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Garo is one of my all-time favorite toku series. It has a really engaging story with interesting characters and a well-developed and very rich mythology. The action is pretty topnotch, too, with a lot of well choreographed wirework, especially in the unarmored fight scenes. I personally tend to think that the armor scenes are usually too short, but there's an in-story reason for that so I can deal - besides, when the armor is out for extended periods it just means that things are about to get crazy epic.

The visuals in Garo are another great reason to check it out, as both the hero and monster designs are really interesting and unique. There are also a lot of cool things done with the camera and backgrounds, leading to a lot of really dynamic visuals in the series (the Kiba dvd special is possibly the best example of this to date, as that thing was pretty much wall-to-wall awesome visual pieces).

The original series aired in 2005 and was capped off by a tv special called Beast of the White Night. A theatrical film, Red Requiem, came out in 2010 and was released on dvd last year, quickly followed by a dvd special centered around the villain Kiba. The Kiba special took place alongside the last few episodes of the original series, but it also set up some plot points that are being followed up on in the currently airing series, Makai Senki.

If you're a Rider fan, there are a lot of fun cameos that can be picked up on in Garo. The main female character, Kaoru, is played by an actress named Mika Hijii, who was the Orchid Undead in Kamen Rider Blade. The secondary hero of Garo, Rei Suzumara/Silver Knight Zero, was the Dragon Orphenoch in Faiz. The guy that played White Knight Dan in Beast of the White Knight would go on to play Taiga in Kiva. Garo's dad is also Gaoh from the first Den-O movie. Goro and Kitaoka from Ryuki show up in the original series and Kusaka, Tezuka/The First Ichimonji, and the police chief from W have all been in Makai Senki. One of the Horrors in the original series is also played by an actress that some of you might know from either Go-Onger or Japanese porn, whichever you watch more of.

Garo is an absolutely amazing show and I cannot recommend it enough. Just don't try to watch it with your kids unless you're a pretty lousy parent, as it's got a lot of pretty graphic violence, some fairly creepy imagery, and more than a little bit of nudity.