[Switchblade]

So as a bit of insight into how my brain works, I tend to start populating this list as I go through the year, gradually adding or removing moments as they stand out to me so I can fill in my own responses. I'm not sure what that says about me.

Favorite New Show of 2022

Absolutely Donbrothers. Full disclosure, I'm about ten episodes behind on it. Work unexpectedly shifted into serious overdrive in October and I'm just coming out of it now. I lost a lot of my normal tokusatsu time, so I ended up falling behind on all of the weekly shows (still only seen two episodes of Black Sun because if I'm having a hard time squeezing in 23-minute episodes you know that 40-minute ones aren't making the cut). I did a better job of keeping up with Geats and Decker, but I'm just now starting to make it through my backlog with Donbrothers. Doesn't change the fact that I always walk away from an episode of this show with a smile on my face because I consistently have a great time with it.

Favorite New-to-You Show of 2022

Ultraman R/B. I skipped this show back when it first aired because I wasn't feeling it after the first few episodes. Finally came back to it this year and had a great time. I really grew to love the whole Minato family and Saki is easily one of my favorite antagonists that the franchise has ever given us.

Favorite Movie, Miniseries, or Special of 2022

Honestly haven't seen many full films this year. In fact, I think it was just the R/B movie to wrap up that late watch. I know that I haven't seen the OOO reunion or the Saber movie, even though I've had both sitting on my computer for months. So miniseries it is, then, and I'm going to go with Girls Remix. I'll touch on this below, but a huge part of why I still cared about Revice was Sakura and Hana's partnership, so this special was very much made for me. Having Akiko back coincided perfectly with renewed nostalgia for W, too, and whoever had the idea to put Poppy and Izu in a room together was a genius.

Favorite Rewatch of 2022

Prompted by Hiroyuki Watanabe's death, I decided that it would be fun to revisit the Saejima branch of Garo this year. I'm still not done with the first series, but I got far enough past halfway for it to count.

Favorite Male Lead Character

This is a tough one for me because Taro is unlikeable by design, Kanata doesn't work for me, Ace is arguably not the lead character in his own show, and the back half of Revice didn't do Ikki any favors. I guess I'm going to go by the idea that every Sentai character is a lead and go with Inuzuka because he works really well as a more mellow and occasionally goofy take on the Inoue bad boy.

Favorite Female Lead Character

I feel like I had a lot more to work with in this category. Sakura remained my favorite of the Igarashi siblings throughout the entire year and Neon is easily the most interesting of Geats's main characters for me so far. This honor can't go to anyone other than Haruka, though. She is a fantastic character who steals pretty much every scene she's in. Absolutely love her.

Favorite Male Supporting Character

There are plenty of good choices here, too. Definitely not Tamaki, though, because even if I liked him it feels out of place for Revice's ultimate butt monkey to win something. I think I'm going to go with... pause to look up character's actual name... Kaito Goshikida, aka Zenkaizer Black, aka "Master" from Donbrothers. I still have no idea what his deal is, but I always enjoy the fact that most of his purpose on the show is to just subtly dick with the heroes.

Favorite Female Supporting Character

Aguilera/Hana, no hesitation. For reasons that I'm starting to better understand, I almost always find female characters more engaging and empathetic than males. Hana's journey from suggestive statue-marrying cultist to reformed hero and supportive girlfriend was one of the aspects of Revice that always worked for me.

Favorite Villain

There's part of me that wants to say Akaishi from Revice because he was really effective and often scary as a villain, but at the same time I just did not like the guy and the fact is that most of his success stems largely from Daiji being a moron. So, once again running into the danger that I haven't watched past episode 31 yet and am definitely missing some things, I'm going to say Sonoi. Excellent counterpart to Taro and it's really fun to watch their friendly rivalry.

