtick pretty quickly, but since the character is always on crack I can laugh about it. Makes me wonder though, why do I like this guy even though I hate smear characters in other shows… I don’t know really.

Anyways, I like R/B, even though some things could be tweaked a bit. I think they really need to get rid of the "past-Ultraman as transformation items"-thing. Especially since it serves no purpose other than "This dude gives you fire powers, this one water etc". If they used it better, like if Rosso uses Taro’s power he actually connects to his consciousness and gains advice and thus character development from a past Ultraman, that’d be cool.

But I’m afraid the potential is wasted as Tsuburaya just continues to pump out Legend Ultraman-merch every year. But hey, if the show is as entertaining as R/B, I can forgive them.

Also, I wonder how Orb fits into all of this. We know the name of the show with the giant circle in the back basically spells "ORB", we have seen Ultraman Orb Dark as figures and stuff, and now Aizen discovers Gai’s jacket and hums his signature tune. I gotta say, if this show takes place in the same universe as Orb and if Gai himself shows up and becomes a support character, that would be fantastic.