[Kurona]

So at this point, Kuuga wasn't quite doing it for me after the first few episodes. Oh, sure; I had my fun with bugman holding an honest-to-god real pistol; and my favourite form just debuted last episode... but things just weren't clicking for me. I was enjoying it fine enough, but it just wasn't hooking me and I stopped watching Kuuga for, like, a week? Not because of anything viscerally negative, but just because I couldn't really be bothered with it.

And then I came back to episodes 11 and 12.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Hey, look, it's another one of my favorite Kamen Rider episodes ever.

It's very difficult to not agree with this.


EVERYTHING fell into place with this episode. It's so perfectly paced and thought out; it gives new meaning to who Godai is and why he does the things he does; it has this beautiful, heartfelt, emotional pathos to it. If someone watched the first few episodes of Kuuga and said "nah this ain't for me", I would honest to god say to them "alright, fair enough, but I highly suggest you try watching up till the end of episode 12 first". These episodes -complete- Kuuga. It might even be better to say it forms a foundation to it, or is the real last scene of Kuuga's beginning, or something like that. This is where you really, truly start to understand what it's about.

Which is funny, because when someone asks me what Kuuga's about; one of the things at the top of my list would be Godai's relationship with Ichijou. They are without a doubt one of the best duos in Rider history, rivaling the likes of even Eiji with Ankh and Sento with Banjou for me; and you just can't leave their connection out of any true analysis. And yet this episode barely features our workaholic policeman and barely focuses on him. But that's fine: because important as Ichijou is to Godai, this is showing you just about everything else that's important to him.


Fish just about said everything I could want to say, but to end it off there is one more thing I'd like to expand on: that line Kanzaki delivers? Now, it of course depends on the subs; and as said I was watching the one that translated the goddamn Grongi lines. But for me, it went like this:-

"To tell the truth... I no longer understand education. The children themselves say they have no hope for the future... in that case, what should I be teaching them?"

That line gets me every single time. Now, I'm 23; and I'm well aware there's people even younger than me on the boards, but you could definitely say I'm still pretty young and it's not been all that long since my school years. And that feeling of finding it difficult to be dedicated or attached to something; and beyond that even just without hope because the future looks so bleak? That's something I personally felt a lot when I was not much younger, something I occasionally feel these days, and something that when I talk to my peers and people younger than me and even people a fair bit older than me, I come to realise is an experience that's not quite universal; but certainly very widely felt.

And a lot of media, when tackling these ideas; they'll go for general encouragement, or come up with solutions, or all manner of things. And you'll get some that'll be a little harsh, a few of which are more than is necessary. And I'm not saying that these don't come from a kind place, but a lot of them clearly don't understand what it is or don't think too hard about it or just plain don't want to go there.

I bring this up, all this context; because... for this specific feeling, no piece of media; no character in fiction has ever made me feel more seen and understood than this fictional schoolteacher, in a completely different country, in the year 2000, saying this one singular line.

And he'll come back in a later episode and expand upon it more, to be sure (in ways that I still found quite poignant), but this is the magic of Kuuga right here for me. Just about any other show that would tackle problems head-on like this and give little lines to sum it up? It'd come across as pandering; as ill-conceived; as lecturing or as meaningless platitudes. But Kuuga every time it wants to say something, it knows what it's talking about.

The reason I loved and stayed with Rider, with Tokusatsu in general; is this one reason that I think Kuuga does even better than most shows of its kind: it's genuine.