[Kiwami]

Before I start, thank you Switchblade for making these threads every year! I was looking forward to this one.

Favorite New Show of 2021

Kamen Rider Revice.

Zenkaiger is really good, probably my favorite Sentai after Zyuohger right now, but I always preferred Kamen Rider over Super Sentai and Revice hits all the right notes for me.

The characters are great, the suits are fun, the gimmick is cool, and the story makes me want to see what's next. It heavily reminds me of the time when I started watching Kamen Rider and discovered so many great shows, like OOO for example, which I loved and binge watched in days.

Now, I'm not saying Revice is similar to OOO; it just invokes the same feeling of a show that I can't stop watching for me. In fact, I look forward to giving Revice another watch already, and that doesn't happen too often for me with currently ongoing shows.

Favorite New-to-You Show of 2021

Choukou Senshi Changerion. I actually didn't know this show existed until Sentinel put the figure up for pre-order a few weeks ago, but I fell in love with it very quickly.

Don't get me wrong, it sucks. It's really bad. Completely insane plots with an unlikeable main protagonist and the suit battles are reduced to awkward flailing around at the end of the episode when one side-character reveals they were the monster all along.

But! It is never boring. Not once. It's brutally hilarious actually, even though probably unintended it makes for a fantastic parody of the genre.

My favorite twist on a genre-classic story so far is that when the main character's secretary leaves and he searches for a new one, a whole slew of strong bad guys go after him all at once, so his support crew wants to get him a "power-up". So far so good, we know this kind of plot. A magic crystal is bought out of storage, and it's up to the newly hired secretary to deliver it.

Now, quick detour: The main protagonist, being the absolute dick he is, chewed out the new secretary earlier for not doing anything but complain. While being rightfully hurt, she realizes he's not entirely wrong so she makes him a lunchbox, because that's what she wants to do to help. The support crew is attacked by the bad guys, they can only get the magic crystal to the new secretary, who rides away on her bike, crystal and lunchbox with her.

She crashes in her hurry, both the crystal and the lunchbox fall to the ground, a hungry dog approaches and she tries to get the animal away in panic.

Meanwhile, our hero is getting ganged up by the bad guys and is about to lose. The new secretary arrives, here's your power-up!

...

It's the lunchbox, the dog ate the crystal. What the fuck

Our hero is confused and angry, but after new secretary tells him she made the lunchbox to help he's touched by her feelings. The bad guys are pissed about the holdup, one approaches and smacks the lunchbox away, spilling the inside all over the ground. Our hero becomes so mad because of this that he easily beats all the bad guys, no power-up needed.

Changerion is full of stuff like this, and most of the time it is much more insane than this. In fact, I was tempted to open a thread as I watched the series and only share one single screen cap for each episode, that one being the weirdest line of dialogue. My laziness got the better of me, as usual, and I ended up not doing it, but have a quick glimpse anyway:



It's fun. Simple but effective fun. I can only recommend this absolute mess of a show.

Favorite Movie, Miniseries, or Special of 2021

The home media release was this year so I hope it counts: I really liked REALxTIME. I think it was fun.

Favorite Rewatch of 2021

Okay confession time: I dropped Zenkaiger around the time Twokaiser appeared. Didn't care much for his antics and was bored with the show overall.

I decided to pick it up again later and instead of picking up where I left of I decided to start fresh. And a good decision it was, I already kind of liked this show but that rewatch made me love it. It's really good early on, around the time Twokaiser appears it drops a bit for me but it goes right back up after. What a fun show.

Favorite Male Lead Character

As much as I like Ikki I think I give it to Kaito. He's a great Sentai leader and I think the actor makes it work. He's the type of childish hotshot who's actually likeable and has his moments where he calms down and shows some serious feelings.

Favorite Female Lead Character

Sakura Igarashi 100%. What a fantastic character and Rider. I like her a lot. Valkyrie was awesome, but Jeanne is probably the best female Rider we ever had IMO.

Yua walked so Sakura could run.

Favorite Male Supporting Character

I like the dad from Revice, he's fun. Quirky but lovable.

Favorite Female Supporting Character

I agree wholeheartedly with Matrixbeast on that one, Yatsude rules. She's so wholesome, a great support to the team.

Favorite Villain

I personally don't count Stacey as a villain even though he probably is, and while Revice has cool villains they don't stand out to me that much so... okay, I'll go with the underdog pick: Boccowaus. Simply because the concept of this giant wall face that bangs its fist on the ground when it's mad, which in turn makes everyone around bounce like crazy is funny to me.

Favorite Returning Past Character

I really liked Tsuruhime coming back in the Zenkai Red special, I always thought it was cool that she was the leader of her team, and seeing her giving a great talk to Kaito how not every Sentai leader has to be red, how in fact appearance and gender don't matter, only your heart, that was fantastic.

Favorite Actor

I like Kiita Komagine as Kaito, as I've mentioned before, he really makes the character come to life with a great performance every episode.

Favorite Actress

Ayaka Imoto as Sakura Igarashi. Very nice variety of emotions on display, she's awesome in the role of a teenager being confronted with her own weakness and also as a kickass Rider.

Favorite Suit Design

This one's hard. Zenkaiser is perfect, a great homage to his predecessors and I like that they didn't give him a single color, in fact that he isn't referred to by a color at all, he's only "Zenkaiser". So cool. Similarly, Stacaesar, amazing suit design.

But I give it to Kamen Rider Revi. I didn't like the design at first but seeing it in motion quickly changed my mind. Now I just adore the helmet, the sculpted Cheshire Cat-grin is so cool.

Favorite Weapon/Vehicle/Mecha

I like the Ohinbuster50. A fun weapon that works surprisingly well as a gun.

Favorite Fight Scene

Kamen Rider Jeanne going ham in her first fight was epic.

Favorite Dramatic Scene

There's probably better ones but Kaito being crushed about Secchan forgetting him was so well done, it got me good.

Favorite Comedic Scene

Zenkaiger had lots of funnies, I don't remember any particular ones though.

Biggest "WTF did I just watch?" Moment

Similar to the answer above. Although, Changerion overloaded my WTF-sensor many times so that trumped everything the currently ongoing shows had to offer.

Favorite Song

Both Zenkiager and Revice' OP's are great; I think I prefer liveDevil though.

Favorite Piece of Merchandise

I bought a lot Figuarts, all of them great, none really stand above the rest though.

Biggest Surprise of 2021

Sentai Figuarts coming back, at least in some capacity.

Biggest Disappointment of 2021

Ultraman Trigger sadly. Usually I can talk about a lot of cool stuff Ultraman did this year, but 2021 is different in that regard. The show is just "meh" to me, I don't hate it, I can enjoy the great effects and miniature work, but the show itself cannot capture my interest.

The Onari Memorial Award for Single Worst Thing in 2021 Tokusatsu

I'm afraid I have to give one final big middle finger to Kamen Rider Saber I guess. I just don't like this show, at all.