[Omnikaiser]

So I finished Zero spin-offs just now. And if Black Blood was nice but forgettable, Dragon Blood was amazing !!!

Black Blood :

I liked it. But it was a very short series who couldn't let time for characters and the story to develop. The global story was a bit too mystic for my taste, but i still liked it. I feel like that non-japanese actor contributes to that feeling too. I had the same feeling in Ghost.

Too bad the two side characters didn't have lot of screen time in 6 episodes. It was refreshing to see a woman fight like a knight and a Man Priest fight with an umbrella.

But in the end I think the thing I will remember the most from this series is the 2 times Fujita spoke French (as a French guy myself, it made me fangasm)


Dragon Blood :

Damn that was amazing !! It's probably my favorite GARO show after the original and Makai Senki so far.

I don't even know where to start.
Once again, the story writing got me. I didn't expect this development and ending at all. Edel coming back twice after being dead was already surprising, but Alice being an antagonist who thought her plan from the start was a huge "WTF?!".
I feel dumb for not noticing before, but it's true she is dressed in White for the first part of the show, and once she steals the egg and hatches it, she is wearing Black. My old western cinema option course teacher would be mad at me for not noticing that
To be honest I still found weird one of the first scene with Alice in the 1st episode. When she is facing the bunch of Rabbit masked horrors, and they tell her : "I will eat that part and me that part", Alice reaction saying "Uso desho ?" was said in a strange tone, as if she didn't care at all. At first I put that on the actress being very young and kind of bad.
But if that was done on purpose, then that was an amazing subtle hint.

In the end the story is very sad. Alice died and I blame Rei (and the Makai Knight usual attitude) for it, kinda.
She spent all her life being rejected by others and being alone. And even if her scheme already started before meeting Rei, it felt like she sent some "HELP" signals to him at many occasions so she can change mind.
But the common Makai Knights attitude, towards people they could love, Rei showed (that kouga showed in previous series too) went horribly wrong with Alice. It was done to protect her, but that was the wrong approach this time and she felt rejected again (that Rei/Rekka kiss scene O_O) and turned totally evil. I'm sure if he kept her near him and tried a different way she could have forgotten her plan a bit (but still not accept killing the egg though).


The other things that made me happy with the series is the appearance of 2 of my favorite Kamen Rider veteran actors : Tomohisa Yuge and Haga Yuria.

Tomohisa Yuge : my toku love kinda grew with him because the 3 first KR series I watched were the ones he appeared in (Gaim, Kabuto and Ryuuki) and I'm always happy to hear he is involved in recent toku (Dragon Blood here and Amazons S2).

Haga Yuria : I think she is my favorite Kamen Rider lead actress and I thought I would not see her in toku again since Kiva was almost 10 years ago.
fun fact (SPOILER for her 555 and Kiva roles, be careful) : Dragon Blood, 555, Kiva. All the characters she played in toku end up dying.
This time it happened real quick. a bit sad about it. I kinda thought Rekka+Kagome could be the new Jabi+Rekka.



Action scenes were top notch during that season. Lot of CGI, but good CGI and choreographies.
I was sure Rei would go over the 99.9sec at some point or else having the countdown in every episode would be pointless.
But yeah while the transformation in a Dragon-like creature looked nice, Fujita's appearance as a monster was eewwww...

Speaking about Fujita, while I didn't find him that older between 2006 Garo and 2013 Black Blood, when I first saw him in 2017 Dragon Blood I was like : ouch, I guess he hit that point men reach where they look older suddenly.
But got used to it along the series.

Rekka's actress, on the contrary, seem to not age at all (but Red Requiem/Makai Senki/Tougen no Fue/Dragon Blood has not the same time between the series).


I don't think I have much more to say about it except it was really great and enjoyed it a lot (while Rei is far from being a character I loved at first).

Oh yeah, maybe that I find lot of Horrors were women this time, but it's not like there were lot of horrors anyway.

EDIT : oh yeah and the end is very abrupt really.


Time for Makai no Hana and Raiga next.