[Locke]

I have returned! Well… not really. Just thought I’d pop my head in since there is a new Rider about. I gave it a REALLY good go with Drive and Ex-Aid but none of the Superhero Time stuff really does it for me anymore and I am far too isolated from the community to really keep up with the non Superhero Time stuff.

I’ve watched two episodes of Build so far. In a general sense I like Build’s design but honestly I’ve felt like all of the primary Rider’s after Gaim, except maybe Ex-Aid, have had awesome core designs that have been ruined by ugly forms down the line. I can live with the low production quality of tokusatsu but for me the Giant Robot style of suit construction where you just stick a cluster of flimsy crap with no design coherence onto a morph suit and let it flap in the wind does nothing for me and we have got a LOT of that shit over the last few years for Rider forms.

Build as a character/set of powers I’m still out on. I couldn’t even tell you Build’s name at this point and it is too early to decide whether Build changing form a hundred times an episode is going to be fun or draining. I’m already concerned it is leaning towards the more negative side of things when he started to flap around his hoover arm.

So far the story has done nothing for me either, Rider still doesn’t seem to understand the difference between melodrama and genuine pathos but I will say that I am happy that this seems like a far more serious Rider than what we’ve gotten for the last few years and in some ways seems to be going back to basic in terms of overarching themes and ideas. Oh and Night Rogue so far has been so cool, like a Toku version of the Dread Doctors.

I also rewatched the first episode of Blade for the Nth time. It remains one of the only older shows I enjoyed but never finished and now someone other than TVN has finished Blade, I have no excuse.

Thoughts on episode one, all these years later? I like being dropped in media res, it helps that these clearer encodes allow me to actually differentiate the actors in the way the potato quality TVN encodes never could. The actual set up is extremely bland as far as Japanese stories go but the contrast to the pretty much non existent pace in the first two episodes of Build to something like Blade which moves at a blink and you’ll miss it pace to a fault.

I love the Rider suit designs in this show, Chalice is one of the coolest looking Rider’s ever in my mind. The actual implementation of the whole magic cards shit is actually great too, even if the concept of it is super dumb. Really sweet transformations to boot although “Turn Up”, what the fuck haha. Just a shame about the nauseating direction and unnecessary and dated CG effects.