[Kamen Rider Die]

AVATARO SENTAI DONBROTHERS EPISODE 1: AVATARO!



I was watching Kamen Rider Decade a little while ago, and it gave me the opportunity to talk with other Decade fans. A surprisingly high number of them had started watching Kamen Rider with Decade; with an anniversary season.

That seemed insane to me. I specifically watched Decade so I’d understand Zi-O (starting this Thursday!), and I watched Kuuga through Kiva so I’d understand Decade. The idea of starting without context, without grasping the references that acted like a central theme of the series? No way could that possibly be a good way to start a franchise, despite the multitude of engaged fans who had an anniversary show as their origin.

This is my first-ever Sentai premiere, and it's the sequel to an anniversary season. Naturally.

It’s all because of Inoue, one of my favorite TV writers full-stop. I loved his Agito and Faiz series for Kamen Rider, and found his Kiva series to be an intensely-watchable mixed bag. I wasn’t really looking for a Sentai to watch (plate’s… plate’s real full!), but when the announcement was made that he’d be writing the 46th Sentai show, I knew I had to watch it.

“Inoue Forever.” It’s a thing I say a lot. His work – love it or hate it – is always a passionate expression of his interests, and it really sparks something in me. There’s nothing about his work that ever feels compromised, or tentative. What you get from an Inoue show is exactly what he wants to say, for better or worse. (Like, frequently worse! He can just as easily create something Fully Terrible as he can Fully Awesome. Energy can be misapplied! I love Inoue, but I don’t always love Inoue’s execution, to be clear. I don’t want me and you to get off on a misunderstanding? It would be weird, in the afterglow of an Inoue premiere.) I love the unfiltered, frequently ill-advised approach of his.

Mostly because he seems to want to talk about stuff I find really interesting to explore via superhero fiction: the value of art; the necessity of self-expression; the ways systems crush heroes and villains alike; owning your shortcomings; occasionally falling into rivers and getting narratively-convenient amnesia.

And a lot of that was on display in this first episode, thankfully.

It’s exactly what I’d hoped for in an Inoue-written sequel to an anniversary Sentai: a story that could not care less about celebrating anniversaries or acting as a sequel to a Sentai. I don’t get the references here (I recognize Zenkaiger and Grayscale Zenkaiger, but that’s it) and I honestly don’t care to, and this show was more than willing to accommodate me. It’s more concerned with telling a thrilling story about a world revealed as monstrous, and a girl who becomes a hero, than it was about anything else.

I really love the gimmick for the show – They Live, For Kids – and I think it’s executed with a gorgeously disorienting visual style. (Also, hey, The World Is A System Run By Hidden Monsters, hello thematic obsession.) Everything, when seen through the Magic Glasses, is both more wonderful and more menacing. Colors radiate off of objects. Geometric shapes dot the skyline. And every stranger could be an inhuman threat.

And yet… god, it’s just a fun show? Peril aplenty, but this thing never for a second feels like it’s oppressive, or even tense. The tone is relentlessly exciting, with an opening credits dance number that feels positively restrained, when compared to the sugar-rush of the show itself. Things keep happening, no matter what, and it’s a smart decision. Exposition is for later episodes, man. For now, give me gags I can laugh at, action that sears my retinas, and characters I can believe in.

Which: HARUKA! Yes! I believe in Haruka! She’s the ideal way to introduce someone to the world of DonBrothers (and the world of Sentai), thanks to her genre-savvy and limitless pluck. Nothing that happens to her makes any sense, but the actor is so deft at balancing her astonished glee (this is just like a manga!) and stark terror (just the funniest screams, if that isn’t weird to say) that her reactions provide a logic to the episode. The performance is so grounded and watchable that it almost feels gaudy to have additional superheroes on this show. I’m so in her headspace, that it mostly didn’t occur to me to wonder about what weird thing was currently happening to her, or speculate as to what secret it might be hiding. I don’t need to know what’s going on, because she doesn’t know what’s going on, and I believe in her character enough to go on this bizarre journey with her.

What the journey is… god, I couldn’t even fathom a guess. A lot of weird stuff befalls our heroine (and, like, she is my heroine) without a hundred percent feeling like it’s giving us any context for what we’re seeing yet. There’s Haruka’s life getting detonated in an afternoon, assuming the villains have somehow found a way to make her look like a plagiarist. There’s her run-in with a poetic swordsman who is so righteous and romantic that, since this is an Inoue show, it immediately becomes a horror show of callous executions and minor shoving. And there’s her chance meeting with Cube Dad, the dad who lives in a cube, and his cryptic directions to find Momoi Tarou and pledge fealty to him.

Speaking of our Red! MOMOI TAROU! I love him? He’s incredibly weird, with cheekbones that are more unnerving and unreal than all of the CG on this show put together (which: it’s real bad! I also couldn’t care less!), and we really only spend a couple scenes with him. They’re both so good, though, that it got me totally locked-in on this show.

They’re about connections, which is nice. The idea that there’s no such thing as a chance encounter, and that even accidents can become lifelines? I like that. It’s wonderful to see the Big Lead Character as a person first, and a Sentai second. The first scene he has, the delivery scene, paints a really evocative picture of a character. He’s sort of pushy, and aggressive… but he’s also ready to help, and he hates seeing people give up on themselves. He’s almost frustratingly chipper, but it works? He cleans an entire apartment in a moment, just to give a guy a fighting chance at his bar exam, and it’s so hilariously over-the-top (he makes a little You Can Do It hat!) that, like, you want that guy fighting for you. You want some weirdo to care enough to do that.

The second scene is still that, but turned up to Sentai. Don Momotaro arrives on a litter, showered with flower petals, ready to turn a life-or-death struggle into a party. It’s the constant refrain of this episode, that this stuff should be FUN. Life is all about having a positive attitude, and not letting new experiences pass you by. Whether that’s involving yourself in the emotional turmoil of a guy who can’t study well, or teaming up with other superheroes to protect a city from a rampaging Ego Monster, it’s all the same thing: The world's a party, if you let it be.

I can't believe I'm watching a Sentai show, and I can't believe I had this much fun watching it. I'm ready to go on this journey with these characters. I'm going to open myself up to it, to all of you new friends, and just enjoy the party.

Inoue Forever!