[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I figured this open invitation was the perfect opportunity to go watch these episodes again and I'm happy to report that... Kuuga is a really awesome show!

What I'm way less happy to report is that the conversation at the end is indeed completely borked.

The gist of what's actually going down is that Mika was scared seeing Ichijou being so aggressive, all the more so because she had just seen him so happy right beforehand. She found it hard to believe that the guy violently restraining a criminal in the street was the same guy who was just chatting it up with her about their taste in sweets, but what Yuusuke is reassuring her of is that both of those sides of Ichijou are equally real, and that the side of him Mika was scared of doesn't invalidate or erase the part of him that's a kind person.

It's part of a larger theme in Kuuga, that I'm going to have to yell at you about when you finish the show, about violence, and the effect it has on people, something that connects directly to Yuusuke's current situation with his growing powers, the motives of the Grongi, and even the fact that the main villain in 43 isn't even a monster.

That's what I was thinking they were aiming for. It's tough, in general for me with Kuuga, to figure out some of the emotional beats because of how... bland the acting is? I feel like the actors are frequently saying one thing, portraying another, and the editing is doing God knows what. The action sequences and Grongi plots have a clarity that I feel the dramatic parts usually (but not always) lack.

It definitely doesn't help that these last 15 episodes or so are subbed by what looks like a different team. (MCS? Is that a thing? The font's different, anyway.) It feels a lot more truncated, with less descriptive language and more blunt statements. I'm having to intuit a bit more than normal, and it obviously is not going super great. Thanks for your feedback!

And, yeah, probably going to need someone to argue for a thematic read of this series. I'm kind-of barely seeing the edges of a theme maybe, but nothing with the forcefulness of other Kamen Rider shows. It's all a lot more purely procedural than I was hoping for, but it ain't over yet.