Favorite Returning Past Character

I do love that this has become a consistently recurring category. I'm going to break tradition by not saying the Gokaigers again, even though it would be a valid answer. Instead, as alluded to above, it's going to be a toss-up between Izu and Poppy, probably my two favorite characters from their respective series (Ex-Aid is a bit of a closer call, but Kuroto's star dims more for e me every time he gets brought back).

Favorite Actor

Kouhei Higuchi, who plays Taro on Donbrothers. The show asks for a lot from him between the very deadpan normal scenes and the more manic episodes and I think he does a good job of both.

Favorite Actress

Yui Asakura, Revice's Hana. Again, really love the character, but in particular I'm impressed with some of the moments when she did most of her acting with just body language. Very believable performance.

Favorite Writer

A sentence I never expected to type: Toshiki Inoue wrote the most consistently excellent episodes this year.

Favorite Director

This may be recency bias since I just watched one of his episodes of Decker last night, but Takanori Tsujimoto did some of my favorite episodes this year. I always love an Ultraman director who brings some unique new elements to the series.

Favorite Suit Design

Kamen Rider Geats, specifically the full Boost and Magnum pairing. Great colors, great helmet, really nice armor design, and it all looks good in action, too. Honorable mention to Decker's Dynamic form, which is one of the best looking final Ultraman forms we've gotten in ages.

Favorite Weapon/Vehicle/Mecha

Don Onitaijin. Very nicely designed and executed combined mecha.

Favorite Fight Scene

I lost a pet this year. It was something that I knew was coming, but that didn't change how much it sucked having to make that final call and then go through the whole experience. I'm not sure how much that influenced this, but the Ikki takes Vice for one last play in the park fight from the last episode of Revice hit me like a ton of bricks.

Favorite Dramatic Scene

Like I said above, female characters resonate more with me and the same also holds true for WLW stories. I knew that Revice was definitely implying some things with Sakura and Aguilera up to this point, but I was not prepared for how hard they went into developing that relationship. I never expected anything as overt as the "I loved you." "Don't use the past tense!" confrontation and it basically put in place the main thing I watched Revice for from that point on.

Favorite Comedic Scene

Donbrothers is frequently hilarious and I could probably make a top ten list for the year out of this series alone. There's one particular joke that has really stuck with me, though, and it's honestly one of the smaller ones. There was an episode where Jiro went home to visit his friends (who, naturally, all think he's a weird loser). He tells them about his adventures with the Donbrothers, though, and it reminds them of their own forgotten childhood ambitions, which ends with a punchline that is fairly understated but drew probably the biggest laugh out of me of the year: "I wanted to be invisible.

Biggest "WTF did I just watch?" Moment

Donbrothers. All of it. Start to finish.

Favorite Song

I like both the Donbrothers and Decker opening themes, but I'm going to go with the rocking but relatively obscure Riot in Bloom from Girls Remix. I like Hana/Yui Asakura; have I mentioned that?

Favorite Piece of Merchandise

Still not a merch guy.

Biggest Surprise of 2022

Again, still behind on Donbrothers and this is something I fill expect has gotten/will get worse before the end of the series, but I was absolutely not expecting it when Kiji Brother actively let a dude get murdered for threatening his wife. That was a jaw on the floor moment.

Biggest Disappointment of 2022:

I feel like I'm probably safe saying Black Sun, even with only seeing two episodes. I had very high hopes for this show, but between this and Amazons it seems like the concept of what an "adult" Kamen Rider series looks like is a pretty narrow concept and one that I do not care for.

The Onari Memorial Award for Single Worst Thing in 2022 Tokusatsu:

There are definitely some story decisions and individual moments that I really did not care for this year, but I'm going to go real world on this one. Jason David Frank's death. I know that the guy could be controversial, but he was such a huge part of what brought me into this hobby in the first place and is 100% responsible for bringing me back into it with PR Dino Thunder. I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for Tommy. I also wouldn't have had a ponytail when I was in my late teens/20s and I looked damn good with long hair.